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Giry, nor even little Giry, nor even "little Meg!" But Mme. Giry's pride was so great that the celebrated box-keeper imagined that everybody knew her. "Never heard of her!" the manager declared. "But that's no reason, Mme. Giry, why I shouldn't ask you what happened last night to make you and the inspector call in a municipal guard."
They could ask M. Debienne and M. Poligny, and anybody who knew her; and also M. Isidore Saack, who had had a leg broken by the ghost! "Indeed!" said Moncharmin, interrupting her. "Did the ghost break poor Isidore Saack's leg?" Mme. Giry opened her eyes with astonishment at such ignorance. However, she consented to enlighten those two poor innocents.
I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered but for the unheard-of chance described above. But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it. Giry, now deceased, who had charge of the ghost's private box.
"Hold your tongue, you fool!" muttered M. Firmin Richard. "You brought back the fan. And then?" "Well, then, they took it away with them, sir; it was not there at the end of the performance; and in its place they left me a box of English sweets, which I'm very fond of. That's one of the ghost's pretty thoughts." "That will do, Mme. Giry. You can go." When Mme.
"No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance ... on the evening when the under-secretary of state for fine arts ..." At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mme. Giry: "Yes, that's true, I remember now! The under-secretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me. I went down to the ballet-foyer for a moment.
"Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!" But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed: "Mother! Mother!" Sorelli looked into the passage bravely.
The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries, with scared requests for explanations. "Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!" "It's the ghost!" little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth: "No, no! I, didn't say it! I didn't say it!
The thing happened so quickly that Mme. Giry, when in the passage, was still quite bewildered and seemed not to understand. But, suddenly, she understood; and the Opera rang with her indignant yells, her violent protests and threats. About the same time, Carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed.
Giry once more suited the action to the word, She passed behind M. Richard and, so nimbly that Moncharmin himself was impressed by it, slipped the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of M. Richard's dress-coat. "Of course!" exclaimed Richard, looking a little pale.
Giry had bowed herself out, with the dignity that never deserted her, the manager told the inspector that they had decided to dispense with that old madwoman's services; and, when he had gone in his turn, they instructed the acting-manager to make up the inspector's accounts.
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