"
M. Segmuller looked up, intense astonishment written upon his face. "How
can you know that?" he said slowly. "How can you swear it? You were in
your bedroom when the quarrel began."
Silent and motionless in his corner, Lecoq was inwardly jubilant. This
was a most happy result, he thought, but a few questions more, and the
old woman would be obliged to contradict herself. What she had already
said sufficed to show that she must have a secret interest in the
matter, or else she would never have been so imprudently earnest in
defending the prisoner.
"However, you have probably been led to this conclusion by your
knowledge of the murderer's character," remarked M. Segmuller, "you are
apparently well acquainted with him."
"Oh, I had never set eyes on him before that evening."
"But he must have been in your establishment before?"
"Never in his life."
"Oh, oh! Then how do you explain that on entering the shop while you
were upstairs, this unknown person--this stranger--should have called
out: 'Here, old woman!' Did he merely guess that the establishment was
kept by a woman; and that this woman was no longer young?"
"He did not say that."
"Reflect a moment; you, yourself just told me so."
"Oh, I didn't say that, I'm sure, my good sir."
"Yes, you did, and I will prove it by having your evidence read. Goguet,
read the passage, if you please."
The smiling clerk looked back through his minutes and then, in his
clearest voice, he read these words, taken down as they fell from the
Widow Chupin's lips: "I had been upstairs about half an hour, when I
heard some one below call out 'Eh! old woman.
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