But a startling surprise awaited the detectives.
Their imperious knocking at the door of the frowsy Chat Mort at first brought no reply. A few minutes later the proprietor appeared, half-dressed and yawning drowsily as though just awakened from profound sleep. He was instantly arrested and handcuffed and the police poured into the house, revolvers drawn and ready for what they expected would be a furious combat with reckless and desperate men.
To their utter amazement the house was empty!
The room looking on to the courtyard, in which, according to Jules and Yvette, the conspirators had held their meeting, was in perfect order, apparently as it had been left the night before when the place was shut up. There was not a sign that anyone had been there for hours, not even a whiff of fresh tobacco smoke to suggest that the room had been recently occupied.
Roquet was utterly mystified. He had, with very good reason, dreamed any escape impossible. Could Jules and Yvette have been mistaken?
That, he felt, was out of the question. None the less the problem remained—where were the men? The house was speedily searched from attic to cellars, but in vain. There was not the smallest indication that any meeting had been held there!
Roquet naturally felt intensely foolish, and his embarrassment was in no way lessened by the voluble protestations of the proprietor who demanded, with every show of righteous indignation, the reason of what he was pleased to term “an outrageous domiciliary visit.” There was, of course, no charge against him, and ultimately the baffled police were compelled to release him and retire, furious and puzzled at the utter failure of what had promised to be a brilliant coup.
Three days later the mystery was solved.
From the cellar of the “Chat Mort” a narrow tunnel had been driven to an equally disreputable establishment a short distance away, and when the police had raided the house the plotters had swiftly bolted, leaving the innkeeper to drop behind them the stone slab in the cellar floor which covered the entrance to the tunnel.
The position now was grave enough, and Yvette, Jules, and Dick discussed it at length with the Préfet and his lieutenants. To all entreaties that he should stay out of the procession the Chief resolutely turned a deaf ear, and they found it impossible to shake his resolve.