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Haussmann; he would go up to some unhappy sergent-de-ville, who might, however unwittingly, excite his ire, and tell him a bit of his mind in English, with sarcastic allusions to his cocket-hat and his toasting-fork, and polite inquiries after the health of ce cher Monsieur Lambert, or the whereabouts of cet excellent Monsieur Godinot.
"Oh, not a sergent-de-ville, monsieur, I beg of you. I should be disgraced." "No. It shall be a man in plain clothes, to see that you are not hindered by reporters on the way." Hanaud turned towards the door. On the dressing-table a cord was lying. He took it up and spoke to the nurse. "Was this the cord with which Helene Vauquier's hands were tied?" "Yes, monsieur," she replied.
At the corner of the road, just as he is turning down to the villa, he sees a sergent-de-ville at the gate. He knows that the murder is discovered. He puts on full speed and goes straight out of the town. What is he to do? He is driving a car for which the police in an hour or two, if not now already, will be surely watching. He is driving it in broad daylight.
Hanaud beckoned towards the sergent-de-ville. "Perrichet will make an excellent detective," he said; "for he looks more bovine and foolish in plain clothes than he does in uniform." Perrichet advanced in his mufti to the table. "Speak, my friend," said Hanaud. "I went to the shop of M. Corval. Mlle. Celie was quite alone when she bought the cord.
She dared not go back to her room. The thought of the concierge at the bottom of the stairs, insistent for the rent, frightened her. She stood on the pavement and burst into tears. A few people stopped and watched her curiously, and went on again. Finally a sergent-de-ville told her to go away. The girl moved on with the tears running down her cheeks. She was desperate, she was lonely.
A sergent-de-ville passed, enveloped in his cape. He turned and stared at the young woman; then took her roughly by the arm. "What are you doing here?" he said, brutally. She looked up at him with wondering eyes. "I do not know myself," she answered. The man looked more closely at her, discovered through all her confusion a nameless refinement and the subtle perfume of purity. He took pity on her.
I unclasped the shagreen case; the sergent-de-ville and the gendarme stole up and looked over my shoulder; the garçon drew near with round eyes; the little woman peeped across; the merchant, with tears streaming over his face, gazed as if it had been a loadstone; finally, I looked myself.
Anyway, another adventure I liked better was still to come before that long Paris night was at an end. It was so characteristic of Harland and his joy in the humorous and the absurd that I do not quite see why he did not let his Mademoiselle Miss share it. Outside the Rat Mort, in the early hours of the next morning, we picked up an old-fashioned one-horse, closed cab, built to hold two people, and of a type almost as extinct in Paris as the three-horse omnibus. It was the only cab in sight and we packed into and outside of it, not two but eight. As it crawled down one of the steep streets from Montmartre there was a creak, the horse stopped and, as quickly as I tell it, the bottom was out of the cab and we were in the street. Harland, as if prepared all along for just such a disaster, whisked the top hat so conspicuous in everything we did from the astonished Architect's head, handed it round, made a pitiful tale of le pauvr' cocher and his hungry wife and children, and implored us to show, now or never, the charitable stuff we were made of. Considering it was the end of a long evening, he collected a fairly decent number of francs and presented them to the cocher with an eloquent speech, which it was a pity someone could not have taken down in shorthand for him to use in his next story. The cocher, the least concerned of the group, thanked us with a broad grin, drew up his broken cab close to the sidewalk, took the horse from the shaft, clambered on its back, rode as fast as he could go down the street, and disappeared into the night. A sergent-de-ville, who had been looking on, shrugged his shoulders; in his opinion, cet animal l
The sergent-de-ville read slowly; not a breath was heard in the crowd; even the old woman, who did not understand French, listened like the others. The buzz of a fly could have been heard. But when he came to this passage, "Our cavalry was dismounted to such an extent that we were forced to bring together the officers who yet owned horses to form four companies of one hundred and fifty men each.
"I was slightly ill and went out a little," she said. "I do not know the streets and lost my way." Notwithstanding the improbability of the explanation, he did not hesitate. He murmured a few soft words of reproach and placed her in the hands of her maid, who removed her wet garments. During that time he called the sergent-de-ville, who remained in the vestibule, and closely interrogated him.
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