They at once noticed the traces left by the fugitive in the trampled grass. In two places, marks of blackened blood, now almost dried up, were observed. After the turn at the end of the cloisters, there was nothing more to be seen, as the nature of the ground, here covered with pine-needles, did not lend itself to the imprint of a body. But, in that case, how had the wounded man succeeded in escaping the eyes of Raymonde, Victor and Albert? There was nothing but a few brakes, which the servants and the gendarmes had beaten over and over again, and a number of tombstones, under which they had explored. The examining magistrate made the gardener, who had the key, open the chapel, a real gem of carving, a shrine in stone which had been respected by time and the revolutionaries, and which, with the delicate sculpture work of its porch and its miniature population of statuettes, was always looked upon as a marvelous specimen of the Norman-Gothic style. The chapel, which was very simple in the interior, with no other ornament than its marble altar, offered no hiding-place. Besides, the fugitive would have had to obtain admission. And by what means? The inspection brought them to the little door in the wall that served as an entrance for the visitors to the ruins. It opened on a sunk road running between the park wall and a copsewood containing some abandoned quarries. M. Filleul stooped forward: the dust of the road bore marks of anti-skid pneumatic tires. Raymonde and Victor remembered that, after the shot, they had seemed to hear the throb of a motor-car. The magistrate suggested: “The man must have joined his confederates.” “Impossible!” cried Victor. “I was here while mademoiselle and Albert still had him in view.” “Nonsense, he must be somewhere! Outside or inside: we have no choice!” “He is here,” the servants insisted, obstinately. The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and went back to the house in a more or less sullen mood. There was no doubt that it was an unpromising case. A theft in which nothing had been stolen; an invisible prisoner: what could be less satisfactory? It was late. M. de Gesvres asked the officials and the two journalists to stay to lunch. They ate in silence and then M. Filleul returned to the drawing room, where he questioned the servants. But the sound of a horse’s hoofs came from the courtyard and, a moment after, the gendarme who had been sent to Dieppe entered. “Well, did you see the hatter?” exclaimed the magistrate, eager at last to obtain some positive information. “I saw M. Maigret. The cap was sold to a cab-driver.” “A cab-driver!” “Yes, a driver who stopped his fly before the shop and asked to be supplied with a yellow-leather chauffeur’s cap for one of his customers. This was the only one left. He paid for it, without troubling about the size, and drove off. He was in a great hurry.” “What sort of fly was it?” “A calash.” “And on what day did this happen?”