“Poor little soul!” he murmured. “Here is something more to add to her troubles! It is really terrible! It seems to me as if we should never come to the end of it; and I ask myself, whether the police will ever find the key to all these mysteries! Did someone really break into Elizabeth Dollon’s room to steal this paper? It is rather improbable. Judging from what she told me, there is nothing compromising in it.

But then, why this search ?... She is right so far: if the intruders had been merely thieves, they would have carried off her jewellery! Then it is for that paper they came?

Besides, ordinary burglars would have had considerable difficulty in getting into her room, where she is remarkably well guarded, by the very fact of there being other boarders in the house. No, the very audacity of this attempted theft seems to prove that it is connected with the other affairs which have brought the name of Jacques Dollon into such prominence... I see in this the same extraordinary audacity, the same certainty of escape, the same long and careful preparation, for it is a by no means convenient place for a burglary in broad daylight: comings and goings are perpetual, and the guilty persons ran a hundred risks of being caught.”

Fandor interrupted his reflections to read Elizabeth’s letter once more.

“She is dying of fright! That is evident!... In any case she calls to me for help. Her letter was posted yesterday evening... I will go to see her – and at once... Who knows but I might find some clue which would put me on the right track?” But Jérôme Fandor did not feel very hopeful.

After considering carefully every point con nected with, and pertaining to, the affair of rue du Quatre Septembre, he had almost come to the conclusion, optimistic as he was regarding the police, that chance alone would bring about the arrest of the guilty parties.

“To grasp these criminals by the heels,” he had frankly declared, “requires the aid of very favourable circumstances, and without them, neither I nor the police will get at the truth of it all.”

Fandor made a definite distinction between the opinion of the police and his own, because two different theories now stood with regard to the two affairs – that of the attack on the Princess Sonia Danidoff, and that of the robbery of rue du Quatre Septembre, where the imprints of Jacques Dollon’s fingers had been found.

The police – and Fandor coupled Monsieur Havard with Monsieur Bertillon under this definition – the police held it for certain that Jacques Dollon was alive, very much alive, and the probabilities were great that he was guilty of the different crimes attributed to him.

In an interview granted to a press rival of La Capitale, Monsieur Bertillon had stated: