“That?” said Corentin. “You have walked into a trap. That man has three packs of cards in his shoes; you can see that by the place of his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-officer need wear no disguise.”
Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Carlos was getting into the fly.
“Hallo! Monsieur l’Abbe!” cried Corentin.
Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly. Still, Corentin had time to say:
“That was all I wanted to know.—Quai Malaquais,” he shouted to the driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.
“I am done!” said Jacques Collin to himself. “They have got me. I must get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they want of us.”
Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the man’s eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.
“Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you,” said Corentin, finding no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
“Who?” cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; “I will spend my last days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it.”
“It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose. This explains everything. The Spaniard is a demon of the first water, who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining money out of a pretty baggage’s bolster.—It is your lookout if you think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very devil to deal with.”