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"Yes, yes, I'm positive that the sixty notes were brought here after the murder." "Let's look for them." This was easy and soon done. In half an hour, not a corner remained unexplored, not a knick-knack unlifted. "Nothing," said Inspector Morisseau. "Shall we continue?" "No," replied Renine, "The notes are no longer here." "What do you mean?" "I mean that they have been removed." "By whom?
You killed Cousin Guillaume. You took the sixty bank-notes and left them at your rooms. And at five o'clock you went back to fetch the ladies." Dutreuil had listened with an expression at once mocking and flurried, casting an occasional glance at Inspector Morisseau as though to enlist him as a witness: "The man's mad," it seemed to say. "It's no use being angry with him."
You dare to suggest that!" Renine still made no reply. Dutreuil flew into a rage and, taking Inspector Morisseau aside, exclaimed: "Mr. Inspector, I strongly protest against all this farce and against the part which you are unconsciously playing in it.
Then he took from an inner pocket of his waistcoat a bundle of bank-notes and selected six, which he burnt almost completely, arranging the remains and hiding the rest of the notes at the bottom of the box, among the ashes and the blackened bits of paper: "M. Morisseau," he said, when he had done, "I am asking for your assistance for the last time. Go and fetch Dutreuil.
"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."
Anything rather than the guillotine; and they the bank-notes were the only proof which we had against him. How could he have left them where they were?" Morisseau was flabbergasted: "What! The only proof?" "Why, obviously!" "But your witnesses? Your evidence? All that you were going to tell the chief?" "Mere bluff." "Well, upon my word," growled the bewildered inspector, "you're a cool customer!"
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.
He was met by a gust of smoke so dense that one might well have supposed the whole floor to be ablaze. Renine at once saw that the fire had gone out of its own accord, for lack of fuel, and that there were no more flames: "M. Morisseau, you won't let any one come in with us, will you? An intruder might spoil everything. Bolt the door, that will be best."
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