"I'm sure of it. If there were no other proof, there is this particular fracture of the wind-pipe, which is Ya-Bon's special mark. What I do not understand is why, when he had settled his adversary, Ya-Bon didn't break down the door with a push of his shoulder and go after Siméon. I presume that he was wounded and that he had not the strength to make the necessary effort. I presume also that the woman did not die at once and that she spoke, saying things against Siméon, who had abandoned her instead of defending her. This much is certain, that Ya-Bon broke the window-panes . . ." "To jump into the Seine, wounded as he was, with his one arm?" said Patrice. "Not at all. There's a ledge running along the window. He could set his feet on it and get off that way." "Very well. But he was quite ten or twenty minutes behind Siméon?" "That didn't matter, if the woman had time, before dying, to tell him where Siméon was taking refuge." "How can we get to know?" "I've been trying to find out all the time that we've been chatting . . . and I've just discovered the way." "Here?" "This minute; and I expected no less from Ya-Bon. The woman told him of a place in the cabin--look, that open drawer, probably--in which there was a visiting-card with an address on it. Ya-Bon took it and, in order to let me know, pinned the card to the curtain over there. I had seen it already; but it was only this moment that I noticed the pin that fixed it, a gold pin with which I myself fastened the Morocco Cross to Ya-Bon's breast." "What is the address?" "Amédée Vacherot, 18, Rue Guimard. The Rue Guimard is close to this, which makes me quite sure of the road they took." The two men at once went away, leaving the woman's dead body behind. As Don Luis said, the police must make what they could of it. As they crossed Berthou's Wharf they glanced at the recess and Don Luis remarked: "There's a ladder missing. We must remember that detail. Siméon has been in there. He's beginning to make blunders too." The car took them to the Rue Guimard, a small street in Passy. No. 18 was a large house let out in flats, of fairly ancient construction. It was two o'clock in the morning when they rang. A long time elapsed before the door opened; and, as they passed through the carriage-entrance, the porter put his head out of his lodge: "Who's there?" he asked. "We want to see M. Amédée Vacherot on urgent business." "That's myself." "You?" "Yes, I, the porter. But by what right . . . ?" "Orders of the prefect of police," said Don Luis, displaying a badge. They entered the lodge. Amédée Vacherot was a little, respectable-looking old man, with white whiskers. He might have been a beadle. "Answer my questions plainly," Don Luis ordered, in a rough voice, "and don't try to prevaricate. We are looking for a man called Siméon Diodokis." The porter took fright at once: