helpless over his adversary's shoulder, or he may resist, with the result that the tendons are torn from his lacerated arm and he faints in agony.
Such was the master hold gained by M. Paul in the first minute of the struggle; long and carefully he had practiced this coup with a wrestling professional. It never failed, it could not fail, and, in savage triumph, he prolonged his victory, slowly increasing the pressure, slowly as he felt the tendons stretching, the bones cracking in this helpless right arm. A few seconds more and the end would come, a few seconds more and—then a crashing, shattering pain drove through Coquenil's lower heart region, his arms relaxed, his hands relaxed, his senses dimmed, and he sank weakly to the ground. His enemy had done an extraordinary thing, had delivered a blow not provided for in Jitsu tactics. In spite of the torsion torture, he had swung his free arm under the detective's lifted guard, not in Yokohama style but in the best manner of the old English prize ring, his clenched fist falling full on the point of the heart, full on the unguarded solar-plexus nerves which God put there for the undoing of the vainglorious fighters. And Coquenil dropped like a smitten ox with this thought humming in his darkening brain: "It was the left that spoke then."
As he sank to the ground M. Paul tried to save himself, and seizing his opponent by the leg, he held him desperately with his failing strength; but the spasms of pain overcame him, his muscles would not act, and with a furious sense of helplessness and failure, he felt the clutched leg slipping from his grasp. Then, as consciousness faded, the brute instinct in him rallied in a last fierce effort and he bit the man deeply under the knee.
When Coquenil came to himself he was lying on the ground and several policemen were bending over him. He lifted his head weakly and looked about him. The stranger was gone. The automobile was gone. And it all came back to him in sickening memory, the flaunting challenge of this man, the fierce struggle, his own overconfidence, and then his crushing defeat. Ah, what a blow that last one was with the conquering left!
And suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had been outwitted from the first, that the man's purpose had not been at all what it seemed to be, that a hand-to-hand conflict was precisely what the stranger had sought and planned for, because—because—In feverish haste Coquenil felt in his breast pocket for the envelope with the precious leather fragments. It was not there. Then quickly he searched his other pockets. It was not there. The envelope containing the woman's name and address was gone.
Chapter X.
Gibelin Scores a Point
The next day all Paris buzzed and wondered about this Ansonia affair, as it was called. The newspapers printed long accounts of it with elaborate details, and various conjectures were made as to the disappearance of Martinez's fair companion. More or less plausible theories were also put forth touching the arrested American, prudently referred to as "Monsieur K., a well-known New Yorker." It was furthermore dwelt upon as significant that the famous detective, Paul Coquenil, had returned to his old place on the force for the especial purpose of working on this case. And M. Coquenil was reported to have already, by one of his brilliant strokes, secured a clew that would lead shortly to important revelations. Alas, no one knew under what distressing circumstances this precious clew had been lost!
Shortly before nine by the white clock over the columned entrance to the Palais de Justice, M. Paul passed through the great iron and gilt barrier that fronts the street and turning to the left, mounted the wide stone stairway. He had had his snatch of sleep at the haman, his rubdown and cold plunge, but not his intended bout with the wrestling professional. He had had wrestling enough for one day, and now he had come to keep his appointment with Judge Hauteville.
Two flights up the detective found himself in a spacious corridor off which opened seven doors leading to the offices of seven judges. Seven! Strange this resemblance to the fatal corridor at the Ansonia! And stranger still that Judge Hauteville's office should be Number Six!
Coquenil moved on past palace guards in bright apparel, past sad-faced witnesses and brisk lawyers of the court in black robes with amusing white bibs at their throats. And presently he entered Judge Hauteville's private room, where an amiable greffier asked him to sit down until the judge should arrive.
There was nothing in the plain and rather businesslike furnishings of this room to suggest the somber and sordid scenes daily enacted here. On the dull leather of a long table, covered with its usual litter of papers, had been spread the criminal facts of a generation, the sinister harvest of ignorance and vice and poverty. On these battered chairs had sat and twisted hundreds of poor wretches, innocent and guilty, petty thieves, shifty-eyed scoundrels, dull brutes of murderers, and occasionally a criminal of a higher class, summoned for the preliminary examinations. Here, under the eye of a bored guard, they had passed miserable hours while the judge, smiling or frowning, hands in his pockets, strode back and forth over the shabby red-and-green carpet putting endless questions, sifting out truth from falsehood, struggling against stupidity and cunning, studying each new case as a separate problem with infinite tact and insight, never wearying, never losing his temper, coming back again and again to the essential point until more than one stubborn criminal had broken down and, from sheer exhaustion, confessed, like the assassin who finally blurted out: "Well, yes, I did it. I'd rather be guillotined than bothered like this."
Such was Judge Hauteville, cold, patient, inexorable in the pursuit of truth. And presently he arrived.
"You look serious this morning," he said, remarking Coquenil's pale face.
"Yes," nodded M. Paul, "that's how I feel," and settling himself in a chair he proceeded to relate the events of the night, ending with a frank account of his misadventure on the Champs Elysées.
The judge listened with grave attention. This was a more serious affair than he had imagined. Not only was there no longer any question of suicide, but it was obvious that they were dealing with a criminal of the most dangerous type and one possessed of extraordinary resources.
"You believe it was the assassin himself who met you?" questioned Hauteville.
"Don't you?"
"I'm not sure. You think his motive was to get the woman's address?"
"Isn't that reasonable?"
Hauteville shook his head. "He wouldn't have risked so much for that. How did he know that you hadn't copied the name and given it to one of us—say to me?"
"Ah, if I only had," sighed the detective.
"How did he know that you wouldn't remember the name? Can't you remember it—at all?"
"That's what I've been trying to do," replied the other gloomily, "I've tried and tried, but the name won't come back. I put those pieces together and read the words distinctly, the name and the address. It was a foreign name, English I should say, and the street was an avenue near the Champs Elysées, the Avenue d'Eylau, or the Avenue d'Iena, I cannot be sure. I didn't fix the thing in my mind because I had it in my pocket, and in the work of the night it faded away."
"A great pity! Still, this man could neither have known that nor guessed it. He took the address from you on a chance, but his chief purpose must have been to impress you with his knowledge and his power."
Coquenil stared at his brown seal ring and then muttered
