"And the nurse who watches her?"
"Félicienne is very old and rather deaf."
"But by day she sees her mistress moving to and fro, doing this and that. Must we not admit a certain complicity?"
"Never! Félicienne herself has been deceived by Hermance's hypocrisy."
"All the same, it was she who telephoned to Madame de Lourtier first, about that advertisement...."
"Very naturally. Hermance, who talks now and then, who argues, who buries herself in the newspapers, which she does not understand, as you were saying just now, but reads through them attentively, must have seen the advertisement and, having heard that we were looking for a servant, must have asked Félicienne to ring me up."
"Yes ... yes ... that is what I felt," said Rénine, slowly. "She marks down her victims.... With Hortense dead, she would have known, once she had used up her allowance of sleep, where to find an eighth victim.... But how did she entice the unfortunate women? How did she entice Hortense?"
The car was rushing along, but not fast enough to please Rénine, who rated the chauffeur:
"Push her along, Adolphe, can't you?... We're losing time, my man."
Suddenly the fear of arriving too late began to torture him. The logic of the insane is subject to sudden changes of mood, to any perilous idea that may enter the mind. The madwoman might easily mistake the date and hasten the catastrophe, like a clock out of order which strikes an hour too soon.