The thought of seeing her again roused his anger to its highest pitch. All the way down the Rue Royale and across the Place de la Concorde he kept blurting out words of revenge and threats which he was itching to carry out. He would abuse Florence. He would sting her with his insults. He felt a bitter and painful need to hurt the odious creature.
But on reaching the Place du Palais-Bourbon he pulled up short. His practised eye had counted at a glance, on the right and left, a half-dozen men whose professional look there was no mistaking. And Mazeroux, who had caught sight of him, had spun round on his heel and was hiding under a gateway.
He called him:
"Mazeroux!"
The sergeant appeared greatly surprised to hear his name and came up to the car.
"Hullo, the Chief!"
His face expressed such embarrassment that Don Luis felt his fears taking definite shape.
"Look here, is it for me that you and your men are hanging about outside my house?"
"There's a notion, Chief," replied Mazeroux, looking very uncomfortable.
"You know that you're in favour all right!"
Don Luis gave a start. He understood. Mazeroux had betrayed his confidence. To obey his scruples of conscience as well as to rescue the chief from the dangers of a fatal passion, Mazeroux had denounced Florence Levasseur.
Perenna clenched his fists in an effort of his whole being to stifle his boiling rage. It was a terrible blow. He received a sudden intuition of all the blunders which his mad jealousy had made him commit since the day before, and a presentiment of the irreparable disasters that might result from them. The conduct of events was slipping from him.
"Have you the warrant?" he asked.
Mazeroux spluttered:
"It was quite by accident. I met the Prefect, who was back. We spoke of the young lady's business. And, as it happened, they had discovered that the photograph—you know, the photograph of Florence Levasseur which the Prefect lent you—well, they have discovered that you faked it. And then when I mentioned the name of Florence, the Prefect remembered that that was the name."
"Have you the warrant?" Don Luis repeated, in a harsher tone.
"Well, you see, I couldn't help it…. M. Desmalions, the magistrate—"
If the Place du Palais Bourbon had been deserted at that moment, Don Luis would certainly have relieved himself by a swinging blow administered to Mazeroux's chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief's anger, intended a whole litany of excuses:
"It was for your good, Chief…. I had to do it … Only think! You yourself told me: 'Rid me of the creature!' said you. I'm too weak. You'll arrest her, won't you? Her eyes burn into me—like poison! Well, Chief, could I help it? No, I couldn't, could I? Especially as the deputy chief—"
"Ah! So Weber knows?"
"Why, yes! The Prefect is a little suspicious of you since he understood about the faking of the portrait. So M. Weber is coming back in an hour, perhaps, with reinforcements. Well, I was saying, the deputy chief had learnt that the woman who used to go to Gaston Sauverand's at Neuilly—you know, the house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace—was fair and very good looking, and that her name was Florence. She even used to stay the night sometimes."
"You lie! You lie!" hissed Perenna.
All his spite was reviving. He had been pursuing Florence with intentions which it would have been difficult for him to put into words. And now suddenly he again wanted to destroy her; and this time consciously. In reality he no longer knew what he was doing. He was acting at haphazard, tossed about in turns by the most diverse passions, a prey to that inordinate love which impels us as readily to kill the object of our affections as to die in an attempt to save her.
A newsboy passed with a special edition of the Paris-Midi, showing in great black letters:
"SENSATIONAL DECLARATION BY DON LUIS PERENNA
"MME. FAUVILLE IS INNOCENT
"IMMINENT ARREST OF THE TWO CRIMINALS"
"Yes, yes," he said aloud. "The drama is drawing to an end. Florence is about to pay her debt to society. So much the worse for her."
He started his car again and drove through the gate. In the courtyard he said to his chauffeur, who came up:
"Turn her around and don't put her up. I may be starting again at any moment."
He sprang out and asked the butler:
"Is Mlle. Levasseur in?"
"Yes, sir, she's in her room."
"She was away yesterday, wasn't she?"
"Yes, sir, she received a telegram asking her to go to the country to see a relation who was ill. She came back last night."
"I want to speak to her. Send her to me. At once."
"In the study, sir?"
"No, upstairs, in the boudoir next to my bedroom."
