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Mazeroux had followed him into the courtyard and was keeping close behind him, apparently unobserved by Perenna, who having so far appeared not to notice it. He now, however, took the sergeant by the arm and led him to the front steps. "All is going well. I was afraid that Florence, suspecting something, might not have come back. But she probably doesn't know that I saw her yesterday.
Was it the same pair of jaws that had left its impress in the pulp of the fruit? Mazeroux returned. M. Desmalions moved briskly toward the sergeant, who showed him the apple which he had found under the ivy. And Perenna at once realized the supreme importance which the Prefect of Police attached to Mazeroux's explanations and to his unexpected discovery.
He took Sauverand's two revolvers and laid them in a drawer. Then he went back to the door, intending to lock it. But hearing a sound on the first-floor landing, he leant over the balusters. The butler was coming upstairs with a tray in his hand. "What is it now?" "An urgent letter, sir, for Sergeant Mazeroux." "Sergeant Mazeroux is with me. Give me the letter and don't let me be disturbed again."
"Yes," whispered Don Luis, who had been present at the first investigation and who was left alone for a moment with Mazeroux. "Yes, you will have trouble, especially if you let the people you capture take to their heels. Eh, Mazeroux, what did I tell you last night? But, still, what a scoundrel! And he's not alone, Alexandre.
"Neither the papers nor the safe, Monsieur le Préfet. Sergeant Mazeroux must have told you that he made me stand aside, to insure the regularity of the inquiry." "So you never came into the slightest contact with the safe?" "Not the slightest." M. Desmalions looked at the examining magistrate and nodded his head.
But Marie Fauville vouchsafed not the slightest explanation of this or of anything else. She remained impenetrable. On the other hand, the police failed to discover her accomplice or accomplices, or the man with the ebony walking-stick and the tortoise-shell glasses whom the waiter at the Café du Pont-Neuf had described to Mazeroux and who seemed to have played a singularly suspicious part.
On his arrival in Africa, Don Luis Perenna, Sultan of Mauretania, found his old associates and accredited Mazeroux to them and to his grand dignitaries.
"You can never tell," suggested Mazeroux. A few minutes more passed. M. Desmalions had sat down. The others also were seated. No one spoke. And suddenly they all sprang up, with one movement, and the same expression of surprise. A bell had rung. They at once heard where the sound came from. "The telephone," M. Desmalions muttered. He took down the receiver. "Hullo! Who are you?"
Then he went to a photographer, who made a new copy of Mlle. Levasseur's photograph. Don Luis had this touched up and faked it himself, so that the Prefect of Police should not perceive the substitution of one set of features for another. He dined at a restaurant and, at nine o'clock, joined Mazeroux on the Boulevard Suchet.
"You'll have an upset one fine day, Chief," said Mazeroux. "No fear," replied Don Luis. "Motor accidents are reserved for fools." They reached the Place de l'Alma. The car turned to the left. "Straight ahead!" cried Don Luis. "Go up by the Trocadéro." The car veered back again. But suddenly it gave three or four lurches in the road, took the pavement, ran into a tree and fell over on its side.
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