Silent and motionless in his corner, Lecoq was inwardly jubilant. This was a most happy result, he thought, but a few questions more, and the old woman would be obliged to contradict herself. What she had already said sufficed to show that she must have a secret interest in the matter, or else she would never have been so imprudently earnest in defending the prisoner. “However, you have probably been led to this conclusion by your knowledge of the murderer’s character,” remarked M. Segmuller, “you are apparently well acquainted with him.” “Oh, I had never set eyes on him before that evening.” “But he must have been in your establishment before?” “Never in his life.” “Oh, oh! Then how do you explain that on entering the shop while you were upstairs, this unknown person--this stranger--should have called out: ‘Here, old woman!’ Did he merely guess that the establishment was kept by a woman; and that this woman was no longer young?” “He did not say that.” “Reflect a moment; you, yourself just told me so.” “Oh, I didn’t say that, I’m sure, my good sir.” “Yes, you did, and I will prove it by having your evidence read. Goguet, read the passage, if you please.” The smiling clerk looked back through his minutes and then, in his clearest voice, he read these words, taken down as they fell from the Widow Chupin’s lips: “I had been upstairs about half an hour, when I heard some one below call out ‘Eh! old woman.’ So I went down,” etc., etc. “Are you convinced?” asked M. Segmuller. The old offender’s assurance was sensibly diminished by this proof of her prevarication. However, instead of discussing the subject any further, the magistrate glided over it as if he did not attach much importance to the incident. “And the other men,” he resumed, “those who were killed: did you know them?” “No, good sir, no more than I knew Adam and Eve.” “And were you not surprised to see three men utterly unknown to you, and accompanied by two women, enter your establishment?” “Sometimes chance--” “Come! you do not think of what you are saying. It was not chance that brought these customers, in the middle of the night, to a wine-shop with a reputation like yours--an establishment situated far from any frequented route in the midst of a desolate waste.” “I’m not a sorceress; I say what I think.” “Then you did not even know the youngest of the victims, the man who was attired as a soldier, he who was named Gustave?” “Not at all.” M. Segmuller noted the intonation of this response, and then slowly added: “But you must have heard of one of Gustave’s friends, a man called Lacheneur?” On hearing this name, the landlady of the Poivriere became visibly embarrassed, and it was in an altered voice that she stammered: “Lacheneur! Lacheneur! no, I have never heard that name mentioned.”