A fortnight went by. I had packed my traps, and leaving Cromer, returned to my rooms in London, and then crossed to Paris, where I spent a week in close, anxious inquiry.
Paris in August is given over to the Cookites and provincials, and most of my friends were absent.
The Prefecture of Police was, however, the chief centre of my sphere of operations, for in that sombre room, with its large, littered writing-table, its telephones, its green-painted walls, and green-baize covered door, the private cabinet of my friend Henri Jonet—the famous Chief Inspector of the Sûreté—I sat on several occasions discussing the activity of Jeanjean and his clever gang.
Jonet was a sharp-featured, clean-shaven man of about forty-five, short and slightly stout, with a pair of merry dark eyes, his hair carefully brushed and trousers always well creased. He was something of a dandy in private life, even though he so often assumed various disguises, passing very frequently as a camelot, or a respectable workman. Of his successes in detection of crime all the world knew.
Next to the Chef de la Sûreté, Chief Inspector Jonet was the most famous police official in Paris, or even in France. In the course of the past few years he had many times dealt unsuccessfully with crimes in which the amazing Jules Jeanjean had been implicated.
I had on many occasions assisted him in his investigations into other matters, and, therefore, on the sultry afternoon, when I called and presented my card, I was shown up immediately into his private bureau—that dismal and rather depressing room, which I so well remembered.
We sat smoking together for a long time before I approached the subject upon which I had called to consult him.
He sat back in his chair enjoying the excellent Bogdanoff cigarette, a fellow to which he had handed to me, and recalling a strange affair that, a year ago, had occupied us both—a theft of bonds from a private bank in the Boulevard Haussmann.
Outside, the afternoon was blazing hot, therefore the green sun-shutters were closed, and the room was in semi-darkness. Jonet's big writing-table was piled with reports and correspondence, as well as one or two recently-arrived photographs of persons wanted by the police authorities of other European countries.
Now and then the telephone buzzed, and he would reply, and give instructions in a quick, sharp voice. Then he turned to me again and continued our conversation.