This was a small room on the second floor which had once been a lady's boudoir, and he preferred it to his study since the attempt at murder of which he had been the object. He was quieter up there, farther away; and he kept his important papers there. He always carried the key with him: a special key with three grooves to it and an inner spring.
Mazeroux had followed him into the courtyard and was keeping close behind him, apparently unobserved by Perenna, who having so far appeared not to notice it. He now, however, took the sergeant by the arm and led him to the front steps.
"All is going well. I was afraid that Florence, suspecting something, might not have come back. But she probably doesn't know that I saw her yesterday. She can't escape us now."
They went across the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. Mazeroux rubbed his hands.
"So you've come to your senses, Chief?"
"At any rate I've made up my mind. I will not, do you hear, I will not have Mme. Fauville kill herself; and, as there is no other way of preventing that catastrophe, I shall sacrifice Florence."
"Without regret?"
"Without remorse."
"Then you forgive me?"
"I thank you."
And he struck him a clean, powerful blow under the chin. Mazeroux fell without a moan, in a dead faint on the steps of the second flight.
Halfway up the stairs was a dark recess that served as a lumber room where the servants kept their pails and brooms and the soiled household linen. Don Luis carried Mazeroux to it, and, seating him comfortably on the floor, with his back to a housemaid's box, he stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth, gagged him with a towel, and bound his wrists and ankles with two tablecloths. The other ends of these he fastened to a couple of strong nails. As Mazeroux was slowly coming to himself, Don Luis said:
"I think you have all you want. Tablecloths—napkins—something in your mouth in case you're hungry. Eat at your ease. And then take a little nap, and you'll wake up as fresh as paint."
He locked him in and glanced at his watch.
"I have an hour before me. Capital!"
At that moment his intention was to insult Florence, to throw up all her scandalous crimes in her face, and, in this way, to force a written and signed confession from her. Afterward, when Marie Fauville's safety was insured, he would see. Perhaps he would put Florence in his motor and carry her off to some refuge from which, with the girl for a hostage, he would be able to influence the police. Perhaps—But he did not seek to anticipate events. What he wanted was an immediate, violent explanation.
He ran up to his bedroom on the second floor and dipped his face into cold water. Never had he experienced such a stimulation of his whole being, such an unbridling of his blind instincts.
"It's she!" he spluttered. "I hear her! She is at the bottom of the stairs. At last! Oh, the joy of having her in front of me! Face to face! She and I alone!"
He returned to the landing outside the boudoir. He took the key from his pocket. The door opened.
He uttered a great shout: Gaston Sauverand was there! In that locked room Gaston Sauverand was waiting for him, standing with folded arms.
CHAPTER TEN
GASTON SAUVERAND EXPLAINS
Gaston Sauverand!
Instinctively, Don Luis took a step back, drew his revolver, and aimed it at the criminal:
"Hands up!" he commanded. "Hands up, or I fire!"
Sauverand did not appear to be put out. He nodded toward two revolvers which he had laid on a table beyond his reach and said:
"There are my arms. I have come here not to fight, but to talk."
"How did you get in?" roared Don Luis, exasperated by this display of calmness. "A false key, I suppose? But how did you get hold of the key? How did you manage it?"
The other did not reply. Don Luis stamped his foot:
"Speak, will you? Speak! If not—"
But Florence ran into the room. She passed him by without his trying to stop her, flung herself upon Gaston Sauverand, and, taking no heed of Perenna's presence, said:
"Why did you come? You promised me that you wouldn't. You swore it to me. Go!"
Sauverand released himself and forced her into a chair.
"Let me be, Florence. I promised only so as to reassure you. Let me be."
"No, I will not!" exclaimed the girl eagerly. "It's madness! I won't have you say a single word. Oh, please, please stop!"
He bent over her and smoothed her forehead, separating her mass of golden hair.
"Let me do things my own way, Florence," he said softly.
She was silent, as though disarmed by the gentleness of his voice; and he whispered more words which Don Luis could not hear and which seemed to convince her.
Perenna had not moved. He stood opposite them with his arm outstretched and his finger on the trigger, aiming at the enemy. When Sauverand addressed Florence by her Christian name, he started from head to foot and his finger trembled. What miracle kept him from shooting? By what supreme effort of will did he stifle the jealous hatred that burnt him like fire? And here was Sauverand daring to stroke Florence's hair!
