Free The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc

them for the moment, might one not discover the road by which they had disappeared?
    What Beautrelet surmised was that the four pictures had undoubtedly been carried off in the motor car, but that, before reaching Caudebec, they were transferred to another car, which had crossed the Seine either above Caudebec or below it. Now the first horse-boat down the stream was at Quillebeuf, a greatly frequented ferry and, consequently, dangerous. Up stream, there was the ferry-boat at La Mailleraie, a large, but lonely market-town, lying well off the main road.
    By midnight, Isidore had covered the thirty-five or forty miles to La Mailleraie and was knocking at the door of an inn by the waterside. He slept there and, in the morning, questioned the ferrymen.
    They consulted the counterfoils in the traffic-book. No motor car had crossed on Thursday the 23rd of April.
    “A horse-drawn vehicle, then?” suggested Beautrelet. “A cart? A van?”
    “No, not either.”
    Isidore continued his inquiries all through the morning. He was on the point of leaving for Quillebeuf, when the waiter of the inn at which he had spent the night said:
    “I came back from my thirteen days’ training on the morning of which you are speaking and I saw a cart, but it did not go across.”
    “Really?”
    “No, they unloaded it onto a flat boat, a barge of sorts, which was moored to the wharf.”
    “And where did the cart come from?”
    “Oh, I knew it at once. It belonged to Master Vatinel, the carter.”
    “And where does he live?”
    “At Louvetot.”
    Beautrelet consulted his military map. The hamlet of Louvetot lay where the highroad between Yvetot and Caudebec was crossed by a little winding road that ran through the woods to La Mailleraie.
    Not until six o’clock in the evening did Isidore succeed in discovering Master Vatinel, in a pothouse. Master Vatinel was one of those artful old Normans who are always on their guard, who distrust strangers, but who are unable to resist the lure of a gold coin or the influence of a glass or two:
    “Well, yes, sir, the men in the motor car that morning had told me to meet them at five o’clock at the crossroads. They gave me four great, big things, as high as that. One of them went with me and we carted the things to the barge.”
    “You speak of them as if you knew them before.”
    “I should think I did know them! It was the sixth time they were employing me.”
    Isidore gave a start:
    “The sixth time, you say? And since when?”
    “Why every day before that one, to be sure! But it was other things then—great blocks of stone—or else smaller, longish ones, wrapped up in newspapers, which they carried as if they were worth I don’t know what. Oh, I mustn’t touch those on any account!—But what’s the matter? You’ve turned quite white.”
    “Nothing—the heat of the room—”
    Beautrelet staggered out into the air. The joy, the surprise of the discovery made him feel giddy. He went back very quietly to Varengeville, slept in the village, spent an hour at the mayor’s offices with the school-master and returned to the chateau. There he found a letter awaiting him “care of M. le Comte de Gesvres.” It consisted of a single line:
    “Second warning. Hold your tongue. If not—”
    “Come,” he muttered. “I shall have to make up my mind and take a few precautions for my personal safety. If not, as they say—”
    It was nine o’clock. He strolled about among the ruins and then lay down near the cloisters and closed his eyes.
    “Well, young man, are you satisfied with the results of your campaign?”
    It was M. Filleul.
    “Delighted, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction.”
    “By which you mean to say—?”
    “By which I mean to say that I am prepared to keep my promise—in spite of this very uninviting letter.”
    He showed the letter to M. Filleul.
    “Pooh! Stuff and nonsense!” cried the magistrate. “I hope you won’t let that prevent you—”
    “From telling you what I