Duke's eyes did not usually twinkle as they twinkled during this
solemn and deliberate progress through the house of M. Gournay-
Martin. M. Formery had so exactly the air of a sleuthhound; and he
was even noisier.

Having made this thorough examination of the house, M. Formery went
out into the garden and set about examining that. There were
footprints on the turf about the foot of the ladder, for the grass
was close-clipped, and the rain had penetrated and softened the
soil; but there were hardly as many footprints as might have been
expected, seeing that the burglars must have made many journeys in
the course of robbing the drawing-rooms of so many objects of art,
some of them of considerable weight. The footprints led to a path of
hard gravel; and M. Formery led the way down it, out of the door in
the wall at the bottom of the garden, and into the space round the
house which was being built.

As M. Formery had divined, there was a heap, or, to be exact, there
were several heaps of plaster about the bottom of the scaffolding.
Unfortunately, there were also hundreds of footprints. M. Formery
looked at them with longing eyes; but he did not suggest that the
inspector should hunt about for a set of footprints of the size of
the one he had so carefully measured on the drawing-room carpet.

While they were examining the ground round the half-built house a
man came briskly down the stairs from the second floor of the house
of M. Gournay-Martin. He was an ordinary-looking man, almost
insignificant, of between forty and fifty, and of rather more than
middle height. He had an ordinary, rather shapeless mouth, an
ordinary nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary forehead, rather low,