“No, I haven’t noticed any change.”
“And yet you think he has secured the letters. Now, in my opinion, he has not got those letters, and it was not he who came here on the night of 22 June.”
“Who was it, then?”
“The mysterious individual who is managing this affair, who holds all the threads in his hands, and whose invisible but far-reaching power we have felt from the beginning. It was he and his friends who entered this house on 22 June; it was he who discovered the hiding-place of the papers; it was he who left Mon. Andermatt’s card; it is he who now holds the correspondence and the evidence of the treachery of the Varin brothers.”
“Who is he?” I asked, impatiently.
“The man who writes letters to the Echo de France.... Salvator! Have we not convincing evidence of that fact? Does he not mention in his letters certain details that no one could know, except the man who had thus discovered the secrets of the two brothers?”
“Well, then,” stammered Madame Andermatt, in great alarm, “he has my letters also, and it is he who now threatens my husband. Mon Dieu! What am I to do?”
“Write to him,” declared Daspry. “Confide in him without reserve. Tell him all you know and all you may hereafter learn. Your interest and his interest are the same. He is not working against Mon. Andermatt, but against Alfred Varin. Help him.”
“How?”
“Has your husband the document that completes the plans of Louis Lacombe?”