The hostility he encountered, however
eventually obliged him to retire from office, leaving behind him
animosities likely to terminate only with his life."
The sick man closed the book, and with assumed modesty, he asked: "Ah,
well! What do you think of my little method of induction?"
But Lecoq was too much engrossed with his own thoughts to reply to this
question. "I think," he remarked, "that if the Duc de Sairmeuse had
disappeared for two months--the period of May's imprisonment, all Paris
would have known of it--and so--"
"You are dreaming," interrupted Tabaret. "Why with his wife and his
valet de chambre for accomplices, the duke could absent himself for a
year if he liked, and yet all his servants would believe him to be in
the house."
"I admit that," said Lecoq, at last; "but unfortunately, there is one
circumstance which completely upsets the theory we have built up so
laboriously."
"And what is that if you please?"
"If the man who took part in the broil at the Poivriere had been the Duc
de Sairmeuse, he would have disclosed his name--he would have declared
that, having been attacked, he had only defended himself--and his name
alone would have opened the prison doors. Instead of that, what did the
prisoner do? He attempted to kill himself. Would a grand seigneur, like
the Duc de Sairmeuse, to whom life must be a perpetual enchantment, have
thought of committing suicide?"
A mocking whistle from the old Tabaret interrupted the speaker.
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