Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/99

 accomplice. Mazeroux made a gesture of entreaty, as though to say:

"Well, what are you waiting for? Why don't you give up the criminal? Quick, it's time!"

Don Luis smiled.

"What's the matter?" asked the Prefect, in a tone that now entirely lacked the sort of involuntary politeness which he had shown since the commencement of the examination.

"The matter? The matter?"

Perenna seized a chair by the back, spun it round and sat down upon it, with the simple remark:

"Let's talk!"

And this was said in such a way and the movement executed with so much decision that the Prefect muttered, as though wavering:

"I don't quite see"

"You soon will, Monsieur le Préfet."

And, speaking in a slow voice, laying stress on every syllable that he uttered, he began:

"Monsieur le Préfet, the position is as clear as daylight. Yesterday evening you gave me an authorization which involves your responsibility most gravely. The result is that what you now want, at all costs and without delay, is a culprit. And that culprit is to be myself. By way of incriminating evidence, you have the fact of my presence here, the fact the door was locked on the inside, the fact that Sergeant Mazeroux was asleep while the crime was committed, and the fact of the discovery of the turquoise in the safe. All this is crushing, I admit. Added to it," he continued, "we have the terrible presumption that I had every interest in the removal of M. Fauville and his