He questioned the carter exhaustively, but without gaining much further information. That the man had no idea of the identity of his seducer was clear. The only name he had got hold of was that of Dupierre, for Boirac had instructed him to say at his house that he had called for Messrs. Dupierre’s cask. Asked if he had not seen the advertisements of rewards for the information he had now given, the man said he had, but that he was afraid to come forward. First he feared he would lose his job if the matter came to his employer’s ears, and then the very fact that so large a reward was offered had frightened him, as he assumed he had unwittingly helped with some crime. He had suspected the matter was one of robbery until he saw of the discovery of the cask in the papers. Then he had at once guessed that he had assisted a murderer to dispose of his victim’s body, and he had lived in a veritable nightmare lest his share in the business should be discovered. Failing to get anything further out of him, La Touche finally dismissed him somewhat contemptuously with his hundred francs. Then he settled himself to try and puzzle out his problem. And first as to the movements of the cask. It had started from Boirac’s house; how did it get there? Clearly from Dupierre’s. It must have been the cask in which Boirac’s statue had been sent home. That cask, then, left Dupierre’s on the Saturday of the dinner party, reaching Boirac’s house the same day. It lay there until the following Thursday. During that time the statue was taken out and the body substituted. The cask then travelled to London, was taken by Felix to St. Malo, and finally got into the hands of the police at Scotland Yard. But then, what about the cask which was met at Waterloo and sent back from London to the Gare du Nord? This, La Touche saw, must have been a different cask, and there must therefore have been two moving about, and not one as they had believed. He tried to follow the movements of this second cask. It left Dupierre’s on the Tuesday evening, reached Waterloo on the following morning and on next day, Thursday, was sent back to Paris, reaching the Gare du Nord at 4.45 p.m. It had always been assumed this cask went from there to the rue Cardinet Goods Station. This was now proved to have been an error. Where, then, did it go? Like a flash La Touche saw. It had gone from the Gare du Nord to Dupierre’s. He looked up his chronology of the case. Yes a cask had been received by Dupierre on that Thursday evening, but they had believed it had come from Boirac’s house. And then the whole diabolical plot began dimly to appear, as La Touche endeavoured to picture the scene which had probably taken place.