Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

“I shouldn’t be surprised if you had guessed right.”

Thus encouraged,

“At any rate,” Felix declared, “I am going to try.”

He took a pen, and, after trying a dozen times,

“How is this?” he asked, holding out a sheet of paper.

The commissary carefully compared the original with the copy.

“It is not perfect,” he murmured; “but at night, with the imagination excited by a great peril—Besides, we must risk something.”

“If I had a few hours to practise!”

“But you have not.  Come, take up your pen, and write as well as you can, in that same hand, what I am going to tell you.”

And after a moment’s thought, he dictated as follows: 

“All goes well.  T. drawn into a quarrel, is to fight in the morning with swords.  But our man, whom I cannot leave, refuses to go ahead, unless he is paid two thousand francs before the duel.  I have not the amount.  Please hand it to the bearer, who has orders to wait for you.”

The commissary, leaning over his secretary’s shoulder, was following his hand, and, the last word being written,

“Perfect!” he exclaimed.  “Now quick, the address:  Mme. la Baronne de Thaller, Rue de le Pepiniere.”

There are professions which extinguish, in those who exercise them, all curiosity.  It is with the most complete indifference, and without asking a question, that the secretary had done what he had been requested.

“Now, my dear Felix,” resumed the commissary, “you will please get yourself up as near as possible like a restaurant-waiter, and take this letter to its address.”

“At this hour!”

“Yes.  The Baroness de Thaller is out to a ball.  You will tell the servants that you are bringing her an answer concerning an important matter.  They know nothing about it; but they will allow you to wait for their mistress in the porter’s lodge.  As soon as she comes in, you will hand her the letter, stating that two gentlemen who are taking supper in your restaurant are waiting for the answer.  It may be that she will exclaim that you are a scoundrel, that she does not know what it means:  in that case, we shall have been anticipated, and you must get away as fast as you can.  But the chances are, that she will give you two thousand francs; and then you must so manage, that she will be seen plainly when she does it.  Is it all understood?”

“Perfectly.”

“Go ahead, then, and do not lose a minute.  I shall wait.”

Away from Mlle. Lucienne, Maxence had gradually been recalled to the strangeness of the situation; and it was with a mingled feeling of curiosity and surprise that he observed the commissary acting and bustling about.

The good man had found again all the activity of his youth, together with that fever of hope and that impatience of success, which usually disappear with age.

He was going over the whole of the case again,—his first meeting with Mlle. Lucienne, the various attempts upon her life; and he had just taken out of the file the letter of information which had been intrusted to him, in order to compare the writing with that of the letter taken from his adversary by M. de Tregars, when the latter came in all out of breath.

“Zelie has spoken!” he said.

And, at once addressing Maxence,

“You, my dear friend,” he resumed, “you must run to the Hotel des Folies.”

“Is Lucienne worse?”

“No.  Lucienne is getting on well enough.  Zelie has spoken; but there is no certainty, that, after due reflection, she will not repent, and go and give the alarm.  You will return, therefore, and you will not lose sight of her until I call for her in the morning.  If she wishes to go out, you must prevent her.”

The commissary had understood the importance of the precaution.

“You must prevent her,” he added, “even by force; and I authorize you, if need be, to call upon the agent whom I have placed on duty, watching the Hotel des Folies, and to whom I am going to send word immediately.”

Maxence started off on a run.

“Poor fellow!” murmured Marius, “I know where your father is.  What are we going to learn now?”

He had scarcely had time to communicate the information he had received from Mme. Cadelle, when the first of the commissary’s emissaries made his appearance.

“The commission is done,” he said, in that confident tone of a man who thinks he has successfully accomplished a difficult task.

“You know the name of the individual who sought a quarrel with M. de Tregars?”

“His name is Corvi.  He is well known in all the tables d’hote, where there are women, and where they deal a healthy little game after dinner.  I know him well too.  He is a bad fellow, who passes himself off for a former superior officer in the Italian army.”

“His address?”

“He lives at Rue de la Michodiere, in a furnished house.  I went there.  The porter told me that my man had just gone out with an ill-looking individual, and that they must be in a little Café on the corner of the next street.  I ran there, and found my two fellows drinking beer.”

“Won’t they give us the slip?”

“No danger of that:  I have got them fixed.”

“How is that?”

“It is an idea of mine.  I just thought, ‘Suppose they put off?’  And at once I went to notify some policemen, and I returned to station myself near the Café.  It was just closing up.  My two fellows came out:  I picked a quarrel with them; and now they are in the station-house, well recommended.”

The commissary knit his brows.

“That’s almost too much zeal,” he murmured.  “Well, what’s done is done.  Did you make any inquiries about the Saint Pavin and Jottras matter?”

“I had no time, it was too late.  You forget, perhaps, sir, that it is nearly two o’clock.”

Just as he got through, the secretary who had been sent to the Rue de la Pepiniere came in.

“Well?” inquired the commissary, not without evident anxiety.

“I waited for Mme. de Thaller over an hour,” he said.  “When she came home, I gave her the letter.  She read it; and, in presence of a number of her servants, she handed me these two thousand francs.”

At the sight