Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/133

Rh vague terror associated in her enfeebled mind with the very name of that aunt.

As soon as she was well enough to travel she was taken to the Ursuline convent at Dinan by a good priest who had befriended her grandmother for many years. After this transference to the convent the police lost sight of the child Lemarque.

Throughout the evening, even amidst the distractions of a finely acted comedy by Augier, and in the wakeful intervals of a somewhat disturbed night, Edward Heathcote brooded over the details of the evidence which he had read, not once, but several times, before he closed the volume of reports.

The detective instinct, which is a characteristic of every well-trained lawyer's mind, had been suddenly developed into almost a passion. He no longer limited his desire to the unravelling of the web of Léonie Lemarque's fate; he ardently longed to discover the mystery of Marie Prévol's murder—to succeed where one of the most accomplished Parisian detectives had ignominiously failed. His eagerness to hear more about Drubarde's efforts and failures in this particular case led him to the Quai des Grands Augustins at an early hour, in time to surprise the worthy Félix in the act of breakfasting temperately upon café au lait and boiled eggs.

Monsieur Drubarde gave his new friend a cheery welcome. It was a lovely morning, balmy as midsummer, and the little garden on the leads was bright with gaily-coloured asters, nasturtiums, and geraniums, and agreeably perfumed with mignonette.

"Do you perceive the exquisite odours?" asked Drubarde.

"Your mignonette is delicious."

"My mignonette!" cried the police-officer scornfully. "Why, when the wind blows straight from the flower-market, as it does to-day, I can sit in my garden and enjoy all the perfumes of the Riviera. I can revel in orange-blossoms, drink my fill of tube-roses and stephanotis, Maréchal Niel and Jacqueline roses. And look what a view! Not a touch of the sculptor's chisel that I cannot see yonder on the old kings of Notre Dame; not a cornice or a column in the new hospital that does not stand clear in the morning light! And yet Paris is peopled with fools who do not make gardens on their housetops!"

"Perhaps every landlord would not be so complaisant as yours, Monsieur Drubarde, nor every housetop so adapted to horticulture."

"True, your Parisian landlord is a churl and a niggard, and a good many of our housetops are no doubt impracticable. But the inventive mind, the love of the beautiful, is more often wanting. I see you have been good enough to bring back my volume. You have read the report, I suppose?"

"Every line, every syllable, three times over."