Once there, the eager Toutou dragged them among the rocks, then sidled into a narrow crevice that had been invisible until they were almost on it. Pulling the panting, excited dog back and keeping it still with a handhold on the collar of rope around its neck Joly squatted on his haunches to peer into the opening. The crevice was an irregular, waist-high space between the base of the concave wall of the cliff and the lower part of one of the big boulders that leaned against it, forming a constricted corridor, narrowing toward the top, about four meters long and less than a meter high. At the far end, dim and shadowed, was what appeared to be a shallow, low-ceilinged cave in the base of the cliff; what the locals called an abri -the sort of place that little boys were forever stumbling into and turning up one prehistoric find or another, bringing real and would-be archaeologists out in droves.
Just over his shoulder Marielle laughed aloud. "It's an abri. Those bones are ten thousand years old. We've been on a wild goose chase, looking for what's left of some stone-age man, what do you think of that?"
It was clear that the prefect regarded this as a personal victory. In the rear, the dutiful Noyon chuckled wanly.
"We'll see soon enough," Joly said. "I'll go first." He handed the rope to Noyon. "Officer, you stay here with the dog."
"It's the story of my life," Noyon murmured.
With a resigned glance, first at the dirt floor of the crevice and then at his crisply creased trousers-what immutable law was it that ordained that he would have to be wearing the new suit from Arnys today?-Joly settled to his knees and began to crawl through the corridor. Behind him, the amazed, deeply offended Toutou yapped loudly away.