The man is arrested ?" "Not yet, Monsieur le Ministre; but he cannot escape, and it is merely an affair of a few hours." Then the Chief of the Detective Force told the whole story: how Detective Mondesir, on being warned by a secret agent that the Anarchist Salvat was in a tavern at Montmartre, had reached it just as the bird had flown; then how chance had again set him in presence of Salvat at a hundred paces or so from the tavern, the rascal having foolishly loitered there to watch the establishment; and afterwards how Salvat had been stealthily shadowed in the hope that they might catch him in his hiding-place with his accomplices.

And, in this wise, he had been tracked to the Porte-Maillot, where, realising, no doubt, that he was pursued, he had suddenly bolted into the Bois de Boulogne.

It was there that he had been hiding since two o'clock in the morning in the drizzle which had not ceased to fall.

They had waited for daylight in order to organise a _battue_ and hunt him down like some animal, whose weariness must necessarily ensure capture.

And so, from one moment to another, he would be caught.
"I know the great interest you take in the arrest, Monsieur le Ministre," added Gascogne, "and it occurred to me to ask your orders.