The chief knew the young Deputy Attorney very well, and had a deep admiration and respect for him. He did not ask any useless or embarrassing questions when Floriot told him what he wanted. Being a good policeman he already knew much of the private life of the man, and it was easy for him to fill in the gaps in Floriot's story. Noel returned with the photograph and he promised that he would have a number of reproductions made and put his best men on the search.
Leaving the office of the police chief they made the rounds of all the hospitals without learning anything of a woman answering Jacqueline's description. Then Noel insisted that they could do nothing more that day and that they had better go out to Passy, have a good dinner and a night's rest.
All the way home, at dinner, and throughout the evening Noel talked to his friend with a buoyancy he did not feel. As the day wore on he realized what a task they had undertaken, and already he began to feel that if they succeeded in finding her it must be due more to chance than otherwise. But he had no idea of abandoning the search. In his heart he told himself that he would devote his life to it if necessary.
And Floriot? Like the Jew of the legend the spirit of unrest had already entered his soul. He made a hundred vain and impracticable suggestions in the course of the evening, each one involving useless activity on the part of himself and his friend. But the manifest futility of adopting any of his plans did not weigh with him. He wanted to be doing something. Noel finally drugged him with Burgundy and persuaded him to go to bed with many assurances that the Chief would have her or be on the trail in the morning.
"Noel, old man, I don't want to sleep!" was his last protest. "What do you think about going, as I suggested, down to——"
"Tut! Tut!" interrupted Noel, testily. "What have you employed the police for? Go to sleep, old man! It'll be all right by to-morrow night!"
And with a final hand-shake he left him.
In spite of his protest that he did not want to sleep, a mine explosion would not have stirred Floriot two minutes after he touched the bed. Exhausted Nature seized the opportunity to make up for the drains of more than two weeks, and he was still sleeping heavily when Noel came to call him shortly after noon.
"I've just come from the Chief's office," said Noel, brightly, after he had listened to and put aside Floriot's reproaches for not calling him. He did not mention that he had been to the morgue again.
"And what does he say?" demanded the other sitting up with eager anxiety. Noel avoided his eyes.