FRÉDÉRIC LARSAN'S CANE
which I was perhaps wrong not to attach some importance."
We were now out of the park. Rouletabille had dropped into silence. His thoughts were certainly still occupied with Frédéric Larsan's new cane. I had proof of that when, as we came near to Epinay, he said:—
"Frédéric Larsan arrived at the Glandier before me; he began his inquiry before me; he has had time to find out things about which I know nothing. Where did he find that cane?" Then he added: "It is probable that his suspicion—more than that, his reasoning—has led him to lay his hand on something tangible. Has this cane anything to do with it? Where the deuce could he have found it?"
As I had to wait twenty minutes for the train at Epinay, we entered a wine shop. Almost immediately the door opened and Frédéric Larsan made his appearance, brandishing his famous cane.
"I found it!" he said laughingly.
The three of us seated ourselves at a table. Rouletabille never took his eyes off the cane; he was so absorbed that he did not notice a sign Larsan made to a railway employé, a young man with a chin decorated by a tiny blond and ill-kept beard. On the sign he rose, paid for his drink, bowed, and went out. I should not myself have attached any importance to the circumstance, if it had not been recalled to my mind, some months later, by the reappearance of the man with the beard at one of the most tragic moments of this case. I then learned that the
