As he read the last words M. Lesueur's brow darkened. A mare's nest indeed! An hour gone and nothing gained! Then his eye caught a footnote to the last page of the translation he had just perused.
"About the middle of this story" (the footnote said) "I found a few words in brackets that seem to have no connection with the tale. They are in French—foreigner's French and faulty—but they appear to mean: 'We are imprisoned in the garret under the leads of the long wing of the château. Our food will last only another day.'" This laconic footnote was initialled "H. F. (translator)."
The Commissary's eye brightened. Here at last was something, and something good. Rapidly he made his plans. He would start in twenty minutes with six men; he would advise Toussaint by telephone to meet him at the château with six more. The case would prove, perhaps, vastly important. He saw decorations and Paris employment; he read in imagination columns of praise in the great papers of the capital. Quitting unwillingly the realm of ambitious fancy, he took up the telephone, but before he could speak there came a sharp knock at the door, and a gendarme stood awaiting permission to address his superior.
"What is it?" demanded M. Lesueur.
"A tramp, sir," replied the gendarme.
"God in heaven, man! What do I care for a tramp? Is this a workhouse? Send him away and go after him!"
"He has found two Englishmen in a dungeon," observed the gendarme with wooden persistence.
"Let him join them!" snapped M. Lesueur, angrily. Then the next moment, "What do you say? Englishmen? Where? What dungeon?"
"He asks leave to make his deposition, sir. He is not an ordinary tramp."
For a moment the commissary hesitated. The memory of those words interpolated in the third of the mysterious stories checked his impatience. Never neglect possible information.