The Englishman burst with laughter:
"There, what did I tell you? Off before we knew where we were; and with two of your colleagues, M. Ganimard! Ah, he looks after himself, does Arsène Lupin! With cyclist policemen in his pay! Didn't I tell you our friend was a great deal too calm!"
"What then?" cried Ganimard, angrily. "What could I do? It's very easy to laugh!"
"Come, come, don't be cross. We'll have our revenge. For the moment, what we want is reinforcements."
"Folenfant is waiting for me at the end of the Avenue de Neuilly."
"All right, pick him up and join me, both of you."
Ganimard went away, while Shears followed the tracks of the bicycles, which were easily visible on the dust of the road because two of the machines were fitted with grooved tires. And he soon saw that these tracks were leading him to the bank of the Seine and that the three men had turned in the same direction as Bresson on the previous evening. He thus came to the gate against which he himself had hidden with Ganimard and, a little farther on, he saw a tangle of grooved lines which showed that they had stopped there. Just opposite, a little neck of land jutted into the river and, at the end of it, an old boat lay fastened.
This was where Bresson must have flung his parcel, or, rather, dropped it. Shears went down the incline and saw that, as the bank sloped very gently, and the water was low, he would easily find the parcel ... unless the three men had been there first.
"No, no," he said to himself, "they have not had time ... a quarter of an hour at most..... And, yet, why did they come this way?"
A man was sitting in the boat, fishing. Shears asked him: