“Really weeping?”
“That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners.”
“That was not she!” said Camusot.
“Bibi-Lupin at once said, ‘She is a thief!’” said Monsieur Gault.
“He knows the tribe,” said Monsieur de Granville.—“Get out your warrant,” he added, turning to Camusot, “and have seals placed on everything in her house—at once! But how can she have got hold of Monsieur de Serizy’s recommendation?—Bring me the order—and go, Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours’ talk you get a long way into a man’s mind.”
“Especially such a public prosecutor as you are,” said Camusot insidiously.
“There will be two of us,” replied Monsieur de Granville politely.
And he became discursive once more.
“There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and most energetic police officers,” said he, after a long pause. “Bibi-Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision than it gets.—Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive.”
“He has so much to do,” said Camusot. “Still, between these secret cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way from the Conciergerie to the judges’ rooms there are passages, courtyards, and stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be unflagging, whereas the prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.