He showed me a bundle of newspapers of the day before and continued, with a smirking air:
"If you had read yesterday's newspapers, or at least the more important of them, carefully, you would have noticed a discreet advertisement in the special column. It read, 'Proprietor of the Yard wishes to purchase the two documents necessary for working. He can be seen this evening in the Place Vendôme.' Nothing much in the advertisement, was there? But, to the possessors of the two documents, how clear in its meaning . . . and what a bait! To them it was the one opportunity of making a profit, for, with all the publicity attaching to the affair, they were unable to benefit by the result of their robberies without revealing their identity to the public. My calculation was correct. After I had waited an hour by the Vendôme Column, a very luxurious motor-car picked me up, you might almost say without stopping, and, ten minutes afterwards, dropped me at the Étoile, with the documents in my possession. I spent the night in reading the manuscript. Oh, my dear sir, what a genius your uncle was! What a revolution his discovery! And in what a masterly way he expounded it! I never read anything so methodical and so lucid! All that remains for me to do is mere child's-play."
I had listened to the man Massignac with ever-increasing amazement. Was he assuming that anybody would for a moment credit so ridiculous a tale?
He was laughing, however, with a look of a man who congratulates himself on the events with which he is mixed up, or rather, perhaps, on the very skilful fashion in which he believes himself to have manipulated them.
With one hand, I pushed in his direction the hat which he had laid on the table. Then I opened the door leading into the hall.
He rose and said:
"I am staying close by, at the Station Hotel. Would you mind having any letters sent there which may come for me here? For I suppose you have no room for me at the Lodge?"
I abruptly gripped him by the arm and cried:
"You know what you're risking, don't you?"
"In doing what?"