Holding fast to the accomplice, who, for reasons best known to himself, was adopting an injured air in sulky silence, Berry walked by my side.
"What's his game?" he muttered. "In the face of our papers, he's done."
"He'll swear they're his, for a monkey. They're in the car. Probably read them through, while you were looking for me. And all the details are on the Travelling Pass. But he's got to get over the photograph."
"Well, it's up to you," said Berry. "I used to think I could bluff, but this—this is beyond me."
When we arrived at the police-station the chief of the police was summoned, and we told our respective tales.
Our enemy spoke first—shortly, but much to the point.
He was returning, he said, to Pau, where he was staying with friends. Finding that he had run out of petrol, while he was passing through Tarbes, he had turned into a side-street to refill without obstructing a main thoroughfare. As he was starting again, an assault had been made—an unprovoked assault—seriously damaging the car. Thereupon he had sent for the police. Now, foiled in their enterprise, the thieves, he understood, were actually daring to say that he had assaulted them. One of them—he nodded at Berry—had certainly been roughly handled, but, Mon Dieu, what did they expect? (Here he took out his watch and frowned at the dial.) And now would the police get to work? His friends at Pau would be wondering what had become of him.
I admit that you could have pushed me over.
Upon the question of ownership the rogue said not a word. The whole onus of raising that issue he had thrust on to me. I was to broach the barrel of improbability, and by so doing to taint my whole case…
The police were manifestly impressed.