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It was M. Dedet, the chief jailer. "Always at the service of Paul Coquenil," he began. "What can I do for you, mademoiselle?" Then, summoning her courage, and trying her best to make a good impression, Alice told him her errand. She wanted to speak with the American, M. Kittredge, who had been sent here the night before she wanted to speak with him alone.
"What did I mean?" repeated Coquenil, puzzled by the jailer's hostility. "Didn't she tell you what she wanted?" Dedet made no reply, but unlocking a drawer, he searched among some envelopes, and producing a square of faded blotting paper, he opened it before his visitor. "There!" he said, and with a heavy finger he pointed to a scrawl of words.
"See here," went on Dedet, almost appealingly, "do you believe a girl I never saw could know a thing about me that nobody knows?" "Strange!" mused the detective. "Is it an important thing?" "Is it? If it hadn't been about the most important thing, do you think I'd have broken a prison rule and let her see that man? Well, I guess not. But I was up against it and I took a chance."
As soon as Coquenil reached the prison he was shown into the director's private room, and he noticed that M. Dedet received him with a strange mixture of surliness and suspicion. "What's the trouble?" asked the detective. "Everything," snarled the other, then he burst out: "What the devil did you mean by sending that girl to me?"
Coquenil sat down at his massive Louis XV table with its fine bronzes and quickly addressed an urgent appeal to M. Dedet, director of the Santé, asking him to grant the bearer a request that she would make in person, and assuring him that, by so doing, he would confer upon Paul Coquenil a deeply appreciated favor.
"Worse than that, they have taken you off the force. Your commission is canceled." "But but why?" stammered the other. "For influencing Dedet to break a rule about a prisoner au secret; as a matter of fact, you were foolish to write that letter." "I thought the girl might get important evidence from her lover." "No doubt, but you ought to have asked me for an order.
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