“Good-evening, Lestocq; good-evening, Caron.” And then to de Meneval he said, soothingly: “Good-evening, Monsieur Brion. I am pleased to see you and your charming sister at Melun, and think you will enjoy your stay with me.”
De Meneval looked from one to the other in amazement, and opened his mouth to speak; but before he could get out a word Madame Vernet laid her hand on his arm and said, in the tone of soothing a raving lunatic:
“Yes, dear Louis, Dr. Delcasse will take the best possible care of you, and I will come out to see you every week.”
De Meneval found his tongue then.
“To the devil with Dr. Delcasse! I never heard of him before. Police, arrest this woman. I can prove by my wife and by a gentleman now in this garden that the diamond necklace this person wears is the property of my wife.”
“Do nothing of the kind,” interrupted Dr. Delcasse, with quiet authority. “This young man, Louis Brion, is the brother of this lady, Madame Vernet. He is demented, and his latest hallucination is that Madame Vernet has stolen the necklace she wears; that it is worth forty thousand francs, that she stole it from his wife—and he has no wife.”
“But I tell you,” shouted de Meneval, quite beside himself, “that I never saw this woman before. She has my wife’s diamond necklace, and I can prove it. Call Monsieur Bouchard!”
“You see how it is,” coolly remarked Dr. Delcasse to the two police officers, “the only thing is to get him out of the way as quietly as possible. I shall take him at once out to my sanatorium, where I will have a strait-jacket, a padded cell and a cold douche waiting for him.”
The police officers seized him, and dragged him out, under Dr. Delcasse’s direction.