Part 10 (2/2)

Thus, it so happened that but a single pair of eyes within had seen Fouchette, and these eyes belonged to the man who believed her to be dead.

It was for the purpose of the identification of her a.s.sailant that Fouchette had been brought to the Rendez-Vous pour Cochers. Tartar had spared her that trouble, though it was for quite another reason that le Cochon fell into the grip of the police.

The latter had experienced no difficulty in identifying Fouchette in spite of her obstinate silence. As she had come down the river from outside the barrier, it was clear that she made her living in some river suburb. A telephonic inquiry brought not only immediate confirmation from the authorities at Charenton, but had elicited the important details that brought the specials from the Prefecture down upon the suspected cabaret. In the man described as ”le Cochon” the officials at once recognized a notorious escaped convict.

It was not until Fouchette was on her way back to the Prefecture that it was learned that in their prisoner, le Cochon, they also had an a.s.sa.s.sin who up to this moment had eluded arrest.

When the agent had informed her of the death of Tartar she was first overcome with grief. The sense of her utter loneliness rushed upon her. She wept convulsively. Her sorrow was bitter and profound.

”Cheer up, my child; don't give way like that.”

Her companion tried now and then to comfort her in his rough way.

”Ah, monsieur! but he was the only friend I had in the world!” she sobbed.

”There, there!” he said, soothingly; ”you'll have more friends. You'll be taken care of all right.”

”I don't care what becomes of me, now poor Tartar's gone! He loved me!

n.o.body will ever love me like he did,--never!”

But when she had recovered from this tempest of tears it was to succ.u.mb to a tempest of wrath.

”That wretch! I'll see him under the razor!” she exclaimed, meaning the guillotine. ”He tried to drown me, the a.s.sa.s.sin! Yes, I know him for an a.s.sa.s.sin,--a murderer! It was he who pushed me into the river!”

”Oho!”

”It is true! That man is a fiend,--an a.s.sa.s.sin! I am ready to tell everything, monsieur! Everything!”

Not for love of truth,--not for fear of law,--but for the love of a dog.

In this mood she was encouraged by all the wiles and insinuating ways known to the professional student of human nature. So that, when Fouchette reached the Prefecture, she had not only imparted valuable information, she had astounded her official auditor. Not altogether by what she had revealed, but quite as much by her precocious cleverness and judgment.

She was taken at once before Inspector Loup, of the Secret Service.

Fouchette was not in the least intimidated when she found herself closeted alone with this mighty personage. For she did not know the extraordinary power wielded by Inspector Loup, and was in equal ignorance of the stenographer behind the screen. She was thinking only of her revenge. She had sworn, mentally, to have the head of le Cochon. She would see him writhing under the guillotine. Not because he had tried to drown her,--she would never have betrayed him for that,--but because he had murdered her dog. She would have vengeance.

She would have overlooked his cowardly butchery of a stranger in the wood of Vincennes; but for the killing of Tartar she was ready and eager to see the head of le Cochon fall in the Place de la Roquette.

Therefore Fouchette confronted Inspector Loup intent upon her own wrongs, and with a face which might have been deemed impudent but for its premature hardness.

Inspector Loup was a tall, thin man, with small, keen, fishy eyes,--so small they seemed like beads, all pupil, so keen they glistened like diamonds, so fishy they appeared to swim round in two heavily fringed ponds. And they were always swimming,--indolently, as if it were not really worth while, but still leaving the vague and sometimes uncomfortable impression that they were on you, under you, around you, through you; that they were weighing you, a.n.a.lyzing you, and knew what was in your mind and stomach, as well as the contents of your inside pockets.

It was the habit of Inspector Loup to turn these peculiar orbs upon whoever came under his personal jurisdiction for a minute or two without uttering a word, though usually before that time had expired the individual had succ.u.mbed to their mysterious influence and was ready to make a clean breast of it.

Their awful influence upon the wrongdoer was intensified by the softness of his insinuating voice, that seemed to pry down into human secrets as a sort of intellectual jimmy, delicate but powerful, and by the noiselessness of his tread, which had the effect of creeping upon his victim preparatory to the final spring.

In other words, Inspector Loup accomplished by moral force what others believed possible only to physical intimidation. Yet those law-breakers who had presumed too much upon his gentleness had invariably come to grief, and Inspector Loup had reached his present confidential position through thrilling experiences that had left his lank body covered with honorable scars.

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