"Certainly. We shall put a guard over it and keep a sharp lookout until he comes back. As to the man, he has disappeared."
"Disappeared?"
"Disappeared. He generally passes his evenings with his neighbor, the widow Bidoin, who is also a second-hand dealer and a good-for-nothing fortune-teller. She has not seen him this evening and can give us no intelligence of him. We shall have to wait until to-morrow."
I went away. Ah! how sinister, how haunted and dread-inspiring the streets of Rouen appeared to me that night!
I slept so badly, awakening in a nightmare from every one of my short naps.
As I did not wish to appear unduly anxious or impatient, I waited the next morning until it was ten o'clock before going to the police-station.
Nothing more had been seen of the merchant. His shop remained closed.
The commissaire said to me:
"I have taken all the necessary steps. The public prosecutor has been fully apprised of the circumstances of the case; we will go together to that shop and have it opened, and you will point out to me your property."
A coupé conveyed us thither. There were policemen, together with a locksmith, standing in front of the shop-door, which was quickly opened.
When we had effected an entrance I could see nothing of my armoire, my fauteuils, my tables; nothing, not a thing of the furniture that had been in my house, absolutely nothing, while the night before I
