Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/22

 alone regarded me with distrust; and on my demanding the cause, he said, that by the way in which they had been pursued and interrogated, he could not help suspecting that I was the denouncer. I feigned much indignation, and fearing that this opinion might be disseminated, I assembled the prisoners, and informing them of Neveu's suspicions, I demanded if they thought me capable of selling my comrades? and on their answering in the negative, Neveu was compelled to apologise to me. It was important to me that these suspicions should be thus destroyed; for I knew that certain death would be my doom if they had been confirmed. There had been many instances at Roanne of this distributive justice, which the prisoners exercised towards one another. One named Moissel, suspected of having given information relative to a robbery of church plate, had been knocked on the head in the court, without the assassin being detected. More recently, another individual accused of a similar indiscretion, had been found one morning hung with a straw band at the bars of his window, and the perpetrator was never discovered.

In the mean time, M. Dubois sent for me to his closet, where, to avoid suspicion, the other prisoners were conducted with me, as if about to undergo an examination. I entered first, and the commissary-general told me that many very expert robbers had arrived at Lyons, from Paris, and the more dangerous, as being supplied with regular credentials, they might wait in safety for the opportunity of making some decided stroke, and then immediately go away: their names were Jaillier, called Boubanec, Bouthey, called Cadet, Buchard, Garard, Mollin, called the Chapellier, Marquis, called Main d'Or, and some others less notorious. These names, by which they were mentioned, were then entirely new to me; and I told M. Dubois so, adding, that possibly they might be false. He wished to release me immediately, that by seeing these individuals in some public place, I might assure myself whether had ever seen them