“For five years, you say? And how long has Cardillac been here?”
“Cardillac? He has been here for almost three years.”
“For almost three years, and is it not almost three years—” Muller interrupted himself. “Are we quite alone? Is no one listening?” The doctor nodded, greatly surprised, and the detective continued almost in a whisper, “and it is just about three years now that there have been committed, at intervals, three terrible crimes notable from the cleverness with which they were carried out, and from the utter impossibility, apparently, of discovering the perpetrator.”
Orszay sprang up. His face flushed and then grew livid, and he put his hand to his forehead. Then he forced a smile and said in a voice that trembled in spite of himself: “Mr. Muller, your imagination is wonderful. And which of these two do you think it is that has committed these crimes—the perpetrator of which you have come here to find?”
“I will tell you that later. I must speak to No. 302 first, and I must speak to him in the presence of yourself and Gyuri.”
The detective’s deep gravity was contagious. Dr. Orszay had sufficiently controlled himself to remember what he had heard in former days, and just now recently from the district judge about this man’s marvellous deeds. He realised that when Muller said a thing, no matter how extravagant it might sound, it was worth taking seriously. This realisation brought great uneasiness and grief to the doctor’s heart, for he had grown fond of both of the men on whom terrible suspicion was cast by such an authority.
Muller himself was uneasy, but the gloom that had hung over him for the past day or two had vanished. The impenetrable darkness that had surrounded the mystery of the pastor’s murder had gotten on his nerves. He was not accustomed to work so long over a problem without getting some light on it. But now, since the chance watching of the spinning top in the street had given him his first inkling of the trail, he was following it up to a clear issue. The eagerness, the blissful vibrating of every nerve that he always felt at this stage of the game, was on him again. He knew that from now on what was still to be done would be easy. Hitherto his mind had been made up on one point; that one man alone was concerned in the crime. Now he understood the possibility that there might have been two, the harmless mechanician who fancied himself a dangerous murderer, and the handsome young giant with the evil eyes.
The two men stood looking at each other in a silence that was almost hostile. Had this stranger come to disturb the peace of the refuge for the unfortunate and to prove that Dr. Orszay, the friend of all the village, had unwittingly been giving shelter to such criminals?
“Shall we go now?” asked the detective finally.
“If you wish it, sir,” answered the doctor in a tone that was decidedly cool.