"True," pursued M. Lecoq, slowly, "we ought to divide these indications into two classes. There are the traces left on purpose to mislead us—the jumbled-up bed, for instance; then there are the real traces, undesigned, as are these hatchet cuts. But here I hesitate. Is the trace of the hatchet true or false, good or bad? I thought myself sure of the character of these assassins: but now—" He paused; the wrinkles on his face, the contraction of his mouth, betrayed his mental effort.
"But now?" asked M. Plantat.
M. Lecoq, at this question, seemed like a man just roused from sleep.
"I beg your pardon," said he. "I forgot myself. I've a bad habit of reflecting aloud. That's why I almost always insist on working alone. My uncertainty, hesitation, the vacillation of my suspicions, lose me the credit of being an astute detective—of being an agent for whom there's no such thing as a mystery."
Worthy M. Plantat gave the detective an indulgent smile.
"I don't usually open my mouth," pursued M. Lecoq, "until my mind is satisfied; then I speak in a peremptory tone, and say—this is thus, or this is so. But to-day I am acting without too much restraint, in the company of a man who knows that a problem such as this seems to me to be, is not solved at the first attempt. So I permit my gropings to be seen without shame. You cannot always reach the truth at a bound, but by a series of diverse calculations, by deductions and inductions. Well, just now my logic is at fault."
"How so?"
"Oh, it's very simple. I thought I understood the rascals, and knew them by heart; and yet I have only recognized imaginary adversaries. Are they fools, or are they mighty sly? That's what I ask myself. The tricks played with the bed and clock had, I supposed, given me the measure and extent of their intelligence and invention. Making deductions from the known to the unknown, I arrived, by a series of very simple consequences, at the point of foreseeing all that they could have imagined, to throw us off the scent. My point of departure admitted, I had only, in order to reach the truth, to take the contrary of that which appearances indicated. I said to myself:
"A hatchet has been found in the second story; therefore the assassins carried it there, and designedly forgot it.
"They left five glasses on the dining-room table; therefore they were more or less than five, but they were not five.