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That white-faced, silent witness leaning on his cane, stood for the moment to these frantic people as the symbol of what they most admired in a man resourcefulness before danger and physical courage and the readiness to die for a friend. For these three they seldom had a chance to shout and weep, so they wept and shouted now! "Coquenil! Coquenil!"
Hauteville shrugged his shoulders. "That's cutting it pretty fine to compare microscopic scratches on the heads of small nails." "Not at all. Don't we compare microscopic lines on criminals' thumbs? Besides, it's perfectly plain," insisted Coquenil, absorbed in his comparison.
"Then you know what time it is?" asked the other incredulously. "Why er I can tell by looking." He opened his eyes. "Ah, it's earlier than I thought, it's barely seven." "How the devil do you know that?" Coquenil did not answer for a moment. He was looking about him wonderingly, noting the damp stone walls and high vaulted ceiling of a large windowless chamber.
Five minutes later they were speeding swiftly in an automobile toward the Eastern railway station. There followed three days of pitiful anxiety for Coquenil.
He regarded her case as one of the most remarkable psychological phenomena that had come under his observation, and he declared, as an expert, that the girl's statements were absolutely worthy of belief. "Call the next witness," directed the judge, and the clerk of the court sang out: "Paul Coquenil!"
Half an hour later Coquenil reappeared almost his ordinary self, except that he wore neither mustache nor eyeglasses, and, instead of his usual neat dress he had put on the shabby black coat and the battered soft hat that he had worn in leaving the Hôtel des Étrangers. "Ah, Caesar! Old fellow!" he cried fondly as the dog rushed to meet him with barks of joy. "It's good to have a friend like that!
"A good point, that," approved Coquenil, paying attention. "He certainly kept Number Seven dark." "And he probably looked into Number Six through the first hole while Martinez was boring the second. I suppose you can tell which of the two holes was bored first?" chuckled Tignol. M. Paul started, paused in a flash of thought, and then, with sudden eagerness: "I see, that's it!"
"It's the man we arrested, all right without the beard." "It's the Baron de Heidelmann-Bruck," said Coquenil. Tignol gazed at the pictures with a kind of fascination. "How many millions did you say he has?" "A thousand or more." "A thousand millions!" He screwed up his face again and pulled reflectively on his long red nose. "And I put the handcuffs on him! Holy camels!"
"He was in luck to have this storm," muttered Coquenil. Then, in reply to Pougeot's look: "I mean the thunder, it deadened the shot and gained time for him." "Him? How do you know a man did it? A woman was in the room, and she's gone. They telephoned that." The detective shook his head. "No, no, you'll find it's a man. Women are not original in crime. And this is this is different.
After all, there was no danger, the baron was away from Paris, and no one would enter the library before seven or eight. While he waited, Coquenil opened the diary and began to read.
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