The reply was so startling in its quiet unconcern that the Head of the Criminal Bureau was struck dumb for a moment. However, he quickly recovered his self-possession and answered back: “Why, my dear sir, because ... because when a Minister sends for one, surely one ought to take the trouble to obey.” But Tom Bob, quite unruffled, only shrugged his shoulders. Taking a cigarette from his case, he lit it without a sign of embarrassment, then: “You think so?” he said, “well, I think the opposite! If we differ in our ideas, it is probably because you, M. Havard, are you, purely French: and I, Tom Bob, equally American.” “Which means?” “Which means,” concluded the detective, with his Yankee bluntness, “that having nothing to say to the Minister, I did not feel any need to go and see him, and I considered if he wanted to speak to me, that he might very well take the trouble to come as far as the Hôtel Terminus.” Listening to this speech of the phlegmatic American, M. Havard turned first pale, then green, sorely embarrassed as he remembered they were spoken actually before the Minister’s very face. The interview was taking an unpleasant complexion and it was best to push into other matters: “Tell me, my dear Bob,” he asked by way of turning the conversation, and getting back to serious affairs, “you can guess, I take it, why I have come this morning?” Immediately Tom Bob’s face lost its look of calm unconcern; it was evident a genuine curiosity pricked the detective as he replied: “Upon my word, I don’t, Monsieur Havard! I know nothing at all about it, though I must confess it interests me very greatly ... Could I be of any use to you, I wonder?” The Head of the Criminal Bureau, after a moment’s pause, and speaking sharply and incisively in a way to throw the other off his guard: “Useful?” he exclaimed, “yes, you can be very useful to me”—and, almost showing his cards, he demanded: “I expect you to give me an explanation of last night’s events.” “Last night’s events?” “Yes, the tragedy that happened at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s.” “A tragedy happened?” “In a word, I want you to tell me how your wound is.” “My wound?... why, you are gone crazy, Monsieur Havard!” “Crazy indeed! but, now ...” “What on earth are you talking about now?” Tom Bob’s face wore such an expression of amazement, stupefaction, utter lack of comprehension, that with one accord M. Havard and the Minister, who had to hold himself in hand hard to keep his lips shut, sprang up and faced the detective. “But,” screamed M. Havard, boiling over with exasperation, “but you are not, I presume, going to deny that yesterday evening you were at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s ball?” Tom Bob struck his breast in perfectly unaffected surprise. “I?” he stammered, “_I_ was at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s ball!” “Egad! yes: as Fantômas, come now!”