The detectives examined these respective rooms in detail. The furnishing was luxurious and artistic. The drawing-room furniture was Louis Quatorze, with an Aubusson carpet and some cabinets and tables of buhl. There was just enough of good Sèvres and Ormolu, the whole selection of arrangement reflecting the taste of the connoisseur. The dining-room and boudoir gave the same impression of wealth and culture, and the detectives as they passed from room to room were impressed by the excellent taste everywhere exhibited. Though their search was exhaustive it was unfortunately without result. The study was a typical man’s room, except in one respect. There was the usual thick carpet on the floor, the customary book-lined walls, the elaborate desk in the window, and the huge leather arm-chairs. But there was also what almost amounted to a collection of statuary--figures, groups, friezes, plaques, and reliefs, in marble and bronze. A valuable lot, numerous enough and of sufficient excellence not to have disgraced the art galleries of a city. M. Boirac had clearly the knowledge, as well as the means, to indulge his hobby to a very full extent. Burnley took his stand inside the door and looked slowly round the room, taking in its every detail in the rather despairing hope that he would see something helpful to his quest. Twice he looked at the various objects before him, observing in the slow, methodical way in which he had trained himself, making sure that he had a clear mental conception of each before going on to the next. And then his gaze became riveted on an object standing on one of the shelves. It was a white marble group about two feet high of three garlanded women, two standing and one sitting. ‘I say,’ he said to Lefarge, in a voice of something approaching triumph, ‘have you heard of anything like that lately?’ There was no reply, and Burnley, who had not been observing his companion, looked around. Lefarge was on his knees examining with a lens something hidden among the thick pile of the carpet. He was entirely engrossed, and did not appear to have heard Burnley’s remark, but as the latter moved over he rose to his feet with a satisfied little laugh. ‘Look here!’ he cried. ‘Look at this!’ Stepping back to the cross wall adjoining the door, he crouched down with his head close to the floor and his eyes fixed on a point on the carpet in a line between himself and the window. ‘Do you see anything?’ he asked. Burnley got into the same position, and looked at the carpet. ‘No,’ he answered slowly, ‘I do not.’ ‘You’re not far enough this way. Come here. Now look.’ ‘Jove!’ Burnley cried, with excitement in his tones. ‘The cask!’ On the carpet, showing up faintly where the light struck it, was a ring-shaped mark about two feet four inches diameter. The pile was slightly depressed below the general surface, as might have been caused by the rim of a heavy cask. ‘I thought so too,’ said Lefarge, ‘but this makes it quite certain.’