Clay, I am off now again on the track of Mme. Picardet. She was lodging in the same house. She has just driven away; I know to what place; and I am after her to arrest her. In blind haste, Medhurst." That’s smartness, if you like. Though poor little woman, I think he might have left her.'
'Does a Mme. Picardet stop here?' I inquired of the landlord, thinking it possible she might have assumed again the same old alias.
He nodded assent. 'Oui, oui oui,' he answered. 'She has just driven off, and monsieur your friend has gone posting after her.'
'Splendid man!' Charles cried. 'Marvillier was quite right. He is the prince of detectives!'
We hailed a couple of fiacres, and drove off, in two detachments, to the juge d'instruction. There Colonel Clay continued to brazen it out, and asserted that he was an officer in the Indian Army, home on six months' leave, and spending some weeks in Paris. He even declared he was known at the Embassy, where he had a cousin an attaché; and he asked that this gentleman should be sent for at once from our Ambassador's to identify him. The juge d'instruction insisted that this must be done; and Charles waited in very bad humour for the foolish formality. It really seemed as if, after all, when we had actually caught and arrested our man, he was going by some cunning device to escape us.
After a delay of more than an hour, during which Colonel Clay fretted and fumed quite as much as we
