how late you are, my little man!” she exclaimed, as she dropped her knife and fork, and rushed forward to embrace him.
He received her caresses with an air of abstraction.
“My back is broken,” he said. “I have been the whole day playing billiards with Evariste, M. Fauvel’s valet, and allowed him to win as often as he wished, a man who does not know what ‘the pool’ is! I became acquainted with him yesterday, and now I am his best friend. If I wish to enter M. Fauvel’s service in Antonin’s place, I can rely upon M. Evariste’s good word.”
“What, you be an office messenger? you?”
“Of course I would. How else am I to get an opportunity of studying my characters, if I am not on the spot to watch them all the time?”
“Then the valet gave you no news?”
“He gave me none that I could make use of, and yet I turned him inside out, like a glove. This banker is a remarkable man; you don’t often meet with one of his sort nowadays. Evariste says he has not a single vice, not even a little defect by which his valet could gain ten sous. He neither smokes, drinks, nor plays; in fact, he is a saint. He is worth millions, and lives as respectably and quietly as a grocer. He is devoted to his wife, adores his children, is lavishly hospitable, and seldom goes into society.”
“Then his wife is young?”
“She must be about fifty.”
Mme. Alexandre reflected a minute, then asked:
“Did you inquire about the other members of the family?”
“Certainly. The younger son is in the army. The elder son, Lucien, lives with his parents, and is as proper as a young lady; so good, indeed, that he is stupid.”
“And what about the niece?”
“Evariste could tell me nothing about her.”
Mme. Alexandre shrugged her fat shoulders.
“If you have discovered nothing, it is because there is nothing to be discovered. Still, do you know what I would do, if I were you?”
“Tell me.”
“I would consult with M. Lecoq.”
Fanferlot jumped up as if he had been shot.
“Now, that’s pretty advice! Do you want me to lose my place? M. Lecoq does not suspect that I have anything to do with the case, except to obey his orders.”
“Nobody told you to let him know you were investigating it on your own account. You can consult him with an air of indifference, as if you were not at all interested; and, after you have got his opinion, you can take advantage of it.”
The detective weighed his wife’s words, and then said:
“Perhaps you are right; yet M. Lecoq is so devilishly shrewd, that he might see through me.”
“Shrewd!” echoed Mme. Alexandre, “shrewd! All of you at the police office say that so often, that he has gained his reputation by it: you are just as sharp as he is.”
“Well, we will see. I will think the matter over; but, in the meantime, what does the girl say?”
The “girl” was Mme. Nina Gypsy.
In taking up her abode at the Archangel, the poor girl thought she was following good advice; and, as Fanferlot had never appeared in her presence since, she was still under the impression that she had obeyed a friend of Prosper’s. When she received her summons from M. Patrigent, she admired the wonderful skill of the police in discovering her hiding-place; for she had established herself at the hotel under a false, or rather her true name, Palmyre Chocareille.
Artfully questioned by her inquisitive landlady, she had, without any mistrust, confided her history to her.
Thus Fanferlot was able to impress the judge with the idea of his being a skilful detective, when he pretended to have discovered all this information from a variety of sources.
“She is still upstairs,” answered Mme. Alexandre. “She suspects nothing; but to keep her in her present ignorance becomes daily more difficult. I don’t know what the judge told her, but she came home quite beside herself with anger. She wanted to go and make a fuss at M. Fauvel’s; then she wrote a letter which she told Jean to post for her; but I kept it to show you.”
“What!” interrupted Fanferlot, “you have a letter, and did not tell me before? Perhaps it contains the clew to the mystery. Give it to me, quick.”
Obeying her husband, Mme. Alexandre opened a little cupboard, and took out a letter which she handed to him.
“Here, take it,” she said, “and be satisfied.”
Considering that she used to be a chambermaid, Palmyre Chocareille, since become Mme. Gypsy, wrote a good letter.
It bore the following address, written in a free, flowing hand:
FOR M. L. DE CLAMERAN,
Forge-Master, Hotel du Louvre.
To be handed to M. Raoul de Lagors.
(In great haste.)
“Oh, ho!” said Fanferlot, accompanying his exclamation with a little whistle, as was his habit when he thought he had made a grand discovery. “Oh, ho!”
“Do you intend to open it?” questioned Mme. Alexandre.
“A little bit,” said Fanferlot, as he dexterously opened the envelope.
Mme. Alexandre leaned over her husband’s shoulder, and they both read the following letter:
“MONSIEUR RAOUL—Prosper is in prison, accused of a robbery which he never committed. I wrote to you three days ago.”
“What!” interrupted Fanferlot, “this silly girl wrote, and I never saw the letter?”
“But, little man, she must have posted it herself, the day she went to the Palais de Justice.”
“Very likely,” said Fanferlot propitiated. He continued reading:
“I wrote to you three days ago, and have no reply. Who will help Prosper if his best friends desert him? If you don’t answer this letter, I shall consider myself released from a certain promise, and without scruple will tell Prosper of the conversation I overheard between you and M. de Clameran. But I can count on you, can I not? I shall expect you at the Archangel day after to-morrow, between twelve and four.
“NINA GYPSY”
The letter read, Fanferlot at once proceeded to copy it.
“Well!” said Mme. Alexandre, “what do you think?”
Fanferlot was delicately resealing the letter when the door of the hotel office was abruptly opened, and the boy twice whispered, “Pst! Pst!”
Fanferlot
