“What is your friend’s name?” they inquired at once.
Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men’s visit to
the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand
the cause of their agitation.
“I think,” he said, “that it would hardly be proper now to send for
that girl.”
“It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,”
interrupted M. de Tregars.
And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the
commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few
words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same
woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous
mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had
been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.
The commissary of police was astounded. Why had he not known all
this sooner? Better late than never, however.
“Ah! you are right, M. le Marquis, a hundred times right!” he
declared. “This girl must evidently know Vincent Favoral’s secret,
the key of the enigma that we are vainly trying to solve. What
she would not tell to you, a stranger, she will tell to Lucienne,
her friend.”
Maxence offered to go himself for Zelie Cadelle.
“No,” answered Marius. “If she should happen to know you, she
would mistrust you, and would refuse to come.”
It was, therefore, M. Fortin who was despatched to the Rue du
Cirque, and who went off muttering, though he had received five
francs to take a carriage, and five francs for his trouble.
“And now,” said the commissary of police to Maxence, “we must both
of us get out of the way. I, because the fact of my being a
commissary would frighten Mme. Cadelle; you because, being Vincent
Favoral’s son, your presence would certainly prove embarrassing
to her.”
And so they went out; but M. de Tregars did not remain long alone
with Mlle. Lucienne. M. Fortin had had the delicacy not to tarry
on the way.
Eleven o’clock struck as Zelie Cadelle rushed like a whirlwind
into her friend’s room.
Such had been his haste, that she had given no thought whatever to
her dress. She had stuck upon her uncombed hair the first bonnet
she had laid her hand upon, and thrown an old shawl over the
wrapper in which she had received Marius in the afternoon.
“What, my poor Lucienne!” she exclaimed. “Are you so sick as all
that?”
But she stopped short as she recognized M. de Tregars; and, in a
suspicious tone,
“What a singular meeting!” she said.
Marius bowed.
“You know Lucienne?”
What she meant by that he understood perfectly. “Lucienne is my
sister, madame,” he said coldly.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What humbug!”
“It’s the truth,” affirmed Mlle. Lucienne; “and you know that I
never lie.”
Mme. Zelie was dumbfounded.
“If you say so,” she muttered. “But no matter: that’s queer.”