"Tell me later," cut in the detective. "We'll go there. We can have something to eat sent in and—" he smiled indulgently at Tignol—"and something to drink. Hey, cocher!" he called to a passing cab, and a moment later the three men were rolling away to the Latin Quarter, with Coquenil's leather bag on the front seat.
"Enfin!" sighed Pougeot, when they were finally settled in Tignol's room, which they reached after infinite precautions, for M. Paul seemed to imagine that all Paris was in a conspiracy to follow them.
"I've been watched every minute since I started on this case," he said thoughtfully. "My house has been watched, my servant has been watched, my letters have been opened; there isn't one thing I've done that they don't know."
"They? Who?" asked the commissary.
"Ah, who?" repeated M. Paul. "If I only knew. You saw what they did with Gibelin to-night, set him after me when he is supposed to be handling this case. Fancy that! Who gave Gibelin his orders? Who had the authority? That's what I want to know. Not the chief, I swear; the chief is straight in this thing. It's some one above the chief. Lucien, I told you this was a great case and—it is."
"Then you didn't mean what you were saying in the automobile about having doubts?"
"Not a word of it."
"That was all for Gibelin?"
"Exactly. There's a chance that he may believe it, or believe some of it. He's such a conceited ass that he may think I only discovered him just at the last."
"And you're not thinking of going to Rio Janeiro?"