The telephone bell rang. Don Luis left Mazeroux to his conversation with the Prefect, and, taking the bunch of keys, easily unfastened the lock and the bolt of the door and went out into the garden, in the hope of there finding some trace that should facilitate his quest.
As on the day before, he saw, through the ivy, two policemen walking between one lamp–post and the next. They did not see him. Moreover, anything that might happen inside the house appeared to be to them a matter of total indifference.
"That's my great mistake," said Perenna to himself. "It doesn't do to entrust a job to people who do not suspect its importance."
His investigations led to the discovery of some traces of footsteps on the gravel, traces not sufficiently plain to enable him to distinguish the shape of the
