FREYBERGER, also, had received a telegram that morning, or, at least, the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department had received it and communicated its contents to him.

“You can take the case entirely into your own hands, Freyberger,” he said. “You have certainly done well in it heretofore, the connexion between the two crimes seems to me almost made out, should the Paris people identify the portrait we have sent them as that of the supposedly murdered man, Müller, the connexion will be made certain. Your insight has been very praiseworthy, and if the portrait is identified we can at once place our finger upon the person who, if he is not the author of the crime, we are investigating, is, at least, so bound up in it that his capture must place the whole matter in a clear light.

“But will we be any nearer to his arrest? You object to his portrait being published in the papers, yet you know very well the value of that step.

“Take a big morning and evening paper; a portrait published in these papers is a portrait, so to speak, placarded on the sky. A million pair of eyes are at once placed at our service.”

“Quite so, sir,” replied Freyberger, “I am the last man to undervalue the power of the Press. I quite know that if we were to publish the portrait we should have half a million amateur detectives at our service in half a dozen hours. Unfortunately, it is my firm conviction that in an hour after publication, our man, who is now, I fancy, walking about the world catchable, in the pride of his infernal genius, in an hour, I repeat, he would be uncatchable. He would turn himself into air, into water, into smoke. He would become some one else. He is illusion materialized.

“Even if we circulate his portrait amidst the force, within a few hours some man answering his description is sure to be arrested, sure to be released, and the affair will get wind and our Jack-o’-lanthorn will know that some one, not answering the description of Gyde, is being sought for, and he will say to himself ‘they have found out something, they suspect, perhaps they know,’ and he will dive, efface himself, never be seen again.

“I believe the use of ordinary methods against this person will be of no avail. We must trust to chance. And I have a strange belief, rather a sort of instinct, that the chance will come to us through the............