While Lecoq was examining this record with a dazed air, the woman exclaimed: “Ah! now I can explain how it happened that I forgot the man’s name and strange profession—‘foreign artist.’ I did not make the entry myself.”
“Who made it, then?”
“The man himself, while I was finding ten francs to give him as change for the louis he handed me. You can see that the writing is not at all like that of other entries.”
Lecoq had already noted this circumstance, which seemed to furnish an irrefutable argument in favor of the assertions made by the landlady and the prisoner. “Are you sure,” he asked, “that this is the man’s handwriting?”
In his anxiety he had forgotten his English accent. The woman noticed this at once, for she drew back, and cast a suspicious glance at the pretended foreigner. “I know what I am saying,” she said, indignantly. “And now this is enough, isn’t it?”
Knowing that he had betrayed himself, and thoroughly ashamed of his lack of coolness, Lecoq renounced his English accent altogether. “Excuse me,” he said, “if I ask one more question. Have you this man’s trunk in your possession?”
“Certainly.”
“You would do me an immense service by showing it to me.”
“Show it to you!” exclaimed the landlady, angrily. “What do you take me for? What do you want? and who are you?”
“You shall know in half an hour,” replied the young detective, realizing that further persuasion would be useless.