"Of course I did; and at the door of the inn I was met by a small boy, sent by you, who took me to the island and to Velmot's house and to a room in which Velmot locked me up and from which, on the following day, I witnessed Théodore Massignac's torture and removal. My dear Bérangère, it wasn't very clever of you!"
She seemed stupefied and said: "I sent no boy. I never left the Blue Lion and I waited for you that night and all the morning. Somebody must have given us away: I can't think who."
"It's a simple enough mystery," I said, laughing. "Velmot no doubt had a crony of some sort in the inn, who told him of your telephone-call. Then he must have sent that boy, who was in his pay, to pick me up on my way to you."
"But why lay a trap for you and not for me?"
"Very likely he was waiting till next day to capture you. Very likely he was more afraid of me and wanted to seize the opportunity to keep me under lock and key until Massignac had spoken. Also no doubt he was obeying motives and yielding to necessities of which we shall never know and which moreover do not really matter. The fact remains, Bérangère, that, next day . . ."
"Next day," she resumed, "I managed to find a boat and in the evening, to row round the island to the place where my father was dying. I was able to save him."
I in my turn was bewildered:
"What, it was you who saved him? You succeeded in landing, in finding Velmot in the dark, in hitting him just as he was turning on me? It was you who stopped him? It was you who set Massignac free?"
I took her little hand and kissed it with emotion. The dear girl! She also had done all she could to protect Noël Dorgeroux's secret; and with what courage, with what undaunted pluck, risking death twenty times over and not recoiling, at the great hour of danger, from the terrible act of taking life!
"You must tell me all this in detail, Bérangère. Go on with your story. Where did you take your father to?"