"Prove it? That's quite easy. Twenty people will tell you that I kept up constant relations with the major and that we used to meet at the café on the Place d'Armes. It was there that, one day, to oblige him in a moment of financial embarrassment, I took his ticket off him and gave him twenty francs for it."
"Have you any witnesses to the transaction?"
"No."
"Then upon what do you base your claim?"
"Upon the letter which he wrote me on the subject."
"What letter?"
"A letter pinned to the ticket."
"Produce it."
"But it was in the stolen writing-desk!"
"Find it."