There was no appearance of bravado. What Albert said, he thought and felt. M. Daburon regretted his irony.
“Sir,” he said kindly, “you must return to your prison. I cannot release you yet; but you will be no longer in solitary confinement. You will be treated with every attention due to a prisoner whose innocence appears probable.”
Albert bowed, and thanked him; and was then removed.
“We are now ready for Gevrol,” said the magistrate to his clerk.
The chief of detectives was absent: he had been sent for from the Prefecture of Police; but his witness, the man with the earrings, was waiting in the passage.
He was told to enter.
He was one of those short, thick-set men, powerful as oaks, who look as though they could carry almost any weight on their broad shoulders.
His white hair and whiskers set off his features, hardened and tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the sea winds and the heat of the tropics.
He had large callous black hands, with big sinewy fingers which must have possessed the strength of a vice.
Great earrings in the form of anchors hung from his ears. He was dressed in the costume of a well-to-do Normandy fisherman, out for a holiday.