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Updated: June 11, 2025
Jean Louis looked at Renine with a rather disdainful air, as though he were thinking: "Here's a man who has not understood a word of what I've been explaining to him." But Hortense went up to Renine: "Why do you say that?" "Because it will be as I say." "But you must have your reasons?" "One only; but it will be enough, provided this gentleman is so kind as to help me in my enquiries."
The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself: and he walked up to Renine with jerky movements that revealed an increasing resolution: "Millions? My dear sir, I wouldn't have them as a gift. The little bit of stone which I possess is worth much more than that.
She was evidently incapable of opposing the least resistance to Renine. "Are you ready to confess everything?" he asked. "Yes," she panted. "Without delay? I have to catch a train. The business must be settled immediately. If you show the least hesitation, I take you with me. Have you made up your mind to speak?" "Yes." He pointed to Jean Louis: "Whose son is this gentleman? Madame d'Imbleval's?"
Supposing that she ran away: did the wide world contain a retreat in which she would be safe from his pursuit? From the first moment of their first meeting, the end was certain, since Renine had decreed that it should be so.
He did not leave his room except for lunch and went upstairs again immediately afterwards. But at three o'clock Renine and Hortense, who were keeping a watch on him from the inn, saw him come down the wooden staircase, with his bicycle on his shoulder. Leaning it against the bottom step, he inflated the tires and fastened to the handle-bar a rather bulky object wrapped in a newspaper.
Hortense, who had followed Renine, was surprised to recognize her as a maid whom she had had in her service when a girl: "What! Is that you, Lucienne? Are you Madame Pancaldi?" The newcomer looked at her, recognized her also and seemed embarrassed.
He took out the pocket-book, looked through it with his sister, came and put it back again and went off with the letters." Renine paused and added, "Or, at least, with five of them." The two women moved closer to him. What did he intend to convey? If Frederic Astaing had taken away only five letters, what had become of the sixth?
Renine looked at him for a few seconds, as a man will look at a failing adversary who has only to receive the knock-out blow, and, sitting down beside him, suddenly gripped his arm: "Your excellency, if you do not speak, Hortense Daniel will be the seventh victim." "I have nothing to say, monsieur! What do you think I know?" "The truth! My explanations have made it plain to you.
Do you mean that you have understood it? What clues have you to go by?" Renine looked at his watch: "I have not understood everything," he said. "The murder itself, the mere brutal murder, yes. But the essential thing, that is to say, the psychology of the crime: I've no clue to that. Only, it is twelve o'clock.
Renine became a little satirical: "My pupil is doing me no credit to-day," he said. "Why, here is a perfectly simple story, unfolded before your eyes. You have seen it reeled off like a scene in the cinema; and it all remains as obscure to you as though you were hearing of an affair that happened in a cave a hundred miles away!" Hortense was confounded: "What are you saying?
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