‘Now, off!’ said Philippe, hastily folding the note; ‘and return here as soon as you leave this in her own hands. Poor lady!’ he continued, half speaking to himself; ‘it would be sorrow indeed if mere gallantry should link her with the deeds of which her cavalier appears to have been the perpetrator.’
Without another syllable Panurge set off, and Glazer was returning to the room when he met Desgrais descending the stairs, carrying the cabinet and followed by two of the police, who had Lachaussée in custody between them. He addressed him—
‘We shall require the services of your father and yourself to-morrow, M. Glazer, to analyse these different articles. I have put a seal upon them, and must hold you answerable for their safe keeping.’
‘I denounce my being kept a prisoner,’ exclaimed Lachaussée, ‘as informal and unjust. You have no right to detain me upon the mere circumstance of my name appearing on that piece of paper.’
‘I will make ample reparation for any wrong I may do you,’ answered Desgrais, coolly. Then, turning to the guards, he added—
‘You will conduct this person to the Châtelet. And now, M. Frater, you can accompany me, with Maître Picard, to the Rue des Noyers without loss of time. We shall probably there light upon the Marchioness of Brinvilliers.’
Philippe’s heart was in his throat as he heard the name pronounced. He immediately endeavoured to contrive some delay in Desgrais’s departure, offering him refreshment, begging him to stop whilst the cressets of the watch were retrimmed, and pressing articles of outer wear upon him, by reason of the cold, which he pretended he could not find. A few minutes were gained in this manner, and then the guard departed across the Place Maubert, Philippe’s only hope being that Panurge had already got there.
Whilst this scene of fearful interest was being enacted at Glazer’s, Marie had reached the house of the Commissary of Police. Some of the domestics were sitting up for further orders from Desgrais, and by them she was informed that M. Artus could not be disturbed. By dint, however, of heavy bribes, giving them all the money she had about her, which was no inconsiderable sum, she was ushered into the apartment of the Commissary, and to him, in a few hurried words, she made known the object of her visit. But her earnestness was so strange that M. Artus requested she would wait until the next day, when he should have received the report of the proceedings from his agents. Had she shown less anxiety, he would doubtless have granted what she so urgently desired.
Finding there was no chance of assistance from this quarter, she left the room in an agony of terror, and, scarcely knowing what course to pursue, was about to return to the Place Maubert, when Panurge arrived with Glazer’s note. She hastily read it, and the contents struck her like a thunderbolt. ‘Then all is over!’ she exclaimed; and without exchanging another word with the assistant, or any of the officials, she flew through the streets, half clad as she was, with the snow deep on the ground, and the thoroughfares wrapped in the obscurity of a winter night, in the direction of her hôtel in the Rue St. Paul.