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She continued: "As I think of you continually, I pay attention to what is talked of around me," and she proceeded to tell him what she had heard relative to the expedition to Tangiers which had been decided upon the day that Laroche assumed his office; she told him how they had little by little bought up, through agents who aroused no suspicions, the Moroccan loan, which had fallen to sixty-four or sixty-five francs; how when the expedition was entered upon the French government would guarantee the debt, and their friends would make fifty or sixty millions.
Shorland paced up and down the room for a time, and then said: "Great heaven, suppose that by some hideous chance this woman, Gabrielle Rouget, or Lucile Laroche, should prove to be Freeman's wife! The evidence is so overwhelming. There evidently was some trick, some strange mistake, about the Morgue and the burial. This is the fourteenth of January; Freeman is to be married on the twenty-sixth!
Then, with a spasm of self-reproach, M. Floçon remembered that two distinct suggestions had been made to him by two of the travellers, and that, so far, he had neglected them. One was the significant hint from the Italian that he could materially help the inquiry. The other was the General's sneering assertion that the train had not continued its journey uninterruptedly between Laroche and Paris.
Du Roy placed his hat upon a chair and listened attentively. "They are going to take possession of Morocco!" "Why, I lunched with Laroche this morning, and he told me the cabinet's plans!" "No, my dear, they have deceived you, because they feared their secret would be made known." "Sit down," said Georges. He sank into an armchair, while she drew up a stool and took her seat at his feet.
He retraced his steps with a light heart, thinking of a thousand things of the fortune he would make, of that rascal of a Laroche, and of old Walter. He was not at all uneasy as to Clotilde's anger, knowing that she would soon forgive him. When he asked the janitor of the house in which Count de Vaudrec lived: "How is M. de Vaudrec?
"Hallo," Laroche called suddenly in a low voice, "what have we here, Willis?" The inspector crossed over to the other, who was pointing to the granolithic floor in front of him. One of the empty lorries was close to the office wall, and the Frenchman stood between the two. On the floor were three drops of some liquid. "Can you smell them?" he inquired.
He was an officer and a gentleman, and so he showed his hand. Then he wanted information and perhaps much more, though what that would be he could not yet tell. M. Barre had smoked cigarettes freely during Shorland's narrative. At the end he said with peculiar emphasis: "Your friend's wife was surely a Frenchwoman?" "Yes." "Was her name Laroche?" "Yes, that was it.
In fact, if resistance had occurred, the government would have been in a tight place. As Laroche truly said, they could not guillotine or even convict a whole community. The general invited the mayor of Conches, the lieutenant, and the sergeant to breakfast.
It seemed that I had only been in the train quite a little while when it stopped, yet Laroche is more than an hour from Paris, quite a countryside station, and it seems strange that the Cote d'Azur should stop there. That was the grand name of the train that I was travelling by.
'M. Chamblard, 8 Rue Rougemont, Paris, Laroche station. I left on the express for Marseilles with Maurice. I am going to make a voyage around the world. I sha'n't be more than six months. I have engaged by telegraph a state-room on the Traonaddy which leaves to-morrow for Singapore. Anything rather than a Flemish alliance! Farewell.
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