Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
Own up!" Bending over the other, he was trying with all his might to extort a confession from him. But Dutreuil drew himself up and coldly, with a sort of scorn in his voice, said: "Sir, you are a madman. Not a word that you have said has any sense in it. All your accusations are false. What about the bank-notes? Did you find them at my place as you said you would?"
Three walking-sticks, arranged according to their length, hung from three nails. On a little table before the window a hat-box, filled with tissue-paper, awaited the felt hat which Dutreuil carefully placed in it. He laid his gloves beside it, on the lid. He did all this with sedate and mechanical movements, like a man who loves to see things in the places which he has chosen for them.
"Oh!" said the young man, jesting in his turn. "Suresnes is a long way off!" "It's quite close! Hadn't you your friend Jacques Aubrieux's motor-cycle?" A fresh pause followed these words. Dutreuil had knitted his brows as though he were trying to understand. At last he was heard to whisper: "So that is what he was trying to lead up to!... The brute!..."
Renine beckoned to his chauffeur, who was waiting at some little distance, and pushed Gaston Dutreuil into the car, asking: "What address? Where does Madame Aubrieux live?" "23 bis, Avenue du Roule." After helping Hortense in, Renine repeated the address to the chauffeur and, as soon as they drove off, tried to question Gaston Dutreuil: "I know very little of the case," he said.
"There's the Brasserie Lutetia, on the ground-floor of the house in which I live, on the Place des Ternes." "Capital. That will be very handy." They scarcely spoke on the way. Renine, however, said to Gaston Dutreuil: "So far as I remember, the numbers of the notes are known, aren't they?" "Yes. M. Guillaume had entered the sixty numbers in his pocket-book."
He went to his bedroom and returned with a bottle of water, of which he took a few sips, afterwards placing the bottle on the window-sill: "Come along," he said. Prince Renine chuckled. "You seem to be in a hurry to leave the place." "I'm in a hurry to show you up," retorted Dutreuil, slamming the door. They went downstairs to the private room containing the telephone. The room was empty.
"The bottle had been opened by Jacques Aubrieux at lunch, in his own house, and it was you who took it with you to serve as evidence." "Funnier and funnier!" cried Dutreuil, who had the air of being frankly amused. "Then I contrived the whole affair so that Jacques Aubrieux might be accused of the crime?" "It was the safest means of not being accused yourself."
They entered Neuilly through the Porte des Sablons and, two minutes later, stopped before a long, narrow passage between high walls which led them to a small, one-storeyed house. Gaston Dutreuil rang. "Madame is in the drawing-room, with her mother," said the maid who opened the door. "I'll go in to the ladies," he said, taking Renine and Hortense with him.
Renine asked Gaston Dutreuil for the Aubrieuxs' number, took down the instrument and was put through. The maid who came to the telephone answered that Madame Aubrieux had fainted, after giving way to an access of despair, and that she was now asleep. "Fetch her mother, please. Prince Renine speaking. It's urgent." He handed the second receiver to Morisseau.
"It's important that they should be there. Please also ask the manager not to disturb us on any account." And, when Morisseau returned, Renine closed the door, took his stand in front of Dutreuil and, speaking in a good-humoured but emphatic tone, said: "It amounts to this, young man, that the ladies saw nothing of you between three and five o'clock on that Sunday. That's rather a curious detail."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking