"You ought, above all, to have consulted me," was the Man in Grey's calm reproof.
CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE VAILLANT
I
After the capture of the Spaniard at Chéron's farm on that dark night, M. Lefèvre realised that when M. le Duc d'Otrante sent down that insignificant-looking little man in the grey coat to help in the hunt after the astute but infamous Chouans, he had acted—as he always did—with foresight and unerring knowledge of human nature and human capacity.
Henceforward M. Lefèvre became the faithful panegyrist and henchman of the Minister's anonymous agent. He haunted the latter's apartments in the Rue de France, he was significantly silent when the Man in Grey was sneered and jeered at in the higher official circles, and, what is more, when M. Leblanc, sous-préfet of Bourg-le-Roi, had such grave misgivings about his children's governess, it was the commissary who advised him to go for counsel and assistance to the mysterious personage who enjoyed the special confidence and favour of M. le Duc d'Otrante himself.
M. Leblanc, who had an inordinate belief in his own perspicacity, fought for some time against the suggestion; but, after a while, the mystery which surrounded Mademoiselle Vaillant reached such a bewildering stage, whilst remaining outside the scope of police interference, that he finally decided to take his friend's advice, and, one morning, about the end of November, he presented himself at the lodgings in Alençon occupied by the accredited agent of His Majesty's Minister of Police.
Of a truth M. Leblanc was singularly agitated. His usually correct, official attitude had given place to a kind of febrile excitement which he was at great pains to conceal. He had just left Madame Leblanc in a state of grave anxiety, and he himself, though he would not have owned to it for the world, did not know what to make of the whole affair. But he did not intend that his own agitation should betray him into a loss of dignity in the presence of the little upstart from Paris; so, after the formal greetings, he sat down and plunged into a maze of conversational subjects—books, the theatres, the war, the victories of the Emperor and the rumoured alliance with the Austrian Archduchess—until the Man in Grey's quiet monotone broke in on the flow of his eloquence with a perfectly polite query:
"Has Monsieur le Sous-Préfet, then, honoured me with a visit at this early hour for the purpose of discussing the politics of the day?"
"Partly, my good Monsieur Fernand, partly," replied the sous-préfet airily. "I desired that we should become more closely acquainted—and," he added, as if with an after-thought, "I desired to put before you a small domestic matter which has greatly perturbed Madame Leblanc, and which, I confess, does appear even to me as something of a mystery."