However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the presence of the acting-manager, in the managers’ office, within a couple of inches from the desk-chair, and which consisted of a trapdoor, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man’s forearm and no longer; a trapdoor that falls back like the lid of a box; a trapdoor through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallowtail coat.

That is the way the forty-thousand francs went!⁠ ⁠… And that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned.

Speaking about this to the Persian, I said:

“So we may take it, as the forty-thousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandum-book of his?”