“I must refer again to the club in the Rue Saint-Jacques.”

“It appears that this club is rather a bore to the police. Why didn’t they search more vigilantly? they would have found⁠—”

“They have not found; but they are on the track.”

“Yes, that’s the usual phrase; I am quite familiar with it. When the police is at fault, it declares that it is on the track; and the government patiently awaits the day when it comes to say, with a sneaking air, that the track is lost.”

“Yes, but they have found a corpse; the general has been killed, and in all countries they call that a murder.”

“A murder do you call it? why, there is nothing to prove that the general was murdered. People are found every day in the Seine, having thrown themselves in, or having been drowned from not knowing how to swim.”