"Ah, M. Juve, and with a bag too! So early? You think he has been here before?"
"No," said Juve in a dry tone that put a stop to further indiscreet questions. "I don't want you to look up my companion's record, but to take his measurements, and very carefully too."
The man was somewhat surprised at the order, for it was not usual to be asked to do such work at so very early an hour. He was rather irritable too at being disturbed from the rest he was enjoying, and it was very curtly that he spoke to Charles Rambert.
"Come here, please: the standard first: take off your boots."
Charles Rambert obeyed and stood under the standard of measurement, and then, as the assistant ordered him, he submitted to having his fingers smeared with ink so that his finger prints might be taken, to being photographed, full face and in profile, and finally to having the width of his head, from ear to ear, measured with a special pair of caliper compasses.
"I must say your friend is not very talkative, M. Juve. What has he been up to?" and as the detective merely shrugged his shoulders and did not reply, he went on: "That's done, sir. We will develop the negatives and take the prints, and recopy the measurements, and the record shall be classified in the register in a couple of hours."
Charles Rambert grew momentarily more scared. He felt that he was definitely arrested now. But Juve left the arm-chair in which he had been resting, and coming up to him laid his hand upon his shoulder, speaking the while with a certain gentleness.
"Come: there are some other points as to which I wish to examine you." He led him from the anthropometric room along a dark corridor, and presently taking a key from his pocket, opened a door and pushed the lad in before him. "Go in there," he said. "This is where we make the dynamometer tests."
A layman looking round the room might almost have supposed that it was merely some carpenter's shop. Pieces of wood, of various shapes and sizes and sorts, were arranged along the wall or laid upon the floor; in glass cases were whole heaps of strips of metal, five or six inches long, and of varying thickness.
Juve closed the door carefully behind him.
"For pity's sake, M. Juve, tell me what you are going to do with me," Charles Rambert implored.