Ralph sat watching him for two or three minutes. Since their meeting in the train his memory had been busy with the good gentleman, presenting him little by [[73]]little with a more precise remembrance of his doings and his character. It had summoned up the figure of a rather interesting detective, or rather of a rich amateur who had taken up the detection of crime from a taste for it and to amuse himself, but also to serve his interests and his passions. A man fortunate in love, as Ralph now remembered, a woman-hunter, by no means always scrupulous, a man who was on occasion helped by women in his rather too rapid career. Did not people say that he had the entry into the house of the Minister himself, and that the Minister’s wife knew a good deal about certain undeserved favors he had received?
Ralph took the note-book, and with one eye on the detective wrote:
Notes regarding Rudolph Marescal.
“A remarkable policeman. Clearsighted and full of initiative. But too fond of talking. He confides in the first comer, without asking his name or examining the state of his boots, or even looking closely at him and observing carefully his physiognomy.
“Badly brought up. If he meets a young girl of his acquaintance leaving a confectioner’s on the Boulevard Haussmann, he accosts her and talks to her, though she does not wish it. If he finds her some hours later disguised, covered with blood, and guarded by the police, does not make sure that the bolt is in its proper place and that the gentleman [[74]]whom he left in the railway car is not crouching behind the mail-bags.
“He ought not therefore to be astonished if that gentleman, taking advantage of such gross carelessness, decides to preserve a precious anonymity, to reject the rôle of witness and base informer, to take a hand in this strange affair, and to defend energetically, with the help of the papers in the wallet, the memory of the unfortunate Constance Bakersfield and the honor of the Bakersfields, and to concentrate all his energy on punishing the unknown with green eyes, without permitting any one else to touch a single one of her fair hairs or to demand a reckoning for the blood which stained her adorable hands.”
By way of signature Ralph sketched the head of a man in spectacles with a cigarette between his lips and wrote beneath it:
“Could you oblige me with a light?”
The Commissary snored. Ralph set his note-book back on his knee, then drew a little bottle from his pocket, uncorked it, and held it under Marescal’s nose. A strong scent of chloroform filled the carriage. The head of Marescal drooped lower and lower.
Then, very gently, Ralph opened his overcoat, drew from its pocket the belt and wallet, and fastened the belt round his own waist, under his waistcoat.
He had scarcely done this when a train, moving very [[75]]slowly, came past, a freight train. He opened the door of the car, sprang lightly and without being seen on to the buffers of a truck full of apples, and installed himself comfortably under the tarpaulin that covered them.
“A dead girl crook and a murderess of whom I have a horror, such are the worthy persons to whom I afford my protection,” he said to himself. “Why, in the devil’s name, have I plunged into this adventure?” [[76]]