Before the end of the week, Thaller will have wound up the operation, realized, Heaven knows how many millions, and put every thing in such nice order, that justice, who in financial matters is not of the first capacity, will discover nothing wrong. If he can do that, he is safe, he is beyond reach, and will be dubbed a first-class financier. Then to what may he not aspire! Already he talks of having himself elected deputy; and he says everywhere that he has found, to marry his daughter, a gentleman who bears one of the oldest names in France, - the Marquis de Tegars."
"Why, this is the Marquis de Tregars!" exclaimed Maxence, pointing to Marius.
For the first time; M. Saint Pavin took the trouble to examine his visitor; and he, who knew life too well not to be a judge of men, he seemed surprised.
"Please excuse me, sir," he uttered with a politeness very different from his usual manner, "and permit me to ask you if you know the reasons why M. de Thaller is so prodigiously anxious to have you for a son-in-law."
"I think," replied M. de Traggers coldly, "that M. de Thaller would not be sorry to deprive me of the right to seek the causes of my father's ruin.
But he was interrupted by a great noise of voices in the adjoining room; and almost at once there was a loud knock at the door, and a voice called, "In the name of the law!"
The editor of "The Pilot" had become whiter than his shirt.
"That's what I was afraid of," he said. "Thaller has got ahead of me; and perhaps I may be lost."
Meantime he did not lose his wits. Quick as thought he took out of a drawer a package of letters, threw them into the fireplace, and set fire to them, saying, in a voice made hoarse by emotion and anger, "No one shall come in until they are burnt."
But it required an incredibly long time to make them catch fire; and M. Saint Pavin, kneeling before the hearth; was stirring them up, and scattering them, to make them burn faster.
"And now," said M. de Traggers, "will you hesitate to deliver up the Baron de Thaller into the hands of justice?"
He turned around with flashing eyes.
"Now," he replied, "if I wish to save myself, I must save him too.
Don't you understand that he holds me?"
And, seeing that the last sheets of his correspondence were consumed, "You may open now," he said to Maxence.
Maxence obeyed; and a commissary of police, wearing his scarf of office, rushed into the room; whilst his men, not without difficulty, kept back the crowd in the outer office.
The commissary, who was an old hand, and had perhaps been on a hundred expeditions of this kind, had surveyed the scene at a glance. Noticing in the fireplace the carbonized debris, upon which still fluttered an expiring flame, "That's the reason, then," he said, "why you were so long opening the door?"
A sarcastic smile appeared upon the lips of the editor of "The Pilot."
"Private matters," he replied; "women's letters."
"This will be moral evidence against you, sir."
"I prefer it to material evidence."
Without condescending to notice the impertinence, the commissary was casting a suspicious glance on Maxence and M. de Traggers.
"Who are these gentlemen who were closeted with you?" he asked.
"Visitors, sir. This is M. Favoral."
"The son of the cashier of the Mutual Credit?"
"Exactly; and this gentleman is the Marquis de Tregars."
"You should have opened the door when you heard a knocking in the name of the law," grumbled the commissary.
But he did not insist. Taking a paper from his pocket, he opened it, and, handing it to M. Saint Pavin, "I have orders to arrest you," he said. "Here is the warrant."
With a careless gesture, the other pushed it back. "What's the use of reading?" he said. "When I heard of the arrest of that poor Jottras, I guessed at once what was in store for me. It is about the Mutual Credit swindle, I imagine."
"Exactly."
"I have no more to do with it than yourself, sir; and I shall have very little trouble in proving it. But that is not your business.
And you are going, I suppose, to put the seals on my papers?"
"Except on those that you have burnt."