The judge felt that he was triumphing over M. Lecoq.
"Well," said he to the detective in his most ironical tone, "what do you think of your friend now? What do you say to this honest and worthy young man, who, on the very night of the crime, leaves a wedding where he would have had a good time, to go and buy a hammer, a chisel, and a dirk—everything, in short, used in the murder and the mutilation of the body?"
Dr. Gendron seemed a little disconcerted at this, but a sly smile overspread M. Plantat's face. As for M. Lecoq, he had the air of one who is shocked by objections which he knows he ought to annihilate by a word, and yet who is fain to be resigned to waste time in useless talk, which he might put to great profit.
"I think, Monsieur," said he, very humbly, "that the murderers at Valfeuillu did not use either a hammer or a chisel, or a file, and that they brought no instrument at all from outside—since they used a hammer."
"And didn't they have a dirk besides?" asked the judge in a bantering tone, confident that he was on the right path.
"That is another question, I confess; but it is a difficult one to answer."
He began to lose patience. He turned toward the Corbeil policeman, and abruptly asked him:
"Is this all you know?"
The big man with the thick eyebrows superciliously eyed this little
Parisian who dared to question him thus. He hesitated so long that M.
Lecoq, more rudely than before, repeated his question.
"Yes, that's all," said Goulard at last, "and I think it's sufficient; the judge thinks so too; and he is the only person who gives me orders, and whose approbation I wish for."