"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: