In the centre of a large and curiously furnished room, half library
and half actor's study, was seated at a desk the same person wearing
gold spectacles who had said at the police station to the accused
cashier Prosper Bertomy, "Take courage!" This was M. Lecoq in his
official character.
Upon the entrance of Fanferlot, who advanced respectfully, curving his
backbone as he bowed, M. Lecoq slightly lifted his head and laid down
his pen, saying, "Ah! you have come at last, my boy! Well, you don't
seem to be progressing with the Bertomy case."
"Why, really," stammered Fanferlot, "you know--"
"I know that you have muddled everything, until you are so blinded
that you are ready to give over."
"But master, it was not I--"
M. Lecoq had arisen and was pacing the floor. Suddenly he stopped
before Fanferlot, nicknamed "the Squirrel."
"What do you think, Master Squirrel," he asked in a hard and ironical
tone, "of a man who abuses the confidence of those who employ him, who
reveals enough of what he has discovered to make the evidence
misleading, and who betrays for the benefit of his foolish vanity the
cause of justice--and an unhappy prisoner?"
The frightened Fanferlot recoiled a step.
"I should say," he began, "I should say--"
"You think this man should be punished and dismissed; and you are
right. The less a profession is honored, the more honorable should be
those who follow it. You however are treacherous. Ah! Master Squirrel,
we are ambitious, and we try to play the police in our own way! We let
Justice wander where she will, while we search for other things. It
takes a more cunning bloodhound than you, my boy, to hunt without a
hunter and at his own risk."
"But master, I swear--"
"Be silent. Do you wish me to prove that you have told everything to
the examining magistrate, as was your duty? Go to! While others were
charging the cashier, _you_ informed against the banker! _You_ watched
him; you became intimate with his _valet de chambre_!"
Was M. Lecoq really in anger? Fanferlot, who knew him well, doubted it
a little; but with this devil of a man one never quite knew how to
take him.
"If you were only clever," he continued, "but no! You wish to be a
master, and you are not even a good workman."
"You are right, master," said Fanferlot piteously, who could deny no
longer. "But how could I work upon a business like this, when there
was no trace, no mark, no sign, no conviction,--nothing, nothing?"