The men exchanged glances.
"At present we cannot tell," Pierrepont replied. "It depends upon what instructions we receive."
"Do you usually make searches?" asked the prisoner, with visions of his own home being desecrated and ransacked.
"Yes, we generally do," the commissaire of police admitted. "As I have explained, it is for that reason we do not allow a prisoner's wife to know that he is under arrest."
"But such an action is abominable!" cried Le Pontois angrily. "That my house should be turned upside down and searched as though I were a common thief, a forger, or a coiner is beyond toleration. I shall demand full inquiry. My friend Carlier shall put an interpellation in the Chamber!"
"Monsieur le Ministre acts upon his own discretion," the detective replied coldly.
"And by so doing sometimes ruins the prospects and the lives of some of our best men," blurted forth the angry prisoner. It was upon the tip of his tongue to say much more in condemnation, but the sight of the man with the notebook caused him to hesitate.
Every word he uttered now would, he knew, be turned against him. He was under arrest—for some crime that he had not committed.
The other passengers by that night express, who included a party of English tourists, little dreamed as they passed up and down the corridor that the smart, good-looking man who wore the button of the Legion d'Honneur, and who sat there with the three quiet, respectable-looking men, was being conveyed to the capital under escort—a man who, by the law of France, was already condemned, was guilty until he could prove his own innocence!
In the cold grey of dawn they descended at last at the great bare Gare de l'Est in Paris. Paul felt tired, cramped and unshaven, but of necessity entered a taxi called by one of his companions, and, accompanied by Pierrepont and the elder of his assistants, was driven along through the cheerless, deserted streets to the Sûreté.
