Fanferlot jumped up as if he had been shot.
“Now, that’s pretty advice! Do you want me to lose my place? M. Lecoq does not suspect that I have anything to do with the case, except to obey his orders.”
“Nobody told you to let him know you were investigating it on your own account. You can consult him with an air of indifference, as if you were not at all interested; and, after you have got his opinion, you can take advantage of it.”
The detective weighed his wife’s words, and then said:
“Perhaps you are right; yet M. Lecoq is so devilishly shrewd, that he might see through me.”
“Shrewd!” echoed Mme. Alexandre, “shrewd! All of you at the police office say that so often, that he has gained his reputation by it: you are just as sharp as he is.”
“Well, we will see. I will think the matter over; but, in the meantime, what does the girl say?”
The “girl” was Mme. Nina Gypsy.
In taking up her abode at the Archangel, the poor girl thought she was following good advice; and, as Fanferlot had never appeared in her presence since, she was still under the impression that she had obeyed a friend of Prosper’s. When she received her summons from M. Patrigent, she admired the wonderful skill of the police in discovering her hiding-place; for she had established herself at the hotel under a false, or rather her true name, Palmyre Chocareille.
Artfully questioned by her inquisitive landlady, she had, without any mistrust, confided her history to her.