have been lying so as to find out the truth. I have been such a
fool as to answer you, and you are going to turn it all against me."

"What? Are you going to talk nonsense again?"

"No, but I see just how it is, and you won't catch me again! Now
I'd rather die than say a word."

The detective tried to reassure him; but he added:

"Besides, I'm as sly as you; I've told you nothing but lies."

This sudden whim surprised no one. Some prisoners intrench
themselves behind a system of defence, and nothing can divert them
from it; others vary with each new question, denying what they have
just affirmed, and constantly inventing some new absurdity which
anon they reject again. M. Lecoq tried in vain to draw Guespin
from his silence; M. Domini made the same attempt, and also failed;
to all questions he only answered, "I don't know."

At last the detective waxed impatient.

"See here," said he to Guespin, "I took you for a young man of
sense, and you are only an ass. Do you imagine that we don't know
anything? Listen: On the night of Madame Denis's wedding, you
were getting ready to go off with your comrades, and had just
borrowed twenty francs from the valet, when the count called you.
He made you promise absolute secrecy (a promise which, to do you
justice, you kept); he told you to leave the other servants at
the station and go to Vulcan's Forges, where you were to buy for
him a hammer, a file, a chisel, and a dirk; these you were to carry
to a certain woman. Then he gave you this famous five-hundred-franc
note, telling you to bring him back the change when you returned
next day. Isn't that so?"

An affirmative response glistened in the prisoner's eyes; still,
he answered, "I don't recollect it."

"Now," pursued M. Lecoq, "I'm going to tell you what happened
afterwards. You drank something and got tipsy, and in short spent
a part of the change of the note. That explains your fright when
you were seized yesterday morning, before anybody said a word to
you. You thought you were being arrested for spending that money.
Then, when you learned that the count had been murdered during the
night, recollecting that on the evening before you had bought all
kinds of instruments of theft and murder, and that you didn't know
either the address or the name of the woman to whom you gave up
the package, convinced that if you explained the source of the
money found in your pocket, you would not be believed--then,
instead of thinking