Eventually the poor little wretch was led away in custody, proud and smiling, entirely convinced that he was leading his captors to the arrest of Captain Vauvenarde.

On the threshold he turned and bowed to us so low that the brim of his silk hat touched the floor.

Then Lola's nerve gave way and she broke into a passion of awful weeping.
The _commissaire de police_ secured the long thin knife (how the dwarf had managed to conceal it on his small person was a mystery) and the bundle of documents, and accompanied me to my room to see whether he had left anything there to serve as a _piece de conviction_.

We found only the crumpled picture of the horse Sultan neatly pinned against my bedroom wall, and on the floor a ribbon tied like a garter with a little bell opposite the bow.

On it was written "Santa Bianca," and I knew it was the collar of the beloved cat which he must have been carrying about him for a talisman.