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M. Pigot looked at us with a smile of amusement. "It must have been a most interesting experience," he said, "to have seen Crochard at work. I have never had that privilege. But I regret that he should have made good his escape." "More especially since he took the Michaelovitch diamonds with him," I added.
He interrupted him rudely now, and said, "Look here, my man! Spare us those useless denials. Justice knows everything it wants to know. That shot was the third attempt you made to murder a man." Crochard drew back. He looked livid. But he had still the strength to say in a half-strangled voice, "That is false!"
"I am myself and greatly humiliated that I should have fallen so readily into the trap which Crochard set for me. But he is a very clever man." "It was certainly a marvellous disguise," I said. "It was more than that it was an impersonation." "Crochard has had occasion to study me," explained M. Pigot, drily. "And he is an artist in whatever he does.
I see that the order to apprehend my friend Maxime must have reached here before me, although it left Saigon some time later than I did." Might not M. de Brevan be as cowardly as Crochard when he saw that all was lost? This idea, one would think, would have made Sarah tremble. But it never occurred to her. "Ah, the wretch!" she repeated. "The scoundrel, the rascal!"
But the magistrate waved back the letter, and replied, "It is not enough for us to know them, doctor; we want evidence against them, clear, positive, irrefutable evidence. This evidence we will get from Crochard. Oh, I know the ways of these rascals!
"I see with pleasure, daughter," said Fontanon, "that you have pious sentiments; you have a sacred relic round your neck." Madame Crochard, with a feeble vagueness which seemed to show that she had not all her wits about her, pulled out the Imperial Cross of the Legion of Honor.
When Caroline had seated herself with pious reverence on the mossy wooden bench where kings and princesses and the Emperor had rested, Madame Crochard expressed a wish to have a nearer view of a bridge that hung across between two rocks at some little distance, and bent her steps towards that rural curiosity, leaving her daughter in Monsieur Roger's care, though telling them that she would not go out of sight.
He had foreseen this wrath on the part of the prisoner; he had prepared it carefully, and caused it to break out fully; for he knew it would bring him full light on the whole subject. "To cheat me, me!" Crochard went on with extraordinary vehemence, "to cheat a friend, an old comrade! Ah the rascal! But he sha'n't go to paradise, if I can help it!
"The booby!" cried Cerizet, naively; "why, that very caution would make the man want to open it." "You are an able casuist," said du Portail. "Well, an hour later, Charles Crochard, finding that nothing happened to him, returned to the church to obtain his deposit, but Toupillier was no longer there.
However, the Abbe presently came out, and at a word from him the witches scuttered down the stairs at his heels, leaving Francoise alone with her mistress. Madame Crochard, whose sufferings increased in severity, rang, but in vain, for this woman, who only called out, "Coming, coming in a minute!"
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