A little while later, Prasville was appointed secretary-general.
“Very odd, very odd,” said Lupin, who remained plunged in thought, while continuing to observe Prasville’s movements.
At seven o’clock Prasville’s group of men moved away a few yards, in the direction of the Avenue Henri-Martin. The door of a small garden on the right of the house opened and Daubrecq appeared. The two detectives followed close behind him and, when he took the Rue-Taitbout train, jumped on after him.
Prasville at once walked across the square and rang the bell. The garden-gate was between the house and the porter’s lodge. The portress came and opened it. There was a brief conversation, after which Prasville and his companions were admitted.
“A domiciliary visit,” said Lupin. “Secret and illegal. By the strict rules of politeness, I ought to be invited. My presence is indispensable.”
Without the least hesitation he went up to the house, the door of which had not been closed, and, passing in front of the portress, who was casting her eyes outside, he asked, in the hurried tones of a person who is late for an appointment:
“Have the gentlemen come?”
“Yes, you will find them in the study.”
His plan was quite simple: if any one met him, he would pretend to be a tradesman. But there was no need for this subterfuge. He was able, after crossing an empty hall, to enter a dining-room which also had no one in it, but which, through the panes of a glass partition that separated the dining-room from the study, afforded him a view of Prasville and his five companions.
Prasville opened all the drawers with the aid of false keys. Next, he examined all the papers, while his companions took down the books from the shelves, shook the pages of each separately and felt inside the bindings.
“Of course, it’s a paper they’re looking for,” said Lupin. “Bank-notes, perhaps…”
Prasville exclaimed:
“What rot! We shan’t find a thing!”
Yet he obviously did not abandon all hope of discovering what he wanted, for he suddenly seized the four bottles in a liqueur-stand, took out the four stoppers and inspected them.
“Hullo!” thought Lupin. “Now he’s going for decanter-stoppers! Then it’s not a question of a paper? Well, I give it up.”
Prasville next lifted and examined different objects; and he asked:
“How often have you been here?”
“Six times last winter,” was the reply.
“And you have searched the house thoroughly?”
“Every one of the rooms, for days at a time, while he was visiting his constituency.”
“Still… still…” And he added, “Has he no servant at present?”
“No, he is looking for one. He has his meals out and the portress keeps the house as best she can. The woman is devoted to us…”
Prasville persisted in his investigations for nearly an hour and a half, shifting and fingering all the knick-knacks, but taking care to put everything back exactly where he found it. At nine o’clock, however, the two detectives who had followed Daubrecq burst into the study:
“He’s coming back!”
“On foot?”
“Yes.”
“Have we time?”
“Oh, dear, yes!”
Prasville and the men from the police-office withdrew, without undue haste, after taking a last glance round the room to make sure that there was nothing to betray their visit.
The position was becoming critical for Lupin. He ran the risk of knocking up against Daubrecq, if he went away, or of not being able to get out, if he remained. But, on ascertaining that the dining-room windows afforded a direct means of exit to the square, he resolved to stay. Besides, the opportunity of obtaining a close view of Daubrecq was too good to refuse; and, as Daubrecq had been out to dinner, there was not much chance of his entering the dining-room.
Lupin, therefore, waited, holding himself ready to hide behind a velvet curtain that could be drawn across the glazed partition in case of need.
He heard the sound of doors opening and shutting. Some one walked into the study and switched on the light. He recognized Daubrecq.
The deputy was a stout, thickset, bull-necked man, very nearly bald, with a fringe of gray whiskers round his chin and wearing a pair of black eye-glasses under his spectacles, for his eyes were weak and strained. Lupin noticed the powerful features, the square chin, the prominent cheek-bones. The hands were brawny and covered with hair, the legs bowed; and he walked with a stoop, bearing first on one hip and then on the other, which gave him something of the gait of a gorilla. But the face was topped by an enormous, lined forehead, indented with hollows and dotted with bumps.
There was something bestial, something savage, something repulsive about the man’s whole personality. Lupin remembered that, in the Chamber of Deputies, Daubrecq was nicknamed “The Wild Man of the Woods” and that he was so labelled not only because he stood aloof and hardly ever mixed with his fellow-members, but also because of his appearance, his behaviour, his peculiar gait and his remarkable muscular development.
He sat down to his desk, took a meerschaum pipe from his pocket, selected a packet of caporal among several packets of tobacco which lay drying in a bowl, tore open the wrapper, filled his pipe and lit it. Then he began to write letters.
Presently he ceased his work and sat thinking, with his attention fixed on a spot on his desk.
He lifted a little stamp-box and examined it. Next, he verified the position of different articles which Prasville had touched and replaced; and he searched them with his eyes, felt them with his hands, bending over them as though certain signs, known to himself alone, were able to tell him what he wished to know.
Lastly, he grasped the knob on an electric bell-push and rang. The portress appeared a minute later.
He asked:
“They’ve been, haven’t they?”
And, when the woman hesitated about replying, he insisted:
“Come, come, Clemence, did you open this stampbox?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I fastened the lid down with a little strip of gummed paper. The strip has been broken.”
“But I assure you,…” the woman began.
“Why tell lies,” he said, “considering that I myself instructed you to lend yourself to those visits?”
“The fact is…”
“The fact is that you want to keep on good terms with both sides… Very well!” He handed her a fifty-franc note and repeated, “Have they been?”
“Yes.”
“The same men as in the spring?”
“Yes, all five of them… with another one, who ordered them about.”
“A tall, dark man?”
“Yes.”
Lupin saw Daubrecq’s mouth hardening; and Daubrecq continued:
“Is that all?”
“There was one more, who came after they did and joined them… and then, just now, two more, the pair who usually keep watch outside the house.”
“Did they remain in the study?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And they went away when I came back? A few