He lowered his arm. He would kill them later, do with them what he pleased, since they were in his power, and since nothing henceforth could snatch them from his vengeance.
He took Sauverand's two revolvers and laid them in a drawer. Then he went back to the door, intending to lock it. But hearing a sound on the first-floor landing, he leant over the balusters. The butler was coming upstairs with a tray in his hand.
"What is it now?"
"An urgent letter, sir, for Sergeant Mazeroux."
"Sergeant Mazeroux is with me. Give me the letter and don't let me be disturbed again."
He tore open the envelope. The letter, hurriedly written in pencil and signed by one of the inspectors on duty outside the house, contained these words:
"Look out, Sergeant. Gaston Sauverand is in the house. Two people living opposite say that the girl who is known hereabouts as the lady housekeeper came in at half-past one, before we took up our posts. She was next seen at the window of her lodge.
"A few moments after, a small, low door, used for the cellars and situated under the lodge, was opened, evidently by her. Almost at the same time a man entered the square, came along the wall, and slipped in through the cellar door. According to the description it was Gaston Sauverand. So look out, Sergeant. At the least alarm, at the first signal from you, we shall come in."
Don Luis reflected. He now understood how the scoundrel had access to his house, and how, hidden in the safest of retreats, he was able to escape every attempt to find him. He was living under the roof of the very man who had declared himself his most formidable adversary.
"Come on," he said to himself. "The fellow's score is settled—and so is his young lady's. They can choose between the bullets in my revolver and the handcuffs of the police."
He had ceased to think of his motor standing ready below. He no longer dreamt of flight with Florence. If he did not kill the two of them, the law would lay its hand upon them, the hand that does not let go. And perhaps it was better so, that society itself should punish the two criminals whom he was about to hand over to it.
He shut the door, pushed the bolt, faced his two prisoners again and, taking a chair, said to Sauverand:
"Let us talk."
Owing to the narrow dimensions of the room they were all so close together that Don Luis felt as if he were almost touching the man whom he loathed from the very bottom of his heart. Their two chairs were hardly a yard asunder. A long table, covered with books, stood between them and the windows, which, hollowed out of the very thick wall, formed a recess, as is usual in old houses.
Florence had turned her chair away from the light, and Don Luis could not see her face clearly. But he looked straight into Gaston Sauverand's face and watched it with eager curiosity; and his anger was heightened by the sight of the still youthful features, the expressive mouth, and the intelligent eyes, which were fine in spite of their hardness.
"Well? Speak!" said Don Luis, in a commanding tone. "I have agreed to a truce, but a momentary truce, just long enough to say what is necessary. Are you afraid now that the time has arrived? Do you regret the step which you have taken?"
The man smiled calmly and said:
"I am afraid of nothing, and I do not regret coming, for I have a very strong intuition that we can, that we are bound to, come to an understanding."
"An understanding!" protested Don Luis with a start.
"Why not?"
"A compact! An alliance between you and me!"
"Why not? It is a thought which I had already entertained more than once, which took a more precise shape in the magistrates' corridor, and which finally decided me when I read the announcement which you caused to be made in the special edition of this paper: 'Sensational declaration by Don Luis Perenna. Mme. Fauville is innocent!'"
Gaston Sauverand half rose from his chair and, carefully picking his words, emphasizing them with sharp gestures, he whispered:
"Everything lies, Monsieur, in those four words. Do those four words which you have written, which you have uttered publicly and solemnly—'Mme. Fauville is innocent'—do they express your real mind? Do you now absolutely believe in Marie Fauville's innocence?"
Don Luis shrugged his shoulders.
"Mme. Fauville's innocence has nothing to do with the case. It is a question not of her, but of you, of you two and myself. So come straight to the point and as quickly as you can. It is to your interest even more than to mine."
"To our interest?"
"You forget the third heading to the article," cried Don Luis. "I did more than proclaim Marie Fauville's innocence. I also announced—read for yourself—The 'imminent arrest of the criminals,'"
Sauverand and Florence rose together, with the same unguarded movement.
"And, in your view, the criminals are—?" asked Sauverand.
