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second place, you are in very deed Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form pupil and, what is more, an excellent pupil, industrious at your work and of exemplary behavior. As your father lives in the country, you go out once a month to his correspondent, M. Bernod, who is lavish in his praises of you.”
    “So that—”
    “So that you are free, M. Isidore Beautrelet.”
    “Absolutely free?”
    “Absolutely. Oh, I must make just one little condition, all the same. You can understand that I can’t release a gentleman who administers sleeping-draughts, who escapes by the window and who is afterward caught in the act of trespassing upon private property. I can’t release him without a compensation of some kind.”
    “I await your pleasure.”
    “Well, we will resume our interrupted conversation and you shall tell me how far you have advanced with your investigations. In two days of liberty, you must have carried them pretty far?” And, as Ganimard was preparing to go, with an affectation of contempt for that sort of practice, the magistrate cried, “Not at all, M. Inspector, your place is here—I assure you that M. Isidore Beautrelet is worth listening to. M. Isidore Beautrelet, according to my information, has made a great reputation at the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly as an observer whom nothing escapes; and his schoolfellows, I hear, look upon him as your competitor and a rival of Holmlock Shears!”
    “Indeed!” said Ganimard, ironically.
    “Just so. One of them wrote to me, ‘If Beautrelet declares that he knows, you must believe him; and, whatever he says, you may be sure that it is the exact expression of the truth.’ M. Isidore Beautrelet, now or never is the time to vindicate the confidence of your friends. I beseech you, give us the exact expression of the truth.”
    Isidore listened with a smile and replied:
    “Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, you are very cruel. You make fun of poor schoolboys who amuse themselves as best they can. You are quite right, however, and I will give you no further reason to laugh at me.”
    “The fact is that you know nothing, M. Isidore Beautrelet.”
    “Yes, I confess in all humility that I know nothing. For I do not call it ‘knowing anything’ that I happen to have hit upon two or three more precise points which, I am sure, cannot have escaped you.”
    “For instance?”
    “For instance, the object of the theft.”
    “Ah, of course, you know the object of the theft?”
    “As you do, I have no doubt. In fact, it was the first thing I studied, because the task struck me as easier.”
    “Easier, really?”
    “Why, of course. At the most, it’s a question of reasoning.”
    “Nothing more than that?”
    “Nothing more.”
    “And what is your reasoning?”
    “It is just this, stripped of all extraneous comment: on the one hand, THERE HAS BEEN A THEFT, because the two young ladies are agreed and because they really saw two men running away and carrying things with them.”
    “There has been a theft.”
    “On the other hand, NOTHING HAS DISAPPEARED, because M. de Gesvres says so and he is in a better position than anybody to know.”
    “Nothing has disappeared.”
    “From those two premises I arrive at this inevitable result: granted that there has been a theft and that nothing has disappeared, it is because the object carried off has been replaced by an exactly similar object. Let me hasten to add that possibly my argument may not be confirmed by the facts. But I maintain that it is the first argument that ought to occur to us and that we are not entitled to waive it until we have made a serious examination.”
    “That’s true—that’s true,” muttered the magistrate, who was obviously interested.
    “Now,” continued Isidore, “what was there in this room that could arouse the covetousness of the burglars? Two things. The tapestry first. It can’t have been that. Old tapestry cannot be imitated: the fraud would have been palpable at once. There remain the four