Evidently the next step was to search every hole and corner of these same roofs. Armed with revolver and lantern, Fandor started on his tour of investigation; but prudently, for he was now almost certain that there were a number of accomplices involved in this Dollon affair.
To go carefully over the enormous roof of the Palais de Justice was no light task! One has only to consider the immensity of this monumental pile, its complicated architecture, the numberless little courts enclosed within its vast confines, to understand the difficulties with which our intrepid journalist had to contend. But Jérôme Fandor was not the man to be discouraged in the face of difficulties: he was determined to brave them—conquer them! He examined, minutely, the entire roofing of the Palais; he did not leave a corner or a morsel of shadow unexplored; there was not a gutter which he had not searched from end to end. When, after two hours of strenuous exertion, he returned to his starting-point, the chimney of Marie Antoinette, he was fain to confess that if Jacques Dollon had mounted to the roof of the Palais de Justice he certainly had not remained there.
Fandor unfolded his plan once more. It fluttered in the night breeze, as he carefully numbered all the chimneys opening on to this roof; then, one by one, he identified them with the real chimneys before his eyes. He exclaimed joyfully:
"There, now! It's just what I suspected!"
He had discovered there was one chimney not down on the plan: "Whither did it lead?" At all costs he must find out—make sure. He hastened to this extra chimney. Its orifice was large enough to allow of the passage of a man; also, here again, stones had been recently loosened, and a rope had rubbed against them:
"What the deuce is this chimney?" thought Fandor. "Another mystery! This chimney is not a chimney; there is not a trace of soot on it, even old soot!"
After a moment's reflection, he added:
"Can it be for ventilation only? But a ventilation hole could only communicate with one of the apartments in the Palais itself, and how the deuce could they drop a corpse down there? It would have been in the highest degree imprudent to attempt it! No, it is not by that road they have carried off Dollon's body! But then by what way?"
He glued his ear to the chimney. After a while, Fandor could make out a vague, intermittent sound—could catch a little, far-away, plashing sound.
"Can the chimney communicate with the Seine?" he asked himself. "No, we are too far off it. Why this opening, then?... Ah, I have it! It is a drain, a sewer, it communicates with!"