"Why, you know as well as I do: they are the man with the ebony walking-stick, who at any rate cannot deny having murdered Chief Inspector Ancenis, and the woman who is his accomplice in all his crimes. Both of them must remember their attempts to assassinate me: the revolver shot on the Boulevard Suchet; the motor smash causing the death of my chauffeur; and yesterday again, in the barn—you know where—the barn with the two skeletons hanging from the rafters: yesterday—you remember—the scythe, the relentless scythe, which nearly beheaded me."
"And then?"
"Well, then, the game is lost. You must pay up; and all the more so as you have foolishly put your heads into the lion's mouth."
"I don't understand. What does all this mean?"
"It simply means that they know Florence Levasseur, that they know you are both here, that the house is surrounded, and that Weber, the deputy chief detective, is on his way."
Sauverand appeared disconcerted by this unexpected threat. Florence, standing beside him, had turned livid. A mad anguish distorted her features. She stammered:
"Oh, it is awful! No, no, I can't endure it!"
And, rushing at Don Luis:
"Coward! Coward! It's you who are betraying us! Coward! Oh, I knew that you were capable of the meanest treachery! There you stand like an executioner! Oh, you villain, you coward!"
She fell into her chair, exhausted and sobbing, with her hand to her face.
Don Luis turned away. Strange to say, he experienced no sense of pity; and Florence's tears affected him no more than her insults had done, no more than if he had never loved the girl. He was glad of this release. The horror with which she filled him had killed his love.
But, when he once more stood in front of them after taking a few steps across the room, he saw that they were holding each other's hands, like two friends in distress, trying to give each other courage; and, again yielding to a sudden impulse of hatred, for a moment beside himself, he gripped the man's arm:
"I forbid you—By what right—? Is she your wife? Your mistress? Then—"
His voice became perplexed. He himself felt the strangeness of that fit of anger which suddenly revealed, in all its force and all its blindness, a passion which he thought dead. And he blushed, for Gaston Sauverand was looking at him in amazement; and he did not doubt that the enemy had penetrated his secret.
A long pause followed, during which he met Florence's eyes, hostile eyes, full of rebellion and disdain. Had she, too, guessed?
He dared not speak another word. He waited for Sauverand's explanation. And, while waiting, he gave not a thought to the coming revelations, nor to the tremendous problems of which he was at last about to know the solution, nor to the tragic events at hand.
He thought of one thing only, thought of it with the fevered throbbing of his whole being, thought of what he was on the point of learning about Florence, about the girl's affections, about her past, about her love for Sauverand. That alone interested him.
"Very well," said Sauverand. "I am caught in a trap. Fate must take its course. Nevertheless, can I speak to you? It is the only wish that remains to me."
"Speak," replied Don Luis. "The door is locked. I shall not open it until I think fit. Speak."
"I shall be brief," said Gaston Sauverand. "For one thing, what I can tell you is not much. I do not ask you to believe it, but to listen to it as if I were possibly telling the truth, the whole truth."
And he expressed himself in the following words:
"I never met Hippolyte and Marie Fauville, though I used to correspond with them—you will remember that we were all cousins—until five years ago, when chance brought us together at Palmero. They were passing the winter there while their new house on the Boulevard Suchet was being built.
"We spent five months at Palmero, seeing one another daily. Hippolyte and Marie were not on the best of terms. One evening after they had been quarrelling more violently than usual I found her crying. Her tears upset me and I could not longer conceal my secret. I had loved Marie from the first moment when we met. I was to love her always and to love her more and more."
"You lie!" cried Don Luis, losing his self-restraint. "I saw the two of you yesterday in the train that brought you back from Alençon—"
Gaston Sauverand looked at Florence. She sat silent, with her hands to her face and her elbows on her knees. Without replying to Don Luis's exclamation, he went on:
"Marie also loved me. She admitted it, but made me swear that I would never try to obtain from her more than the purest friendship would allow. I kept my oath. We enjoyed a few weeks of incomparable happiness. Hippolyte Fauville, who had become enamoured of a music-hall singer, was often away.
"I took a good deal of trouble with the physical training of the little boy Edmond, whose health was not what it should be. And we also had with us, between us, the best of friends, the most devoted and affectionate counsellor, who staunched our wounds, kept up our courage, restored our gayety, and bestowed some of her own strength and dignity upon our love. Florence was there."
