Madame had tricked him; the countess had tricked him, the Colonel and Fitzgerald.
That Madame had tricked him created no surprise; what irritated him most was the conviction that Fitzgerald was laughing in his sleeve, and that he had misjudged the Englishman's capacity for dissimulation.

Very well.
He threw the gun on the bed; he took Fitzgerald's pipe from his pocket and cast it after the gun, and with a gesture which placed all the contents of the room under the ban of his anathema, he strode out into the corridor, thence to the office.
Here the message to Madame from Beauvais flashed back.

The Colonel of the royal cuirassiers had lied; he had found the certificates.

But still there was a cloud of mystery; to what use could Beauvais put them?
He threw the key to the landlord.
"You lied to me when you said that no one had entered that room," he said.
"O, Herr, I told you that no one but the police had been in the room since your departure.

They made a search the next morning.