The next thing was to find Trottier. He was a man who only began to live after dinner. He might be looked for on the Boulevard between nine o'clock and midnight. He might be found at a club much favoured by actors and journalists, a club which had taken for itself a name from the history of the mediæval drama, and rejoiced in the title of _Les Enfants Sans Souci_, more briefly known as the _Sans Souci_. The _Sans Souci_ had its nest on an _entresol_ in the Rue Vivienne, six low-ceiled rooms opening one out of another, three of them furnished with divans in true Oriental style. These were the smoking-rooms. Then came a fourth and much more spacious apartment, provided with numerous small tables, writing materials, and the newspapers. Tapestried _portières_ on the right and left of the fireplace in this reading-room opened into the sanctuary of the club, two medium-sized rooms, furnished with green cloth tables for baccarat, thickly curtained, thickly carpeted, lighted only from the courtyard of the house, which was like a dry well. Edward Heathcote strolled along the Boulevard, looking for his friend as he went. It was nearly ten o'clock, a delicious night, balmy, starlit, summer-like; a night upon which Sigismond Trottier might naturally have been found seated amidst the idlers clustered on the asphalte in front of a popular café. But in the groups which Heathcote passed between the Hôtel de Bade and the corner of the Place de la Bourse there was no sign of Trottier's ferret-face and long gray hair. So the Englishman continued his walk to the Rue Vivienne, and entered the lamp-lit vestibule which led to the mysteries of the _Sans Souci_. He had been taken there more than once by Trottier, and had been amused and interested by the people he met. "Can you tell me if Monsieur Trottier is here this evening?" he asked of the porter. "Yes, Monsieur. He came half an hour ago. Monsieur Trottier generally comes here at the same hour every evening to write his article for the _Taon_." The rooms were almost empty. Neither journalists nor actors mustered strong before midnight. In a comfortable corner of the writing-room, at a little table brilliantly lighted by a green-shaded lamp, Edward Heathcote found the man he came to seek.