The policeman groaned. “What is your business?” he demanded.

“We’re on vacation,” I told him. “We only arrived today. We’re staying in Le Chat Gris in the Latin Quarter . . .”

The policeman looked at me strangely, as if he were seeing me properly for the first time. “Le Chat Gris . . .” he repeated. He closed the notebook. “Could you please wait here for a minute.”

He stood up and left the room.

In fact it was ten minutes before he returned. The moment he walked in, I noticed there was something different about him. He was brisk, emotionless. And when he spoke, he did his best not to meet our eyes. “I have spoken with my superior officer,” he said. “And he says that you are free to go!”

“How can we be free to go when we’re locked up in here?” Tim asked.

“No, no, no, monsieur. He says that you may leave.”

“They’re unlocking the door and letting us out,” I explained.

“As far as we are concerned, this incident is closed.” The policeman did the same to his notebook.

“What about Bastille and Lavache?” I asked.

“We have no record of these men. It is our view that they do not exist!”

“What?”

“You jump off the bridge for a joke or maybe as a game and you make up the story of the killers to explain your actions. That is the view of my superintendent.”

“Well, he can’t be as super as all that,” I growled.

But there was no point arguing. For whatever their reasons, the French police had decided to let us go. As far as I was concerned, I just wanted to get out of jail. And out of Paris, too, for that matter. I’d only been there for a day but so far our visit had been less fun than a French lesson—and twice as dangerous.

“Let’s go, Tim,” I said.

*  *  *

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time we got back to the Latin Quarter, but the night wasn’t over yet. Tim wanted to stop for a beer and I was still anxious to open the packet of sugar that was burning a hole in my back pocket. We looked for a café and quite by coincidence found ourselves outside an old-fashioned, artistic sort of place whose name I knew. It was La Palette, the very same café where the train steward, Marc Chabrol, had asked us to meet.

He wasn’t there, of course. Right now, if Chabrol was sipping coffee, it was with two wings and a halo. But there was someone there that we recognized. He was sitting out in the front, smoking a cigar, gazing into the night sky. There was no way I’d forget the hat. It was Jed Mathis, the businessman we had met on the train.

Tim saw him. “It’s Ned,” he said.

“You mean Jed,” I said.

“Why don’t we join him?”