Don Luis felt his heart beating faster. Not that he attached the least credit to Gaston Sauverand's words; but he had every hope of arriving, through those words, at the real truth. Perhaps, also, he was unconsciously undergoing the influence of Gaston Sauverand, whose apparent frankness and sincerity of tone caused him a certain surprise.
Sauverand continued:
"Fifteen years before, my elder brother, Raoul Sauverand, had picked up at Buenos Aires, where he had gone to live, a little girl, the orphan daughter of some friends. At his death he entrusted the child, who was then fourteen, to an old nurse who had brought me up and who had accompanied my brother to South America. The old nurse brought the child to me and herself died of an accident a few days after her arrival in France…. I took the little girl to Italy to friends, where she worked and studied and became—what she is.
"Wishing to live by her own resources, she accepted a position as teacher in a family. Later I recommended her to my Fauville cousins with whom I found her at Palmero as governess to the boy Edmond and especially as the friend, the dear and devoted friend, of Marie Fauville…. She was mine, also, at that happy time, which was so sunny and all too short. Our happiness, in fact—the happiness of all three of us—was to be wrecked in the most sudden and tantalizing fashion.
"Every evening I used to write in a diary the daily life of my love, an uneventful life, without hope or future before it, but eager and radiant. Marie Fauville was extolled in it as a goddess. Kneeling down to write, I sang litanies of her beauty, and I also used to invent, as a poor compensation, wholly imaginary scenes, in which she said all the things which she might have said but did not, and promised me all the happiness which we had voluntarily renounced.
"Hippolyte Fauville found the diary…. His anger was something terrible. His first impulse was to get rid of Marie. But in the face of his wife's attitude, of the proofs of her innocence which she supplied, of her inflexible refusal to consent to a divorce, and of her promise never to see me again, he recovered his calmness…. I left, with death in my soul. Florence left, too, dismissed. And never, mark me, never, since that fatal hour, did I exchange a single word with Marie. But an indestructible love united us, a love which neither absence nor time was to weaken."
He stopped for a moment, as though to read in Don Luis's face the effect produced by his story. Don Luis did not conceal his anxious attention. What astonished him most was Gaston Sauverand's extraordinary calmness, the peaceful expression of his eyes, the quiet ease with which he set forth, without hurrying, almost slowly and so very simply, the story of that family tragedy.
"What an actor!" he thought.
And as he thought it, he remembered that Marie Fauville had given him the same impression. Was he then to hark back to his first conviction and believe Marie guilty, a dissembler like her accomplice, a dissembler like Florence? Or was he to attribute a certain honesty to that man?
He asked:
"And afterward?"
"Afterward I travelled about. I resumed my life of work and pursued my studies wherever I went, in my bedroom at the hotels, and in the public laboratories of the big towns."
"And Mme. Fauville?"
"She lived in Paris in her new house. Neither she nor her husband ever referred to the past."
"How do you know? Did she write to you?"
"No. Marie is a woman who does not do her duty by halves; and her sense of duty is strict to excess. She never wrote to me. But Florence, who had accepted a place as secretary and reader to Count Malonyi, your predecessor in this house, used often to receive Marie's visits in her lodge downstairs.
"They did not speak of me once, did they, Florence? Marie would not have allowed it. But all her life and all her soul were nothing but love and passionate memories. Isn't that so, Florence?
"At last," he went on slowly, "weary of being so far away from her, I returned to Paris. That was our undoing…. It was about a year ago. I took a flat in the Avenue du Roule and went to it in the greatest secrecy, so that Hippolyte Fauville might not know of my return. I was afraid of disturbing Marie's peace of mind. Florence alone knew, and came to see me from time to time. I went out little, only after dark, and in the most secluded parts of the Bois. But it happened—for our most heroic resolutions sometimes fail us—one Wednesday night, at about eleven o'clock, my steps led me to the Boulevard Suchet, without my noticing it, and I went past Marie's house.
"It was a warm and fine night and, as luck would have it, Marie was at her window. She saw me, I was sure of it, and knew me; and my happiness was so great that my legs shook under me as I walked away.
"After that I passed in front of her house every Wednesday evening; and Marie was nearly always there, giving me this unhoped-for and ever-new delight, in spite of the fact that her social duties, her quite natural love of amusement, and her husband's position obliged her to go out a great deal."
