Heathcote was pacing up and down the room, intensely agitated. He had abandoned himself wholly to the passion of the moment, forgetful of Trottier's presence, forgetful of all things except that one fixed purpose of his mind which had become almost monomania.
"What would you gain by this?" asked Trottier, wondering at this new aspect of his English friend.
"Revenge! There is enough of the old Adam left in the best of us to make revenge sweet. What must it be to a man who has lost the one delight that made life worth living?"
"I cannot help you to your revenge," answered Trottier. "I was fond of Georges. I hope you may never be able to look in his face and accuse him of the past. I hope he may be spared that shame. I cannot for the life of me understand why you should pursue a stranger with such deadly hatred."
"That is my secret, I say again. If you will not help me, so be it. I must go on working on my own account. But the face—the face—that is, perhaps, the only identification possible. The links of the chain fall into their places—the facts that I have slowly gathered all point to one conclusion; but absolute identification is impossible until I can find a portrait of the man who called himself Georges."
"You are not offended with me, I hope?"
"No, Trottier, I understand your refusal; I respect your loyalty to an old friend. But I must get the portrait I want, somehow, without your help."
Thus ended all hope of aid from Sigismond Trottier. Drubarde, on the other hand, had assured his client that he saw no new clue to the discovery of the missing murderer. If that murderer were indeed identical with the man who met Léonie Lemarque at Charing Cross, if he had surpassed himself in crime by the murder of that helpless girl, it was for the English police, to hunt him down. With such a man as Joseph Distin to inspire their movements, the English police—making due allowance for the dulness of a rosbif-eating nation—ought to work wonders; and here was a case which offered the chances of distinction; here was an assassin going about red-handed, as it were, after a murder not three months old.
"You expect me to find the murderer of Marie Prévol, a man who escaped us ten years ago; and here are your pampered and over-paid English detectives who cannot find the man who threw Léonie Lemarque out of a railway-carriage last July. Is that common sense, do you think, Mr. Heathcote? No, sir; in Paris I am on my own ground. I know this great city from cellar to garret—her bridges, her suburbs, her quarries, her sewers, and caverns, and waste places, all the holes and crannies where crime and vice have hidden for the last forty years; but from the moment your criminal has got to the other
