Fandor looked Monsieur Havard straight in the eye and said coolly:

“Juve has never told me that he had sent in his resignation.”

Monsieur Havard looked searchingly at our journalist, before remarking:

“Come now! What is this you are telling me? Poor Juve?...”Fandor wished to save the chief of the detective department from telling pointless lies.

“Monsieur Havard! Monsieur Havard! Interrogate the members of the band of Numbers, and don’t trouble about how I got my information... but, be sure of one thing – there are dead men of whom I could tell tales, of whose existence I am as well aware of as you yourself!” As the chief stared at the journalist, looking more and more astonished, Fandor added:

“And I do not refer to Dollon! I am referring to Juve – to my dear friend Juve, the king of detectives!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR : AT SAINT-LAZARE

“Hop along there! See if you can’t hurry up a bit!” The warder opened the door of Elizabeth Dollon’s cell and pushed in an old woman – a horrid-looking creature.

“In with you!” commanded the warder in a harsh tone. “You are to stay here till tomorrow. We’ll find another place for you when we get instructions.”

Poor Elizabeth Dollon stared miserably at this foul companion which Fate, in the person of a warder, had thrust on her. The rank old woman stared back with no little curiosity at the pale, sad girl.... Silence fell for a few minutes, then the new prisoner asked, in a tone of rough familiarity:

“What’s your name?”

“I call myself Elizabeth.”

“Don’t know it!... Elizabeth who?”

“Elizabeth Dollon.”

The old hag rose from the corner of the mattress she had seated herself on.

“True? You’re Elizabeth Dollon?... Well, that’s funny! Have you been nabbed long?”

“You ask if it is long since I was...?”

“Nabbed?... Taken!... Arrested!”

Elizabeth nodded in the affirmative. It seemed to her that an infinity of time had passed since her imprisonment at Saint-Lazare.

“I was nabbed last night. If you want to know my name, I’m called Mother Toulouche. They say I’m one of the band of Numbers, and that I receive stolen goods! Lies!

That’s for sure!”

Elizabeth had no desire to go into such an unsavoury question. This horrid old woman rather frightened her; but, such had been her distress and fears since she had been a prisoner that it was some relief not to be quite alone; to have even this old creature to speak to was better than solitary confinement.

In her character of old jail-bird, Mother Toulouche made herself quickly at home.

“Moved tomorrow, they say I’m to be! Pity! At bottom you’re not one of the scurvy sort – you must be here to play spy on me, for all that!... When do you get out? Are you long for Saint-Lago?”

Alas, how could Elizabeth tell?