Fred was pleased at getting such an important assignment, and looked forward hopefully to some exciting work, although he feared there would be nothing in the story in the end. He went at once on board of the French school-ship, where he found a young lieutenant, who had been officer of the deck a few days before, and who had seen a man whom he thought he recognized as an anarchist he had seen on trial in Paris several years before. He had mentioned this fact to a _Star_ reporter who came aboard for news that evening, simply because he had nothing else to tell him, but he doubted that the man he had seen could be the Paris anarchist, although the latter had escaped from France, and was supposed to have fled to America. His name was Etienne Renard, and the officer gave Fred a description of him. As the reporter left the ship he instinctively asked if there was any news, and the lieutenant told him they expected to sail in a few days for Haiti, and that one seaman had deserted since their arrival in New York harbor. Fred made a paragraph of this information, and sent it down to the _Gazette_ office by messenger. As he stood on the dock a few minutes later, looking up and down the river, as if he thought some inspiration might come to him from the puffing tugs in midstream, he wondered what he should do next, for he was now left without a clew. He knew the anarchists of New York had several gathering-places over on the east side of the city, but he felt sure that even if Renard frequented any of these, it would be under an assumed name, and he further knew there was no place where a reporter was less welcome than at a resort of anarchists. Nevertheless, he determined to see what he could learn in that quarter, and soon was on his way to a restaurant called "Zum Groben Michel," a place that has acquired more or less notoriety, because of the riotous meetings that have been held by men of anarchistic and nihilistic tendencies within its doors. He found a number of ugly-looking characters sitting in the place, but none answered to the description of Renard. He asked a few of the neighbors if a Frenchman was ever seen thereabouts, but he received scant courtesy in reply, and no information; and so he went home to think over some new plan of action. The next day he visited the French quarter in the region of Bleecker Street and South Fifth Avenue, and questioned the restaurant-keepers of the neighborhood, but none of them could remember having seen any man answering to Fred's description of Renard. Every day he visited the east-side restaurant, but all his work availed him nothing. He was about to give up the search as futile a couple of days later; but on his way down town to the office to tell the city editor of his failure, he stopped off at Bleecker Street, and went into one of the cheap cafés to make final inquiries from a fat little French proprietor whom he had found most amiable on a previous visit.