"Then . . . then . . . I don't know . . ." He went up to the door. "Let's see, . . . there's a key . . . does it turn? . . . Yes, it turns. But there seems to be a bolt on the other side."
"Who can have fastened it?"
"They, of course! Behind our backs! . . . Perhaps they have another tunnel that runs above this one, alongside of it . . . or else they were waiting in that empty house. . . . In any case, we're caught in a trap. . . ."
He grew angry with the lock, thrust his knife into the chink of the door, tried every means and then, in a moment of weariness, said:
"There's nothing to be done!"
"What, chief, nothing to be done? In that case, we're diddled!"
"I dare say!" said M. Lenormand. . . .
They returned to the other door and came back again to the first. Both were solid, made of hard wood, strengthened with cross-beams . . . in short, indestructible.
"We should want a hatchet," said the chief of the detective-service, "or at the very least, a serious implement . . . a knife even, with which we might try to cut away the place where the bolt is most likely to be . . . and we have nothing. . . ."
He was seized with a sudden fit of rage and flung himself upon the obstacle, as though he hoped to do away with it. Then, powerless, beaten, he said to Gourel: