All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings. What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a _souricière_, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery of Shields’ body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret’s disappearance (_enlèvement_), and to a description of the costume (bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clew offered by the advertisement in the _Times_, and his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s had neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment’s notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and that night Maitland of Gatien’s passed, for the first time during his blameless career, in a police-cell. It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental Justice? Are not our countrymen the common butts of German, French, Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a venture, and inquire afterward? Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge d’Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably _louche_. In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of “the journal of the City.”