It was Wilson calling him. He went to the bed and bent over him:
"What is it, old chap? Feeling bad?"
Wilson moved his lips, but was unable to speak. At last, after many efforts, he stammered out:
"No ... Shears ... it wasn't she ... it can't have been...."
"What nonsense are you talking now? I tell you that it was she! It's only when I'm in the presence of a creature of Lupin's, trained and drilled by him, that I lose my head and behave so foolishly.... She now knows the whole story of the album.... I bet you that Lupin will be told in less than an hour. Less than an hour? What am I talking about? This moment, most likely! The chemist, the urgent prescription: humbug!"
Without a further thought of Wilson, he rushed from the room, went down the Avenue de Messine and saw Mademoiselle enter a chemist's shop. She came out, ten minutes later, carrying two or three medicine-bottles wrapped up in white paper. But, when she returned up the avenue, she was accosted by a man who followed her, cap in hand and with an obsequious air, as though he were begging.
She stopped, gave him an alms and then continued on her way.
"She spoke to him," said the Englishman to himself.
It was an intuition rather than a certainty, but strong enough to induce him to alter his tactics. Leaving the girl, he set off on the track of the sham beggar.
They arrived in this way, one behind the other, on the Place Saint-Ferdinand; and the man hovered long round Bresson's house, sometimes raising his eyes to the second-floor windows and watching the people who entered the house.