"Alas," he said, "the dear child hardly ever wrote to me and cared little about her poor daddy. I, on the other hand, am very fond of her. A daughter's always a daughter, you know. So you can imagine how I jumped for joy when I read in the papers that she had come into money. I should at last be able to devote myself to her and to devote all my strength and all my energy to the great and wonderful task of defending her interests and her fortune." He spoke in a honeyed voice and assumed a false and unctuous air which exasperated me. I questioned him: "How do you propose to fulfill that task?" "Why, quite simply," he replied, "by continuing Noël Dorgeroux's work." "In other words?" "By throwing open the doors of the amphitheatre." "Which means?" "Which means that I shall show to the public the pictures which your uncle used to produce." "Have you ever seen them?" "No. I speak from your evidence and your interviews." "Do you know how my uncle used to produce them?" "I do, since yesterday evening." "Then you have seen the manuscript of which I was robbed and the formula stolen by the murderer?" "Since yesterday evening, I say." "But how?" I exclaimed, excitedly. "How? By a simple trick." "What do you mean?" He showed me a bundle of newspapers of the day before and continued, with a smirking air: "If you had read yesterday's newspapers, or at least the more important of them, carefully, you would have noticed a discreet advertisement in the special column. It read, 'Proprietor of the Yard wishes to purchase the two documents necessary for working. He can be seen this evening in the Place Vendôme.' Nothing much in the advertisement, was there? But, to the possessors of the two documents, how clear in its meaning . . . and what a bait! To them it was the one opportunity of making a profit, for, with all the publicity attaching to the affair, they were unable to benefit by the result of their robberies without revealing their identity to the public. My calculation was correct. After I had waited an hour by the Vendôme Column, a very luxurious motor-car picked me up, you might almost say without stopping, and, ten minutes afterwards, dropped me at the Étoile, with the documents in my possession. I spent the night in reading the manuscript. Oh, my dear sir, what a genius your uncle was! What a revolution his discovery! And in what a masterly way he expounded it! I never read anything so methodical and so lucid! All that remains for me to do is mere child's-play." I had listened to the man Massignac with ever-increasing amazement. Was he assuming that anybody would for a moment credit so ridiculous a tale? He was laughing, however, with a look of a man who congratulates himself on the events with which he is mixed up, or rather, perhaps, on the very skilful fashion in which he believes himself to have manipulated them.