Since he had begun his inquiry on the spot, from the very moment when the revolver shots had rung out, the great detective was growing more and more sure that the arrest of the mysterious offender would be a matter of considerable time. The buildings of the establishment were extensive, and it was easy for a man to move about them without attracting attention. They offered really strange facilities for hiding.
"Mr. Director," said Juve, "I fancy we have inspected pretty well all the persons who leave Lâriboisière as a rule, at this time?"
"That is so."
"Then we must now change our plan. Let us leave a nurse here to detain those who come to ask for passes, and begin a search of the hospital ourselves. I shall post my officers in line, each man keeping in sight the one behind and the one before him. At the foot of every staircase I shall leave a sentry. Then, beginning at the outer wall of the building we will drive everyone on the ground floor toward the other end. If we don't round up our man there, we will proceed to the floor above."
"A good idea," replied M. de Maufil. "We shall catch him in a trap."
When Doctor Chaleck found that the inspector watching the exit leading to the main door in the Rue Ambroise Paré refused him leave to pass out of the hospital without the sanction of the great detective, he had perforce to retrace his steps. Skirting the bushes in the courtyard he took his way toward the medical wards, turning his back on the directoral offices, where he might have encountered our friend Juve. He had taken off his white uniform and was dressed in his street clothes. He halted at the entrance to the long glazed gallery which extends to the operating rooms of the surgical department. Turning suddenly, he saw in the distance and coming his way Inspector Juve, accompanied by the director. He noticed at the same time the cordon of officers preparing to sweep the hospital from end to end. Mechanically, and as if bent on putting a certain distance between him and the new-comers, he turned into the glazed gallery, and reached the far end of it. He was about to go into the surgical ward when a nurse stopped him.
"Doctor, you can't go in just now; Professor Hugard is operating and has given express orders that no one is to be admitted."
Chaleck turned up the gallery again, but abruptly swung round again as he caught sight of Juve and the director just entering the gallery, driving before them half a dozen patients and orderlies. Chaleck joined this little group, which had pulled up at the end of the gallery and was making laughing comments on the rigid inspection to which Juve was just about to subject them.
"Now's the time to show clean hands," joked a non-resident, "eh, Miss Victorine?" he added, smiling at a buxom nurse whom the chances of duty had blockaded in the corridor.
"Depend upon it," growled one of the accountants of the administrative department, shrugging his shoulders, "they are making a great fuss over nothing. After all, no one is hurt. Just one more pistol shot; in this neighbourhood we have ceased to count them."