He slowly ascended the steps, pausing several times, and looking around as if he would like to fly.
Finally he reached the third floor, and stood before a door decorated with the arms of the famous detective—a cock, the symbol of vigilance—and his heart failed him so that he had scarcely the courage to ring the bell.
The door was opened by Janouille, M. Lecoq’s old servant, who had very much the manner and appearance of a grenadier. She was as faithful to her master as a watch-dog, and always stood ready to attack anyone who did not treat him with the august respect which she considered his due.
“Well, M. Fanferlot,” she said, “you come in time for once in your life. Your patron wants to see you.”
Upon this announcement, Fanferlot was seized with a violent desire to retreat. By what chance could Lecoq want anything of him?
While he thus hesitated, Janouille seized him by the arm, and pulled him in, saying:
“Do you want to take root there? Come along, your patron is waiting for you.”
In the middle of a large room curiously furnished, half library and half green-room, was seated at a desk the same person with gold spectacles, who had said to Prosper at the police-office, “Have courage.”
This was M. Lecoq in his official character.
Upon Fanferlot’s entrance, as he advanced respectfully, bowing till his backbone was a perfect curve, M. Lecoq laid down his pen, and said, looking sharply at him:
“Ah, here you are, young man. Well, it seems that you haven’t made much progress in the Bertomy case.”
“Why,” murmured Fanferlot, “you know—”
“I know that you have muddled everything until you can’t see your way out; so that you are ready to give up.”
“But, M. Lecoq, it was not I——”
M. Lecoq arose, and walked up and down the room: suddenly he confronted Fanferlot, and said, in a tone of scornful irony:
“What would you think, Master Squirrel, of a man who abuses the confidence of those who employ him, who reveals just enough to lead the prosecution on the wrong scent, who sacrifices to his own foolish vanity the cause of justice and the liberty of an unfortunate man?”
Fanferlot started back with a frightened look.
“I should say,” he stammered, “I should say—”
“You would say this man ought to be punished, and dismissed from his employment; and you are right. The less a profession is honored, the more honorable should those be who belong to it. And yet you have been false to yours. Ah! Master Fanferlot, we are ambitious, and we try to make the police force serve our own views! We let Justice stray her way, and we go ours. One must be a more cunning bloodhound than you are, my friend, to be able to hunt without a huntsman. You are too self-reliant by half.”
“But, patron, I swear—”
“Silence! Do you pretend to say that you did your duty, and told all to the judge of instruction? Whilst others were informing against the cashier, you undertook to inform against the banker. You watched his movements: you became intimate with his valet.”
Was M. Lecoq really angry, or pretending to be? Fanferlot, who knew him well, was puzzled to know whether all this indignation was real.
“If you were only skilful,” he continued, “but no: you wish to be master, and you are not fit to be a journeyman.”
“You are right, patron,” said Fanferlot, piteously, for he saw that it was useless for him to deny anything. “But how could I go about an affair like this, where there was not even a trace or sign to start from?”
M. Lecoq shrugged his shoulders.
“You are an ass! Why, don’t you know that on the very day you were sent for with the commissary to verify the robbery, you held—I do not say certainly, but very probably held—in your great stupid hands the means of knowing which key had been used when the money was stolen?”
“How! What!”
“You want to know, do you? I will tell you. Do you remember the scratch you discovered on the safe-door? You were so struck by it, that you exclaimed directly you saw it. You carefully examined it, and were convinced that it was a fresh scratch, only a few hours old. You thought, and rightly too, that this scratch was made at the time of the theft. Now, with what was it made? Evidently with a key. That being the case, you should have asked for the keys both of the banker and the cashier. One of them would have had some particles of the hard green paint sticking to it.”
Fanferlot listened with open mouth to this explanation. At the last words, he violently slapped his forehead with his hand, and cried out:
“Imbecile! Imbecile!”
“You have rightly named yourself,” said M. Lecoq. “Imbecile! This proof stares you right in the face, and you don’t see it! This scratch is the sole and only clew to work the case upon, and you must go and lose the traces of it. If I find the guilty party, it will be by means of this scratch; and I am determined that I will find him.”
At a distance the Squirrel very bravely abused and defied M. Lecoq; but, in his presence, he yielded to the influence which this extraordinary man exercised upon all who approached him.
This exact information, these minute details of all his secret movements, and even thoughts, so upset his mind that he could not think where and how M. Lecoq had obtained them. Finally he said, humbly:
“You must have been looking up this case, patron?”
“Probably I have; but I am not infallible, and may have overlooked some important evidence. Take a seat, and tell me all you know.”
M. Lecoq was not the man to be hoodwinked, so Fanferlot told the exact truth, a rare thing for him to do. However as he reached the end of his statement, a feeling of mortified vanity prevented his telling how he had been fooled by Gypsy and the stout man.
Unfortunately for poor Fanferlot, M. Lecoq was always fully informed on every subject in which he interested himself.
“It seems to me, Master Squirrel, that you have forgotten something. How far did you follow the empty coach?”
Fanferlot blushed, and hung his head like a guilty school-boy.
“Oh, patron!” he cried, “and you know about that too! How could you have——”
But a sudden idea flashed across his brain: he stopped short, bounded off his chair, and cried:
“Oh! I know now: you were the large gentleman with red whiskers.”
His surprise gave so singular an expression to his face that M. Lecoq could not restrain a smile.
“Then it was you,” continued the bewildered detective; “you were the large gentleman at whom I stared, so as to impress his appearance upon my mind, and I never recognized you! Patron, you would make a superb actor, if you would go on the stage; but I was disguised, too—very well disguised.”
“Very
