“Speak, speak!” said the commissary. “Fear nothing.”
“Well,” he went on, “M. Saint Pavin and M. Jottras were saying that M. Favoral was only a poor dupe, but that they would know how to find the others.”
“What others?”
“Ah! they didn’t say.”
The commissary shrugged his shoulders.
“What!” he exclaimed, “you find yourself in presence of two men furious to have been duped, who swear and threaten, and you can’t get from them a name that you want? You are not very smart, my dear!”
And as the poor secretary, somewhat put out of countenance, looked down, and said nothing,
“Did you at least ask them,” he resumed, “who the woman is to whom the article refers, and whose existence they have revealed to the reporter?”
“Of course I did, sir.”
“And what did they answer?”