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The three men had now reached the foot of the steps before the house and were about to go up when the door of the château was opened and Dollon appeared. He hurried towards them, with unkempt hair and haggard face, and excitedly exclaimed: "Didn't you meet the Ramberts? Where are they? Where are they?"
Arriving in good time at the little station at Verrières, where he was about to take a train to Paris to keep his appointment at the Law Courts, the old steward Dollon gave his parting instructions to his two children, who had come to see him off. "I must, of course, call upon Mme. de Vibray," he said, "and I don't yet know what time M. Fuselier wants to see me at his office.
But Charles Rambert put in his plea. "Oh, I am sure my father would be delighted to see Thérèse with me when he gets out of the train." "Very well, then," the kind old lady said; "arrange it as you please. But, Thérèse, before you go upstairs, tell our good steward, Dollon, to give orders for the carriage to be ready by six o'clock. It is a long way to the station."
You accuse Etienne Rambert of being Gurn, and Etienne Rambert was lost in the wreck of the Lancaster; you also accuse Gurn of having murdered Dollon, and at the time that murder was committed Gurn was in solitary confinement in the Santé prison." This time the detective made a sign as if of defeat.
"Pure romance!" he said. "And what about the murder of Dollon? I should like, further, to remind you that the fragment of map which, according to you, was the real reason for this man's death, was found on his body, and does not correspond in the least with the hole cut in the map you found in Gurn's rooms." "As for that," Juve said with a smile, "the explanation is obvious.
Juve continued: "Come! Is it not true that six months ago it was just after the Dollon assassination you published in La Capitale a whole series of papers relating to affairs of treason?" "True, but."... "Is it correct that you learned just then that one could define the Second Bureau as the world of spies, and that you were extremely struck by this, extremely surprised?" "That is so, Juve.
Why it would be enough to make me strangle myself with my handkerchief as they believed that wretched Dollon, of sinister memory, did in the past!" He smoked cigarette after cigarette, raving to himself, yet never taking his eyes off the pavements, where tirelessly, ceaselessly, a stream of pedestrians passed up and down the street. "Was I mistaken, I wonder!" he went on.
But at the window of an adjoining room appeared the figure of the steward, Dollon, making a gesture, as if asking for silence. Thérèse, in advance of her guests, had proceeded but a few yards when Mme. de Langrune's old servant rushed down the stone flight of steps in front of the château, towards M. Rambert. Dollon seemed distraught.
By the way, while I think of it, have you sent off the telegram I gave you when I arrived the telegram to the police head-quarters in Paris, asking for a detective to be sent down?" "I took it to the telegraph office myself, sir." His mind made easy on this score, the young magistrate turned to Dollon.
There was only one person who had any interest in preventing Dollon from coming, and that person was Gurn, or it would be better to say Rambert-Gurn; and you know that Dollon was killed before he reached M. Germain Fuselier. Is it necessary to declare that it was Gurn, Rambert-Gurn, who killed him?"
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