don't you?"

The commissary glanced at his watch. "Yes, but do you realize it's after
three o'clock?"

"Never mind, I must see him. A lot depends on it. Get him out of bed for
me, Lucien, and--then you can go home."

"I'll try," grumbled the other, "but what in Heaven's name are you going to
do with that dog?"

"_Use him,_" answered Coquenil.




CHAPTER VII

THE FOOTPRINTS


One of the great lessons Coquenil had learned in his long experience with
mysterious crimes was to be careful of hastily rejecting any evidence
because it conflicted with some preconceived theory. It would have been
easy now, for instance, to assume that this prim spinster was mistaken in
declaring that she had seen the pistol thrown from the window of Number
Seven. That, of course, seemed most unlikely, since the shooting was done
in Number Six, yet how account for the woman's positiveness? She seemed a
truthful, well-meaning person, and the murderer _might_ have gone into
Number Seven after committing the crime. It was evidently important to get