Not for love of truth,—not for fear of law,—but for the love of a dog.
In this mood she was encouraged by all the wiles and insinuating ways known to the professional student of human nature. So that, when Fouchette reached the Préfecture, she had not only imparted valuable information, she had astounded her official auditor. Not altogether by what she had revealed, but quite as much by her precocious cleverness and judgment.
She was taken at once before Inspector Loup, of the Secret Service.
Fouchette was not in the least intimidated when she found herself closeted alone with this mighty personage. For she did not know the extraordinary power wielded by Inspector Loup, and was in equal ignorance of the stenographer behind the screen. She was thinking only of her revenge. She had sworn, mentally, to have the head of le Cochon. She would see him writhing under the guillotine. Not because he had tried to drown her,—she would never have betrayed him for that,—but because he had murdered her dog. She would have vengeance. She would have overlooked his cowardly butchery of a stranger in the wood of Vincennes; but for the killing of Tartar she was ready and eager to see the head of le Cochon fall in the Place de la Roquette.
Therefore Fouchette confronted Inspector Loup intent upon her own wrongs, and with a face which might have been deemed impudent but for its premature hardness.
Inspector Loup was a tall, thin man, with small, keen, fishy eyes,—so small they seemed like beads, all pupil, so keen they glistened like diamonds, so fishy they appeared to swim round in two heavily fringed ponds. And they were always swimming,—indolently, as if it were not really worth while, but still leaving the vague and sometimes uncomfortable impression that they were on you, under you, around you, through you; that they were weighing you, analyzing you, and knew what was in your mind and stomach, as well as the contents of your inside pockets.
It was the habit of Inspector Loup to turn these peculiar orbs upon whoever came under his personal jurisdiction for a minute or two without uttering a word, though usually before that time had expired the individual had succumbed to their mysterious influence and was ready to make a clean breast of it.
Their awful influence upon the wrongdoer was intensified by the softness of his insinuating voice, that seemed to pry down into human secrets as a sort of intellectual jimmy, delicate but powerful, and by the noiselessness of his tread, which had the effect of creeping upon his victim preparatory to the final spring.
In other words, Inspector Loup accomplished by moral force what others believed possible only to physical intimidation. Yet those law-breakers who had presumed too much upon his gentleness had invariably come to grief, and Inspector Loup had reached his present confidential position through thrilling experiences that had left his lank body covered with honorable scars.
Inspector Loup was practically chief of the Secret System,—or, rather, was director of that system under the eye of the Minister of the Interior. He had served a dozen ministries. He had adopted the great Fouché as a standard, and no government could change quicker than Inspector Loup could. If he had been of the Napoleonic period he might have rivalled his distinguished model. As it was, he did as well as was possible with the weak governing material with which France was afflicted.