sinking foundation stones. At the entrance of the fissure a tiny pile of flour showed, as though some object previously dusted with the powder had been forced through the crevice.
I blinked stupidly at him. "Wh-what is this track?" I asked in bewilderment.
"Ah, bah!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "The blindest man is he who shuts his own eyes, my friend. Did you never, as a boy, come upon the trail of a serpent in the dusty road?"
"A snake track"—my mind refused the evidence of my eyes—"but how can that be—here?"
"The gamekeeper thought he saw a serpent in the garden exactly outside this chapel," de Graudin replied in a low voice, "and it was where that besotted gamekeeper imagined he beheld a serpent that the body of Mijnheer Van Brandt was found crushed out of semblance to a human man. Tell me. Friend Trowbridge,—you know something of zoology—what creature, besides the constrictor-snake, kills his prey by crushing each bone of his body till nothing but shapeless pulp remains? Hein?"
"Bu—but—" I began, when he cut me short:
"Go call on our patient," he commanded. "If she sleeps, do not awaken her, but observe the drugget on her floor!"
I hastened to Adrienne Bixby's room, pushed unceremoniously past Roxanne, the maid, and tiptoed to the girl's bedside. She lay on her side, one check pillowed on her arm, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. I bent over her a moment, listening to her even breathing, then, nodding to the maid, turned and walked softly from the room, my eyes glued to the dark-red plush carpet which covered the chamber floor.
Five minutes later I met the little Frenchman in the library, my excitement now as high as his own. "De Grandin," I whispered, involuntarily lowering my voice, "I looked at her carpet. The thing's made of red velvet and shows a spot of dust ten feet away. A trail of faint white footprints leads right up to her bed!"
8
"Sacre no, d'un petit bon-homme!" He reached for his green felt hat and turned toward the door. "The trail becomes clear; even my good, skeptical friend Trowbridge can follow it, I think. Come cher ami, let us see what we can see."
He led me through the château park, between the rows of tall, trembling poplar trees, to a spot where black-boughed evergreens cast perpetual shade above a stone-fenced area of a scant half acre. Rose bushes, long deteriorated from their cultivated state, ran riot over the ground, the whole enclosure had the gloomy aspect of a deserted cemetery. "Why," I asked, "what place is this, de Grandin? It's as different from the rest of the park as—"
"As death is from life, n'est-ce-pas?" he interjected. "Yes, so it is, truly. Observe." He parted a mass of intertwined brambles and pointed to a slab of stone, once white, but now brown and roughened with centuries of exposure. "Can you read the inscription?" he asked.
The letters, once deeply cut in the stone, were almost obliterated, but I made out:
CI GÎT TOUJOURS RAIMOND
SEIGNEUR DE BROUSSAC
"What does it say?" he demanded.
"'Here lies Raimond, Lord of Broussac,'" I replied, translating as well as I could.
"{{lang|fr|Non, non," he contradicted. "It does not say, 'Ci gît,' here lies; but 'Ci gît toujours,'—here lies always,
