"
"But none of all this explains why you do not come and take him
without more ado," remarked Mlle. Michonneau.
"Very well, mademoiselle, I will explain--but," he added in her ear,
"keep your companion quiet, or I shall never have done. The old boy
ought to pay people handsomely for listening to him.--Trompe-la-Mort,
when he came back here," he went on aloud "slipped into the skin of an
honest man; he turned up disguised as a decent Parisian citizen, and
took up his quarters in an unpretending lodging-house. He is cunning,
that he is! You don't catch him napping. Then M. Vautrin is a man of
consequence, who transacts a good deal of business."
"Naturally," said Poiret to himself.
"And suppose that the Minister were to make a mistake and get hold of
the real Vautrin, he would put every one's back up among the business
men in Paris, and public opinion would be against him. M. le Prefet de
Police is on slippery ground; he has enemies. They would take
advantage of any mistake. There would be a fine outcry and fuss made
by the Opposition, and he would be sent packing. We must set about
this just as we did about the Coignard affair, the sham Comte de
Sainte-Helene; if he had been the real Comte de Sainte-Helene, we
should have been in the wrong box.
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