The newcomer was ushered into the magistrate's
presence and proved to be a man of forty or thereabouts, very red in
the face and with carroty hair and whiskers. He was, moreover, strongly
inclined to corpulence, and was clad in clumsy, ill-fitting garments.
In a complacent tone, and with a strong Norman accent, he informed
the magistrate that during the past twenty years he had been in the
employment of various literary men, as well as of a physician, and
notary; that he was familiar with the duties that would be required
of him at the Palais de Justice, and that he knew how to dust papers
without disarranging them. In short, he produced such a favorable
impression that, although M. Segmuller reserved twenty-four hours in
which to make further inquiries, he drew a twenty-franc piece from his
pocket on the spot and tendered it to the Norman valet as the first
instalment of his wages.
But instead of pocketing the proffered coin, the man, with a sudden
change of voice and attitude, burst into a hearty laugh, exclaiming: "Do
you think, sir, that May will recognize me?"
"Monsieur Lecoq!" cried the astonished magistrate.
"The same, sir; and I have come to tell you that if you are ready to
release May, all my arrangements are now completed."
XX
When one of the investigating magistrates of the Tribunal of the Seine
wishes to examine a person confined in one of the Paris prisons,
he sends by his messenger to the governor of that particular jail a
so-called "order of extraction," a concise, imperative formula, which
reads as follows: "The keeper of ---- prison will give into the custody
of the bearer of this order the prisoner known as ----, in order that
he may be brought before us in our cabinet at the Palais de Justice.
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