“Is your master here?” said one of them roughly. “Come, hurry up! There’s no point in lying. I am the Commissary Marescal and I have a warrant for his arrest.”
Pale and trembling she muttered: “He’s in his study.”
“Take us to it!”
He set his hand over her mouth, that she might not warn her master, and made her walk along the passage at the end of which she pointed to a door.
Their adversary had not time to throw himself on guard. He was seized and tied up and dispatched almost as if he had been a trunk.
Marescal said simply: “You are the chief of the robbers of the express. Your name is Ralph de Limézy.” [[185]]Turning to his men he added: “Take him to the police station. Here’s the warrant. And keep your mouths shut, do you hear? Not a word about the personality of our ‘client’. You’re responsible for him, Tony. You, too, Labonce. Take him off, And at three o’clock meet me in front of Bregeac’s house. It will be the young lady’s turn then and the smashing up of her step-father.”
Four men took away the prisoner. Marescal kept the fifth, Sauvinoux, with him.
Forthwith he searched the study and took possession of some papers and other unimportant things. But neither he, nor Sauvinoux, found what they were looking for, the bottle on the label of which he had had time to read, when he came to a stop in the Avenue Wagram: “Eau de Jouvence.”
They went away to lunch in a neighboring restaurant. They came back and Marescal searched furiously.
At last, at a quarter past two, Sauvinoux discovered the famous bottle behind the marble slab under the mantelpiece. It was corked and carefully sealed with red sealing-wax.