“It was a most imprudent act, for such things always leak out somehow. You have a gardener at your house at Champigny, and suppose the idea seized upon this worthy man to dig up the ground round the wall at the end of the garden.” “That is enough,” said Catenac, piteously. “I give in.” Mascarin adjusted his spectacles, as he always did in important moments. “You give in, do you? Not a bit. Even now you are endeavoring to find a means of parrying my home thrusts.” “But I declare to you----” “Do not be alarmed; dig as deeply as he might, your gardener would discover nothing.” The lawyer uttered a stifled exclamation of rage as he perceived the pit into which he had fallen. “He would find nothing,” resumed Mascarin, “and yet the story is all true. Last January, on a bitterly cold night, you dug a hole, and in it deposited the body of a new-born infant wrapped in a shawl. And what shawl? Why the very one that you purchased at the _Bon Marche_, when you were making yourself agreeable to Clarisse. The shopman who sold it to you has identified it, and is ready to give evidence when called upon. You may look for that shawl, Catenac, but you will not find it.” “Have you got that shawl?” asked Catenac hoarsely. “Am I a fool?” asked Mascarin contemptuously. “Tantaine has it; but _I_ know where the body is, and will keep the information to myself. Do not be alarmed; act fairly, and you are safe; but make one treacherous move, and you will read in the next day’s papers a paragraph something to this effect: ‘Yesterday some workmen, engaged in excavations near so-and-so, discovered the body of a new-born infant. Every effort is being made to discover the author of the crime.’ You know me, and that I work promptly. To the shawl I have added a handkerchief and a few other articles belonging to Clarisse, which will render it an easy matter to fix the guilt on you.” Catenac was absolutely stunned, and had lost all power of defending himself. The few incoherent words that he uttered showed his state of utter despair. “You have killed me,” gasped he, “just as the prize, that I have been looking for for twenty years, was in my grasp.” “Work does a man no harm,” remarked the doctor sententiously. There was, however, little time to lose; the Marquis de Croisenois and Paul might be expected to arrive at any moment, and Mascarin hastened to restore a certain amount of calmness to his prostrate antagonist. “You make as much noise as if we were going to hand you over to the executioner on the spot. Do you think that we are such a pair of fools as to risk all these hazards without some almost certain chance of success? Hortebise was as much startled as yourself when I first spoke to him of this affair, but I explained everything fully to him, and now he is quite enthusiastic in the matter. Of course you can lay aside all fear, and, as a man of the world, will bear no malice against those who have simply played a better game than yourself.”