“Yes.”
“And, if I did happen to know, you would take him back to his mother?”
There was a longer pause. Lupin asked himself:
“Can he by chance have swallowed the story? Is the threat of that death enough? Oh, nonsense it’s out of the question!... And yet . . . and yet . . . he seems to be hesitating.”
“Will you excuse me?” asked Daubrecq, drawing the telephone, on his writing-desk, toward him. “I have an urgent message.”
“Certainly, monsieur le député.”
Daubrecq called out:
“Hullo!... 822.19, please, 822.19.”
Having repeated the number, he sat without moving.
Lupin smiled: