who
reveals enough of what he has discovered to make the evidence
misleading, and who betrays for the benefit of his foolish vanity the
cause of justice--and an unhappy prisoner?"

The frightened Fanferlot recoiled a step.

"I should say," he began, "I should say--"

"You think this man should be punished and dismissed; and you are
right. The less a profession is honored, the more honorable should be
those who follow it. You however are treacherous. Ah! Master Squirrel,
we are ambitious, and we try to play the police in our own way! We let
Justice wander where she will, while we search for other things. It
takes a more cunning bloodhound than you, my boy, to hunt without a
hunter and at his own risk."

"But master, I swear--"

"Be silent. Do you wish me to prove that you have told everything to
the examining magistrate, as was your duty? Go to! While others were
charging the cashier, _you_ informed against the banker! _You_ watched
him; you became intimate with his _valet de chambre_!"

Was M. Lecoq really in anger? Fanferlot, who knew him well, doubted it
a little; but with this devil of a man one never quite knew how to
take him.

"If you were only clever," he continued, "but no! You wish to be a
master, and you are not even a good workman."

"You are right, master," said Fanferlot piteously, who could deny no
longer. "But how could I work upon a business like this, when there
was no trace, no mark, no sign, no conviction,--nothing, nothing?"

M. Lecoq raised his shoulders.

"Poor boy!" he said. "Know, then, that the day when you were summoned
with the commissary to verify the robbery, you had--I will not say
certainly but very probably--between your two large and stupid hands
the means of knowing which key, the banker's or the cashier's, had
been used in committing the theft."

"What an idea!"

"You want proof? Very well. Do you remember that mark which you
observed on the side of the copper? It struck you, for you did not
repress an exclamation when you saw it. You examined it carefully with
a glass; and you were convinced that it was quite fresh, and therefore
made recently. You said, and with reason, that this mark dated from
the moment of the theft. But with what had it been made? With a key,
evidently. That being the case, you should have demanded the keys of
the banker and the cashier, and examined them attentively. One of
these would have shown some atoms of the green paint with which a
strong