Two men, one that he had formerly seen, came and looked at him. No effort was made to discover if he were really at fault or not. By this time they were quite convinced that he was a desperate character, and if not a spy, then anyway a murderer, although they were inclined to regard him as a criminal mystery. At all events they no longer could question his right to a night’s lodging. Kreisler was led to a cell, given some bread and water at his urgent request, and left alone. On the following morning he was taken up before the _commissaire de police_. When Kreisler was brought in, this gentleman had just finished cross-examining for the fifteenth time the two German carpenters who were retained as spies. They were not let alone for an instant. They would be dragged out of their cells three times in the course of an afternoon, as often as a new and brilliant idea should strike one of the numerous staff of the police-station. They would be confronted with their foot-rules, and watched in breathless silence; or be keenly cross-questioned, confused and contradicted as to the exact hour at which they had lunched the day before their arrest. The _commissaire_ was perspiring all over with the intensity of his last effort to detect something. Kreisler was led in, and prevented from finishing any sentence or of becoming in any way intelligible during a quarter of an hour by the furious interruptions of the enraged officer. At last he succeeded in asserting that he was quite unacquainted with the two carpenters; moreover, that all he needed was food; that he had decided to give himself up and await the decision of the Paris authorities as regards the deed. If they were not going to take any action, he would return to Paris—at least, as soon as he had received a certain letter; and he gave his address. The _commissaire_ considered him with exhausted animosity and he was sent back to his cell.