Juve smiled.
"Is it the fact," he enquired, instead of replying directly, for like the good detective that he was, intensely keen on his work, he enjoyed mystifying people with whom he conversed, "is it the fact that your name is Gervais Aventin? A civil engineer? The possessor of considerable private means? About to be married? And that lately you made a short journey to Limoges?"
The young man nodded and smiled.
"Your information is perfectly correct in every particular. But I do not yet understand what crime of mine can have subjected me to these enquiries on your part."
Juve smiled again.
"I wondered, sir, why you vouchsafed no answer to the local enquiries which have been made at my instance, to the advertisements which I have had inserted in the papers, in which I discreetly made it known that the police wanted to get into communication with all the passengers who travelled first class, in the slow train from Paris to Luchon, on the night of the 23rd of December last."
This time the young man looked anxious.
"Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "are you in the employment of my future father-in-law?"
Juve burst into a roar of laughter.
"First acknowledge that you did travel by that train on that night: that you got into it at Vierzon, where you live and where you are going to be married; and that you were going to Limoges to see a lady—and that you did not want your fiancée's family to know anything about it."