But he interrupted himself suddenly, seized with a doubt; and there was a moment's silence. The same idea dawned on all the country-folk. The stranger's arrival at Héberville, the breakdown of his motor, his manner of questioning the people at the inn and of gaining admission to the farm: were not all these part and parcel of a put-up job, the trick of a cracksman who had learnt the story from the papers and who had come to try his luck on the spot?...
"Jolly smart of him!" said the inn-keeper. "He must have taken the money from old Trainard's pocket, before our eyes, while he was searching him."
"Impossible!" spluttered Farmer Goussot. "He would have been seen going out that way ... by the house ... whereas he's strolling in the orchard."
Mother Goussot, all of a heap, suggested:
"The little door at the end, down there?..."
"The key never leaves me."
"But you showed it to him."
"Yes; and I took it back again.... Look, here it is."
He clapped his hand to his pocket and uttered a cry:
"Oh, dash it all, it's gone!... He's sneaked it!..."