“Why? Who?”
“Gad, sir!” declared the workman, “perhaps the individual from whom the bank messenger took up his last payment—one Paulet by name. Perhaps, again, the working mason who built that wall?”
“Who was the man?” questioned the Commissary.
“It is not for me to tell you, but for you to find him!”
The Commissary stood puzzling his brains, while the workman went on:
“Then, again, there’s an individual open to suspicion on several counts, the man M. Moche lodged for forty-eight hours in his garret in the Rue Saint-Fargeau, who seized the opportunity to kill two police-officers who were coming to arrest him!”
“You accuse the journalist, Jérôme Fandor, of the bank employé’s murder?”
The workman shrugged his shoulders: “I accuse nobody,” he protested, “I form hypotheses, and that’s all; I ... my part, in fact, is not to bring accusations, but simply ...”
The Commissary, exasperated by these repeated suppressions, this reticence on the part of his interlocutor, suddenly came up to the workman and clapping both hands on his shoulder:
“This is all mighty mysterious,” he complained, “now, for a start, you are going to tell me what you are doing here?”