Ah! if Lecoq could have witnessed the scene, what valuable deductions he might have drawn from it. “Did they talk for a long time?” he asked.
“For less than a quarter of an hour.”
“Do you know whether Madame Milner gave May money or not?”
“I can’t say. They gesticulated like mad—so violently, indeed, that I thought they were quarreling.”
“They knew they were being watched, and were endeavoring to divert suspicion.”
“If they would only arrest this woman and question her,” suggested Father Absinthe.
“What good would it do? Hasn’t M. Segmuller examined and cross-examined her a dozen times without drawing anything from her! Ah! she’s a cunning one. She would declare that May met her and insisted that she should refund the ten francs he paid her for his room. We must do our best, however. If the accomplice has not been warned already, he will soon be told; so we must try to keep the two men apart. What ruse they will employ, I can’t divine. But I know that it will be nothing hackneyed.”
Lecoq’s presumptions made Father Absinthe nervous. “The surest way, perhaps,” ventured the latter, “would be to lock him up again!”
“No!” replied the young detective. “I want his secret, and I’ll have it. What will be said of us if we two allow this man to escape us? He can’t be visible and invisible by turns, like the devil. We’ll see what he is going to do now that he’s got some money and a plan—for he has both at the present moment. I would stake my right hand upon it.”
At that same instant, as if May intended to convince Lecoq of the truth of his suspicion, he entered a tobacconist’s shop and emerged an instant afterward with a cigar in his mouth.