Putting his free hand over the tube, he withdrew it from his ear and applied it to his lips. "Yes, yes," he said rapidly, "enough, enough! I quite understand. It is, as you say, very natural that I should have forgotten."
And then he looked quickly across at the Senator. "You are right, Monsieur le Sénateur: Mr. Dampier's name was put before me only yesterday as that of an Englishman who had disappeared from his hotel. But I took him to be a passing visitor. You know quite a number of the tourists brought by the Exhibition disappear, sometimes for two or three days—sometimes—well, for ever! That, of course, means they have left Paris suddenly, having got into what the English call a 'scrape.' In such a case a man generally thinks it better to go home—wiser if sadder than when he came."
There followed a pause.
"Well, Monsieur le Sénateur," said the Prefect, rising from his chair. "You may rest assured that I will do everything that is in my power to find your friend."
"But the dossier?" exclaimed Senator Burton. "I thought, Monsieur le
Préfet, that I was to see Mr. Dampier's dossier?"
"Oh, to be sure—yes! I beg your pardon."
Again he whistled down the tube. "Picot?" he exclaimed, "I still require that dossier! Why am I kept waiting in this way?"
He listened for a few moments to what his invisible subordinate had to say, and then again he spoke down the funnel, and with a certain pettish impatience. "The last entry is of no importance—understand me—no importance at all! The gentleman for whose benefit I require the dossier already knows of this Mr. Dampier's disappearance."
A moment later a clerk knocked at the door, and appeared with a blue envelope which he laid with a deep bow on the Prefect's table.
It was not a very large envelope, and yet Senator Burton was surprised at its size, and at the number of slips of paper the Prefect of Police withdrew from it.