This cooperation among the powerful arose partly from fear of a general civil uprising, partly from the fact that only since Laure Richis’s murder did they have clues that made systematic pursuit of the murderer possible for the first time. The murderer had been seen. Obviously they were dealing with the ominous journeyman tanner who had spent the night of the murder in the inn stables and disappeared the next morning without a trace. According to the joint testimony of the innkeeper, the groom, and Richis, he was a nondescript, shortish fellow with a brownish coat and a coarse linen knapsack. Although in other respects the recollections of the three witnesses remained unusually vague-they had been unable to describe the man’s face, hair color, or manner of speech-the innkeeper did add that, if he was not mistaken, he had noticed something awkward or limping about the stranger’s posture and gait, as if he had a wounded leg or a crippled foot.

"Good morning, Lollie," said the colonel. "Did you see him again?"

"I certainly won't take eighteen hundred."