"I am very glad to see you," said Adhémar. "Your testimony will confirm the statements I have just made."
"I will spare you the trouble of questioning this gentleman," interrupted M. Robergeot, and turning to George, he said: "Take a chair."
George silently obeyed, and waited. "Have you brought the letters?" asked the magistrate point blank.
"What letters?" asked George, pretending not to understand.
"The letters that were in the pocket-book."
"I haven't the slightest idea what you mean."
"Oh! your friend here intrusted them to your care."
On hearing this, George, in surprise, glanced at Puymirol, who exclaimed: "You can speak. I have told everything."
Caumont turned pale. He forgot that Puymirol did not know Madame Verdon, so that he could not have mentioned her as one of Dargental's correspondents. "It would ill become me to contradict a man I like and esteem," he said in a voice husky with emotion, "and nothing could have induced me to betray the secret he confided to me, but as he bids me speak, I admit that on the day I saw Monsieur de Puymirol for the last time, he intrusted a package of letters to my care, begging me to take charge of them until his return home. As he failed to make his appearance, I felt very anxious about him. However, Monsieur Balmer informed me that my missing friend was in prison. I also learned from the same source that his rooms had been searched; and as I was perfectly satisfied in my own mind that this search had been made for the express purpose of securing the letters in question, I thought it best to burn them."
"Indeed! Ah! You have done very wrong;" exclaimed the magistrate. "By destroying those letters you have made yourself, in a measure, the accomplice of a murderer."