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Updated: May 1, 2025
As everyone was getting up, he took the opportunity to offer M. Plantat his lozenge-box. "Monsieur perhaps uses them?" Plantat, unwilling to decline, appropriated a lozenge, and the detective's face became again serene. Public sympathy was necessary to him, as it is to all great comedians. M. Lecoq was the first to reach the staircase, and the spots of blood at once caught his eye.
He took off his cap and awkwardly bowed as he came towards them, and, when he was within speaking distance, mumbled: "Your servant, monsieur le baron, madame and company." Then, as no one said anything to him he introduced himself as "Desiré Lecoq." This name failing to explain his presence at the château, the baron asked: "What do you want?"
With the remainder he formed a package which he handed to the governor, saying: "I beg you, sir, to take charge of this, and to seal it up here, in presence of the prisoner. This formality is necessary, so that by and by he may not pretend that the dust has been changed." Still, beneath this cynical gaiety Lecoq thought he could detect poignant anxiety.
Lecoq made no reply, but slowly, and with the stiff movements of a somnambulist, he approached the spot to which he had pointed, stooped, picked up something, and said: "My folly is not deserving of such luck." The object he had found was an earring composed of a single large diamond. The setting was of marvelous workmanship.
"You overpower me, Monsieur Tabaret!" interrupted Lecoq, as yet uncertain whether his host was poking fun at him or not. "But it is none the less true that May has disappeared, and I have lost my reputation before I had begun to make it." "Don't be in such a hurry to reject my compliments," replied old Tabaret, with a horrible grimace.
He was annoyed that the rest did not share his convictions, and he awaited their report in a state of irritation which his clerk only too well perceived. He had eaten his breakfast in his cabinet, so as to be sure and be beforehand with M. Lecoq. It was a useless precaution; for the hours passed on and no one arrived.
A prisoner is almost always a match in ingenuity for his custodians." The young detective had not finished speaking when they reached the magistrate's office. Scarcely had Lecoq opened the door than M. Segmuller and his clerk rose from their seats. They both read important intelligence in our hero's troubled face. "What is it?" eagerly asked the magistrate.
Instead of taking the high road, they cut across a pathway which ran along beside Mme. de Lanascol's park, and led diagonally to the wire bridge; this was the shortest way to the inn where M. Lecoq had left his slight baggage. As they went along, M. Plantat grew anxious about his good friend, M. Courtois. "What misfortune can have happened to him?" said he to Dr. Gendron.
I am inclined to think that one was the mistress, the other her servant." "That is proved," ventured the old man, "by the great difference in their feet and in their shoes." This shrewd observation elicited a smile from Lecoq. "That difference," he replied, seriously, "is something, of course; but it was not that which decided me in my opinion.
Only the barrels of the guns could be seen whence came forth rapid jets of smoke; then a head could be seen gazing at the procession. It was Victor Lecoq celebrating the marriage of his old sweetheart, wishing her happiness and sending her his good wishes with explosions of powder. He had employed some friends of his, five or six laboring men, for these salvos of musketry.
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