“Nothing,” she said, again in control of herself. “One gets frightened in spite of one’s self. But there’s no real reason.”
Bregeac reflected. He too was hard put to it to keep his nerves under control. Then he said: “Of course there’s no reason. One generally gets excited for perfectly puerile reasons. I’ll go and question them and I’m sure that everything will be cleared up. Quite sure. For after all it looks rather as if they were watching the house opposite than us.” [[195]]
Aurelie raised her head sharply and said quickly: “What house?”
“I told you about the business—the man they arrested this morning, just before noon. If you’d only seen Marescal when he left his office at eleven. I met him as he left it. He was wearing an expression of immense satisfaction and simply ferocious hate. That’s what bothers me. One can only feel such hate as that in one’s life for some one person. And it is I whom he hates like that, or rather the two of us. So I thought it was we who were threatened.”
Aurelie rose to her feet, paler than ever.
“What’s that you say? An arrest in the house opposite?” she cried.
“Yes; a man of the name of Limézy, who pretends to be an explorer—a Baron de Limézy. I had news of the arrest at one o’clock at the Ministry. They had just brought him to Headquarters.”
She did not know Ralph’s name, but she was certain that Bregeac was talking of no one else, and asked in a trembling voice: “What has he done? Who is he? This Baron de Limézy?”
“According to Marescal he is the murderer of the express. The third confederate whom they were seeking.”
She was on the point of falling. She wore a distracted air and groped giddily in the empty air to find something to hold on to. [[196]]