Part 6 (1/2)
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-gla.s.ses 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 b.u.mps.
There was something b.e.s.t.i.a.l, 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 k.n.o.b 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 a.s.sure 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?”