"Quick! Why can't you hurry?" said Don Luis, urged by his longing to know more. "Look sharp and come to the facts. Speak!"
He had become suddenly afraid lest he should not hear the remainder of the explanation; and he suddenly perceived that Gaston Sauverand's words were making their way into his mind as words that were perhaps not untrue. Though he strove to fight against them, they were stronger than his prejudices and triumphed over his arguments.
The fact is, that deep down in his soul, tortured with love and jealousy, there was something that disposed him to believe this man in whom hitherto he had seen only a hated rival, and who was so loudly proclaiming, in Florence's very presence, his love for Marie.
"Hurry!" he repeated. "Every minute is precious!"
Sauverand shook his head.
"I shall not hurry. All my words were carefully thought out before I decided to speak. Every one of them is essential. Not one of them can be omitted, for you will find the solution of the problem not in facts presented anyhow, separated one from the other, but in the concatenation of the facts, and in a story told as faithfully as possible."
"Why? I don't understand."
"Because the truth lies hidden in that story."
"But that truth is your innocence, isn't it?"
"It is Marie's innocence."
"But I don't dispute it!"
"What is the use of that if you can't prove it?"
"Exactly! It's for you to give me proofs."
"I have none."
"What!"
"I tell you, I have no proof of what I am asking you to believe."
"Then I shall not believe it!" cried Don Luis angrily. "No, and again no! Unless you supply me with the most convincing proofs, I shall refuse to believe a single word of what you are going to tell me."
"You have believed everything that I have told you so far," Sauverand retorted very simply.
Don Luis offered no denial. He turned his eyes to Florence Levasseur; and it seemed to him that she was looking at him with less aversion, and as though she were wishing with all her might that he would not resist the impressions that were forcing themselves upon him. He muttered:
"Go on with your story."
And there was something really strange about the attitude of those two men, one making his explanation in precise terms and in such a way as to give every word its full value, the other listening attentively and weighing every one of those words; both controlling their excitement; both as calm in appearance as though they were seeking the philosophical solution in a case of conscience. What was going on outside did not matter. What was to happen presently did not count.
Before all, whatever the consequences of their inactivity at this moment when the circle of the police was closing in around them, before all it was necessary that one should speak and the other listen.
"We are coming," said Sauverand, in his grave voice, "we are coming to the most important events, to those of which the interpretation, which is new to you, but strictly true, will make you believe in our good faith. Ill luck having brought me across Hippolyte Fauville's path in the course of one of my walks in the Bois, I took the precaution of changing my abode and went to live in the little house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where Florence came to see me several times.
"I was even careful to keep her visits a secret and, moreover, to refrain from corresponding with her except through the poste restante. I was therefore quite easy in my mind.
"I worked in perfect solitude and in complete security. I expected nothing. No danger, no possibility of danger, threatened us. And, I may say, to use a commonplace but very accurate expression, that what happened came as an absolute bolt from the blue. I heard at the same time, when the Prefect of Police and his men broke into my house and proceeded to arrest me, I heard at the same time and for the first time of the murder of Hippolyte Fauville, the murder of Edmond, and the arrest of my adored Marie."
"Impossible!" cried Don Luis, in a renewed tone of aggressive wrath. "Impossible! Those facts were a fortnight old. I cannot allow that you had not heard of them."
"Through whom?"
"Through the papers," exclaimed Don Luis. "And, more certainly still, through Mlle. Levasseur."
"Through the papers?" said Sauverand. "I never used to read them. What! Is that incredible? Are we under an obligation, an inevitable necessity, to waste half an hour a day in skimming through the futilities of politics and the piffle of the news columns? Is your imagination incapable of conceiving a man who reads nothing but reviews and scientific publications?
"The fact is rare, I admit," he continued. "But the rarity of a fact is no proof against it. On the other hand, on the very morning of the crime I had written to Florence saying that I was going away for three weeks and bidding her good-bye. I changed my mind at the last moment; but this she did not know; and, thinking that I had gone, not knowing where I was, she was unable to inform me of the crime, of Marie's arrest, or, later, when an accusation was brought against the man with the ebony walking-stick, of the search that was being made for me."
"Exactly!" declared Don Luis. "You cannot pretend that the man with the ebony walking-stick, the man who followed Inspector Vérot to the Café du Pont-Neuf and purloined his letter—"