“Come, come,” said Lecoq, “you can sermonize by and by.  Now tell me your story.”

“Ah!  I am not proud of it, believe me.  However, never mind.  No doubt you received the letter in which I told you I was going to follow the young men who seemed to recognize Gustave?”

“Yes, yes—­go on!”

“Well, as soon as they entered the cafe, into which I had followed them, they began drinking, probably to drive away their emotion.  After that they apparently felt hungry.  At all events they ordered breakfast.  I followed their example.  The meal, with coffee and beer afterward, took up no little time, and indeed a couple of hours had elapsed before they were ready to pay their bill and go.  Good!  I supposed they would now return home.  Not at all.  They walked down the Rue Dauphin; and I saw them enter another cafe.  Five minutes later I glided in after them; and found them already engaged in a game of billiards.”

At this point Father Absinthe hesitated; it is no easy task to recount one’s blunders to the very person who has suffered by them.

“I seated myself at a little table,” he eventually resumed, “and asked for a newspaper.  I was reading with one eye and watching with the other, when a respectable-looking man entered, and took a seat beside me.  As soon as he had seated himself he asked me to let him have the paper when I had finished with it.  I handed it to him, and then we began talking about the weather.  At last he proposed a game of bezique.  I declined, but we afterward compromised the matter by having a game of piquet.  The young men, you understand, were still knocking the balls about.  We began by playing for a glass of brandy each.  I won.  My adversary asked for his revenge, and we played two games more.  I still kept on winning.  He insisted upon another game, and again I won, and still I drank—­and drank again—­”

“Go on, go on.”

“Ah! here’s the rub.  After that I remember nothing—­nothing either about the man I had been playing with or the young men.  It seems to me, however, that I recollect falling asleep in the cafe, and that a long while afterward a waiter came and woke me and told me to go.  Then I must have wandered about along the quays until I came to my senses, and decided to go to your lodgings and wait on the stairs until you returned.”

To Father Absinthe’s great surprise, Lecoq seemed rather thoughtful than angry.  “What do you think about this chance acquaintance of yours, papa?” asked the young detective.

“I think he was following me while I was following the others, and that he entered the cafe with the view of making me drunk.”

“What was he like?”

“Oh, he was a tall, stoutish man, with a broad, red face, and a flat nose; and he was very unpretending and affable in manner.

“It was he!” exclaimed Lecoq.

“He!  Who?”

“Why, the accomplice—­the man whose footprints we discovered—­the pretended drunkard—­a devil incarnate, who will get the best of us yet, if we don’t keep our eyes open.  Don’t you forget him, papa; and if you ever meet him again—­”