"Yes. Next to Gourel, we are his favorite inspectors. A proof is that he has posted us in the Palace Hotel to watch the people who were living on the first-floor passage at the time of Chapman's murder. Gourel comes every morning, and we make the same report to him that we do to you."
"Capital. It is essential that I should be informed of all that happens and all that is said at the Prefecture of Police. As long as Lenormand looks upon you as his men, I am master of the situation. And have you discovered a trail of any kind in the hotel?"
Jean Doudeville, the elder of the two, replied:
"The Englishwoman who occupied one of the bedrooms has gone."
"That doesn't interest me. I know all about her. But her neighbor, Major Parbury?"
They seemed embarrassed. At last, one of them replied:
"Major Parbury, this morning, ordered his luggage to be taken to the Gare du Nord, for the twelve-fifty train, and himself drove away in a motor. We were there when the train left. The major did not come."
"And the luggage?"
"He had it fetched at the station."
"By whom?"
"By a commissionaire, so we were told."
"Then his tracks are lost?"
"Yes."
"At last!" cried the prince, joyfully.
The others looked at him in surprise.
"Why, of course," he said, "that's a clue!"
"Do you think so?"
"Evidently. The murder of Chapman can only have been committed in one of the rooms on that passage. Mr. Kesselbach's murderer took the secretary there, to an accomplice, killed him there, changed his clothes there; and, once the murderer had got away, the accomplice placed the corpse in the passage. But which accomplice? The manner of Major Parbury's disappearance goes to show that he knows something of the business. Quick, telephone the good news to M. Lenormand or Gourel. The Prefecture must be informed as soon as possible. The people there and I are marching hand in hand."
He gave them a few more injunctions, concerning their double rôle as police-inspectors in the service of Prince Sernine, and dismissed them.
Two visitors remained in the waiting-room. He called one of them in:
"A thousand pardons, Doctor," he said. "I am quite at your orders now. How is Pierre Leduc?"
"He's dead."
"Aha!" said Sernine. "I expected it, after your note of this morning. But, all the same, the poor beggar has not been long. . . ."
"He was wasted to a shadow. A fainting-fit; and it was all over."
"Did he not speak?"
"No."
"Are you sure that, from the day when the two of us picked him up under the table in that low haunt at Belleville, are you sure that nobody in your nursing-home suspected that he was the Pierre Leduc whom the police were looking for, the mysterious Pierre Leduc whom Mr. Kesselbach was trying to find at all costs?"
"Nobody. He had a room to himself. Moreover, I bandaged up his left hand so that the injury to the little finger could not be seen. As for the scar on the cheek, it is hidden by the beard."
"And you looked after him yourself?"
"Myself. And, according to your instructions, I took the opportunity of questioning him whenever he seemed at all clear in his head. But I could never get more than an inarticulate stammering out of him."
The prince muttered thoughtfully:
"Dead! . . . So Pierre Leduc is dead? . . . The whole Kesselbach case obviously turned on him, and now he disappears . . . without a revelation, without a word about himself, about his past. . . . Ought I to embark on this adventure, in which I am still entirely in the dark? It's dangerous. . . . I may come to grief. . . ."
He reflected for a moment and exclaimed:
"Oh, who cares? I shall go on for all that. It's no reason, because Pierre Leduc is dead, that I should throw up the game. On the contrary! And the opportunity is too tempting! Pierre Leduc is dead! Long live Pierre Leduc! . . . Go, Doctor, go home. I shall ring you up before dinner."
The doctor went out.
"Now then, Philippe," said Sernine to his last remaining visitor, a little gray-haired man, dressed like a waiter at a hotel, a very tenth-rate hotel, however.
"You will remember, governor," Philippe began, "that last week, you made me go as boots to the Hôtel des Deux-Empereurs at Versailles, to keep my eye on a young man."
"Yes, I know. . . . Gérard Baupré. How do things stand with him?"
"He's at the end of his resources."
"Still full of gloomy ideas?"
"Yes. He wants to kill himself."
"Is he serious?"
"Quite. I found this little note in pencil among his papers."
"Ah!" said Sernine, reading the note. "He announces his suicide . . . and for this evening too!"
"Yes, governor, he has bought the rope and screwed the hook to the ceiling. Thereupon, acting on your instructions, I talked to him. He told me of his distress, and I advised him to apply to you: 'Prince Sernine is rich,' I said; 'he is generous; perhaps he will help you.'"
"All this is first-rate. So he is coming?"
"He is here."
"How do you know?"
"I followed him. He took the train to Paris, and he is walking up and down the boulevard at this minute. He will make up his mind from one moment to the other."
Just then the servant brought in a card. The prince glanced at it and said to the man:
"Show M. Gérard Baupré in."
Then, turning to Philippe:
"You go into the dressing-room, here; listen and don't stir."
Left alone, the prince muttered:
"Why should I hesitate? It's fate that sends him my way. . . ."
A few minutes later a tall young man entered. He was fair and slender, with an emaciated face and feverish eyes, and he stood on the threshold embarrassed, hesitating, in the attitude of a beggar who would like to put out his hand for alms and dares not.
The conversation was brief:
"Are you M. Gérard Baupré?"
"Yes . . . yes . . . that is my name."
"I have not the honor . . ."
"It's like this, sir. . . . Some one told me . . ."
"Who?"
"A hotel servant . . . who said he had been in your service. . . ."
"Please come to the point. . . ."
"Well! . . ."
The young man stopped, taken aback and frightened by the haughty attitude adopted by the prince, who exclaimed:
"But, sir, there must be some . . ."
"Well, sir, the man told me that you were very rich . . . and very generous. . . . And I thought that you might possibly . . ."
He broke off short, incapable of uttering the word of prayer and humiliation.
Sernine went up to him.
"M. Gérard Baupré, did you not publish a volume of poetry called The Smile of Spring?"
"Yes, yes,"