He caught me by the arm and, fiercely:
"Do you think that I am Lupin to her? Do you think that I am a burglar in her eyes, a rogue, a cheat?... Why, I might be the lowest of miscreants, I might be a murderer even ... and still she would bow to me!"
"Why? Because she loved you once?"
"Rot! That would be an additional reason, on the contrary, why she should now despise me."
"What then?"
"I am the man who gave her back her son!"
III
THE SIGN OF THE SHADOW
"I received your telegram and here I am," said a gentleman with a grey moustache, who entered my study, dressed in a dark-brown frock-coat and a wide-brimmed hat, with a red ribbon in his buttonhole. "What's the matter?"