On the Place de la Concorde, as the motor was turning toward the Tuileries, Mazeroux objected:

"Aren't you going home, Chief?"

"No. There's something more urgent first: we must relieve Marie Fauville of her suicidal obsession by letting her know that we have discovered the criminals."

"And then?"

"Then I want to see the Prefect of Police."

"M. Desmalions is away and won't be back till this afternoon."

"In that case the examining magistrate."

"He doesn't get to the law courts till twelve; and it's only eleven now."

"We'll see."

Mazeroux was right: there was no one at the law courts.

Don Luis lunched somewhere close by; and Mazeroux, after calling at the detective office, came to fetch him and took him to the magistrate's corridor. Don Luis's excitement, his extraordinary restlessness, did not fail to strike Mazeroux, who asked:

"Are you still of the same mind, Chief?"

"More than ever. I looked through the newspapers at lunch. Marie Fauville, who was sent to the infirmary after her second attempt, has again tried to kill herself by banging her head against the wall of the room. They have put a straitjacket on her. But she is refusing all food.

It is my duty to save her."

"How?"

"By handing over the real criminal. I shall inform the magistrate in charge of the case; and this evening I shall bring you Florence Leva.s.seur dead or alive."

"And Sauverand?"

"Sauverand? That won't take long. Unless--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I settle his business myself, the miscreant!"

"Chief!"

"Oh, dry up!"

There were some reporters near them waiting for particulars. He recognized them and went up to them.

"You can say, gentlemen, that from to-day I am taking up the defence of Marie Fauville and devoting myself entirely to her cause."

They all protested: was it not he who had had Mme. Fauville arrested? Was it not he who had collected a heap of convicting proofs against her?

"I shall demolish those proofs one by one," he said. "Marie Fauville is the victim of wretches who have hatched the most diabolical plot against her, and whom I am about to deliver up to justice."

"But the teeth! The marks of the teeth!"

"A coincidence! An unparalleled coincidence, but one which now strikes me as a most powerful proof of innocence. I tell you that, if Marie Fauville had been clever enough to commit all those murders, she would also have been clever enough not to leave behind her a fruit bearing the marks of her two rows of teeth."

"But still--"

"She is innocent! And that is what I am going to tell the examining magistrate. She must be informed of the efforts that are being made in her favour. She must be given hope at once. If not, the poor thing will kill herself and her death will be on the conscience of all who accused an innocent woman. She must--"

At that moment he interrupted himself. His eyes were fixed on one of the journalists who was standing a little way off listening to him and taking notes.

He whispered to Mazeroux:

"Could you manage to find out that beggar's name? I can't remember where on earth I've seen him before."

But an usher now opened the door of the examining magistrate, who, on receiving Don Perenna's card, had asked to see him at once. He stepped forward and was about to enter the room with Mazeroux, when he suddenly turned to his companion with a cry of rage:

"It's he! It was Sauverand in disguise. Stop him! He's made off. Run, can't you?"

He himself darted away followed by Mazeroux and a number of warders and journalists, He soon outdistanced them, so that, three minutes later, he heard no one more behind him. He had rushed down the staircase of the "Mousetrap," and through the subway leading from one courtyard to the other. Here two people told him that they had met a man walking at a smart pace.

The track was a false one. He became aware of this, hunted about, lost a good deal of time, and managed to discover that Sauverand had left by the Boulevard du Palais and joined a very pretty, fair-haired woman--Florence Leva.s.seur, obviously--on the Quai de l'Horloge. They had both got into the motor bus that runs from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Don Luis went back to a lonely little street where he had left his car in the charge of a boy. He set the engine going and drove at full speed to the Gare Saint-Lazare, From the omnibus shelter he went off on a fresh track which also proved to be wrong, lost quite another hour, returned to the terminus, and ended by learning for certain that Florence had stepped by herself into a motor bus which would take her toward the Place du Palais-Bourbon. Contrary to all his expectations, therefore, the girl must have gone home.

The thought of seeing her again roused his anger to its highest pitch.

All the way down the Rue Royale and across the Place de la Concorde he kept blurting out words of revenge and threats which he was itching to carry out. He would abuse Florence. He would sting her with his insults.

He felt a bitter and painful need to hurt the odious creature.

But on reaching the Place du Palais-Bourbon he pulled up short. His practised eye had counted at a glance, on the right and left, a half-dozen men whose professional look there was no mistaking. And Mazeroux, who had caught sight of him, had spun round on his heel and was hiding under a gateway.

He called him:

"Mazeroux!"

The sergeant appeared greatly surprised to hear his name and came up to the car.

"Hullo, the Chief!"

His face expressed such embarra.s.sment that Don Luis felt his fears taking definite shape.

"Look here, is it for me that you and your men are hanging about outside my house?"

"There's a notion, Chief," replied Mazeroux, looking very uncomfortable.

"You know that you're in favour all right!"

Don Luis gave a start. He understood. Mazeroux had betrayed his confidence. To obey his scruples of conscience as well as to rescue the chief from the dangers of a fatal pa.s.sion, Mazeroux had denounced Florence Leva.s.seur.

Perenna clenched his fists in an effort of his whole being to stifle his boiling rage. It was a terrible blow. He received a sudden intuition of all the blunders which his mad jealousy had made him commit since the day before, and a presentiment of the irreparable disasters that might result from them. The conduct of events was slipping from him.