"No, he evidently contemplated coming back and putting everything to rights, so that his share in the business could not be proved, so too that people might believe in your suicide, a mysterious suicide, death without apparent cause; in short, the same tragedy that happened with your father and Little Mother Coralie's mother." "Then you know? . . ." "Why, haven't I eyes to read with? What about the inscription on the wall, your father's revelations? I know as much as you do, captain . . . and perhaps a bit more." "More?" "Well, of course! Habit, you know, experience! Plenty of problems, unintelligible to others, seem to me the simplest and clearest that can be. Therefore . . ." Don Luis hesitated whether to go on: "No," he said, "it's better that I shouldn't speak. The mystery will be dispelled gradually. Let us wait. For the moment . . ." He again stopped, this time to listen: "There, he must have seen you. And now that he knows what he wants to, he's going away." Patrice grew excited: "He's going away! You really ought to have collared him. Shall we ever find him again, the scoundrel? Shall we ever be able to take our revenge?" Don Luis smiled: "There you go, calling him a scoundrel, the man who watched over you for twenty years, who brought you and Little Mother Coralie together, who was your benefactor!" "Oh, I don't know! All this is so bewildering! I can't help hating him. . . . The idea of his getting away maddens me. . . . I should like to torture him and yet . . ." He yielded to a feeling of despair and took his head between his two hands. Don Luis comforted him: "Have no fear," he said. "He was never nearer his downfall than at the present moment. I hold him in my hand as I hold this leaf." "But how?" "The man who's driving him belongs to me." "What's that? What do you mean?" "I mean that I put one of my men on the driver's seat of a taxi, with instructions to hang about at the bottom of the lane, and that Siméon did not fail to take the taxi in question." "That is to say, you suppose so," Patrice corrected him, feeling more and more astounded. "I recognized the sound of the engine at the bottom of the garden when I told you." "And are you sure of your man?" "Certain." "What's the use? Siméon can drive far out of Paris, stab the man in the back . . . and then when shall we get to know?" "Do you imagine that people can get out of Paris and go running about the high-roads without a special permit? No, if Siméon leaves Paris he will have to drive to some railway station or other and we shall know of it twenty minutes after. And then we'll be off." "How?" "By motor." "Then you have a pass?" "Yes, valid for the whole of France." "You don't mean it!" "I do; and a genuine pass at that! Made out in the name of Don Luis Perenna, signed by the minister of the interior and countersigned . . ." "By whom?" "By the President of the Republic."