‘Unless it is to give me further instructions on the subject of your affair, no.’
Thérèse wrung her hands.
‘It is to tell you, on the contrary, that everything is lost. At the very moment that we were talking together, a real robber, unknown to me, was rifling my safe of everything!’
‘You are serious, madame, I suppose?’
‘Serious!’ It is impossible to describe the tragedy in her voice and air. ‘I tell you, monsieur, that I left Baron Y——’s within an hour of speaking to you. I drove straight home, went to the safe, opened it, and found inside a button and a centime.’
‘Really!’
Madame Humbert gazed at me desperately.
‘You do not believe me, perhaps, monsieur? Yet I swear to you as a Christian woman—I swear as a mother—that there were two hundred millions of francs in that safe when I came to dine at Baron Y——’s.’
‘I have not the least doubt of it, madame.’
‘Then what do you suspect?’