To begin with, one doesn't arrest a man whom one has need of. Come, out with it! Lord, how stupid you look! Why don't you answer? How far have you got at the office? Quick, speak! I'll settle the thing in five seconds. Just tell me about your inquiry in two words, and I'll finish it for you in the twinkling of a bed-post, in two minutes by my watch. Well, you were saying"
"But, Chief," spluttered Mazeroux, utterly nonplussed.
"What! Must I drag the words out of you? Come on! I'll make a start. It has to do with the man with the ebony walking-stick, hasn't it? The one we saw at the Café du Pont-Neuf on the day when Inspector Vérot was murdered?"
"Yes, it has."
"Have you found his traces?"
"Yes."
"Well, come along, find your tongue!"
"It's like this, Chief. Some one else noticed him besides the waiter. There was another customer in the café; and this other customer, whom I ended by discovering, went out at the same time as our man and heard him ask somebody in the street which was the nearest underground station for Neuilly."
"Capital, that. And, in Neuilly, by asking questions on every side, you ferreted him out?"
"And even learnt his name, Chief: Hubert Lautier, of the Avenue du Roule. Only he decamped from there six months ago, leaving his furniture behind him and taking nothing but two trunks."
"What about the post-office?"
"We have been to the post-office. One of the clerks recognized the description which we supplied. Our man
