“Not only have men passed this way just a short while ago,” he murmured, “but they were carrying a heavy burden: there are two kinds of footprints, made by two kinds of shoes, and the heels have made much deeper marks in the soil than have the tips – yes, these men definitely bore a heavy burden!”

Fandor was so pleased that he mentally rubbed his hands over this discovery. His quest was a success so far: he was on the track of Dollon’s body! And what copy for La Capitale! Then a sad thought came to dim his delight:

“Poor, poor Elizabeth Dollon! I swore to her I would get at the truth – and a lamentable truth it is. Her brother is dead: he died in the Dépôt : he was done to death – it was no suicide! ”

Whilst talking to himself Fandor was scrutinising every inch of the ground as he moved forward: there might be fresh clues.

“It’s a queer kind of sewer,” he went on. “This streamlet is as much mud as water, it’s almost stagnant.

Evidently this underground sewer-way is no longer used – it’s been abandoned!”

Then a horrid spectacle struck him motionless. His lantern made visible a struggling, heaving mass of rats, fighting tooth and claw, enormous rats devouring some hidden thing!

Fandor’s stomach convulsed at the sight.

Oh, horror! Could it be Jacques Dollon’s body?

Fandor snatched up a stone and flung it furiously among the unclean beasts. They fled. On the ground he could distinguish a mass, a red, formless mass, saturated with congealed blood and torn flesh.

“Assuredly, if the corpse has disappeared, it is there the assassins must have cut it in pieces, that they might carry it more easily, and those vile creatures are in the thick of feasting on the poor victim’s remains! Pouah!” Fandor moved on only to discover another pool of blood almost as large, also besieged by rats: Evidently I shall find nothing else, thought Fandor; the corpse no longer exists!

He continued his advance, determined to find out what this underground passageway ended in. His lantern was flickering to a finish when he arrived at the end of the sewer and found, as he had foreseen, that its opening had been cut into the steep bank of the Seine.

“That’s a bit of luck! I can get out this way instead of having to climb back the way I came, up to the Palais roof and down again!”

It was still night; darkness reigned save on the far horizon, where a faint, whitish line indicated the early dawn of an April day.