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A new and original attraction had been stationed outside the Saint-Anthony's Pig for the last few days. After the formal enquiries succeeding his discovery of the drowned body in the river, Bouzille had come to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. He had met with but a week's delay in his itinerary, having been locked up for that time at Orleans for some trifling misdemeanour.
"This refusal to answer my questions is in itself tantamount to a confession," he said acidly. "Well, we will proceed to call the witnesses. I should like to say that the most interesting witness would undoubtedly be Bouzille, the tramp who recovered the body of Charles Rambert; but unfortunately that individual has no fixed abode and it has not been possible to serve him with a subpoena."
"Well," said Bouzille, "I suppose your rabbit would have fetched a couple of shillings in the market; I've brought you two fowls that are worth quite eighteen-pence each, and if you will give me some dinner at twelve o'clock I will put in a good morning's work for you." Mother Chiquard looked at the clock upon the wall; it was eight o'clock.
Slowly and sheepishly and with head bowed, Bouzille approached mother Chiquard, nervously looking out for a whack over the head with the broom the old lady held. "Don't be cross," he pleaded when he could get in a word; "I want to come to an arrangement with you, mother Chiquard, if it can be done."
The sergeant went back to the library to hold himself at the magistrate's disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it was getting lighter now, and communed with herself.
With a mighty clatter and racket Bouzille came down the slope and stopped before old mother Chiquard's cottage. He arrived in his own equipage, and an extraordinary one it was! Bouzille was mounted upon a tricycle of prehistoric design, with two large wheels behind and a small steering wheel in front, and a rusty handle-bar from which all the plating was worn off.
It was Juve who for the last forty-eight hours had been prowling about the château of Beaulieu disguised as a tramp, and had had himself arrested with Bouzille that he might prosecute his own investigations without raising the slightest suspicion as to his real identity. Juve made a face expressive of his vexation at the over-deferential attitude of the sergeant. "Do pay attention!" he said low.
Bouzille was glad to have made it up with mother Chiquard, and pleased at the prospect of a good dinner at midday; he opened the cottage door, and leisurely arranged a few logs within range of the axe with which he was going to split them; mother Chiquard began to throw down some grain to the skinny and famished fowls that fluttered round her.
"Why, it's the green man of just now," said the asylum nurse to her companion, and he assented, moodily enough. "Yes, it's him right enough." Bouzille took no notice of the attention he had provoked, and did not seem to notice that the green man appeared to be anything but pleased at having been recognised. "I've seen you before, I know," he went on; "where have I met you?"
Now when I get before the gentlemen in black, I don't want to contradict them, and so I always say, 'Yes, my lord, and they are perfectly satisfied; sometimes they laugh and the president of the court says, 'Stand up, Bouzille, and then he gives me a fortnight, or twenty-one days, or a month, as the case may be." The sergeant came back, alone, and addressed the gendarme.
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