“You know her very well, sir. It is that poor girl who had taken me home with her at Batignolles when I left the hospital, who came to my assistance during the Commune, and whom you helped to get out of the Versailles prisons.”
“Do you know what has become of her?”
“Only since yesterday, when I received a letter from her, a very friendly letter. She writes that she has found money to set up a dressmaking establishment, and that she is relying upon me to be her forewoman. She is going to open in the Rue St. Lazare; but, in the mean time, she is stopping in the Rue du Cirque.”
M. de Tregars and Maxence had started slightly.
“What is your friend’s name?” they inquired at once.
Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men’s visit to the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand the cause of their agitation.
“I think,” he said, “that it would hardly be proper now to send for that girl.”
“It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,” interrupted M. de Tregars.
And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.
The commissary of police was astounded. Why had he not known all this sooner? Better late than never, however.