“If I had been there! If only I had been there!” he murmured regretfully every now and then through his set teeth, though when Lecoq’s story was finished, enthusiasm seemed decidedly to have gained the upper hand. “It is beautiful! it is grand!” he exclaimed. “And with just that one phrase: ‘It is the Prussians who are coming,’ for a starting point! Lecoq, my boy, I must say that you have conducted this affair like an angel!”
“Don’t you mean to say like a fool?” asked the discouraged detective.
“No, my friend, certainly not. You have rejoiced my old heart. I can die; I shall have a successor. Ah! that Gevrol who betrayed you—for he did betray you, there’s no doubt about it—that obtuse, obstinate ‘General’ is not worthy to blacken your shoes!”
“You overpower me, Monsieur Tabaret!” interrupted Lecoq, as yet uncertain whether his host was poking fun at him or not. “But it is none the less true that May has disappeared, and I have lost my reputation before I had begun to make it.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry to reject my compliments,” replied old Tabaret, with a horrible grimace. “I say that you have conducted this investigation very well; but it could have been done much better, very much better. You have a talent for your work, that’s evident; but you lack experience; you become elated by a trifling advantage, or discouraged by a mere nothing; you fail, and yet persist in holding fast to a fixed idea, as a moth flutters about a candle. Then, you are young. But never mind that, it’s a fault you will outgrow only too soon. And now, to speak frankly, I must tell you that you have made a great many blunders.”
Lecoq hung his head like a schoolboy receiving a reprimand from his teacher. After all was he not a scholar, and was not this old man his master?
“I will now enumerate your mistakes,” continued old Tabaret, “and I will show you how, on at least three occasions, you allowed an opportunity for solving this mystery to escape you.”
“But—”
“Pooh! pooh! my boy, let me talk a little while now. What axiom did you start with? You said: ‘Always distrust appearances; believe precisely the contrary of what appears true, or even probable.’”
“Yes, that is exactly what I said to myself.”