“Who have I the honor of speaking to?” asked he, instead of making a direct reply.
“I am a friend of M. de Gandelu’s,” returned Andre, thinking it best not to give any name.
“Entirely so. He had, I think, ten thousand francs from you.”
Andre turned toward his companion in some surprise.
“What is the meaning of this?” asked the artist.
“Can’t you see?” whispered Gaston. “I had ten because I wanted the other five for Zora.”
“Oh, indeed,” returned Andre, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows. “Well, then, M. Verminet, it was five thousand francs that you lent to my young friend here. That was right enough; but what do you say to inducing him to forge a signature?”
“I! I do such a thing?” answered Verminet. “Why, I did not know that the signature was not genuine.”
This insolent denial aroused the unhappy Gaston from his state of stupor.
“This is too much, a deuced deal too much,” cried he. “Did you not yourself tell me that, for your own security, you must insist upon another name in addition to mine? Did you not give me a letter, and say, ‘Write a signature like the one at the bottom of this, it is that of Martin Rigal, the banker in the Rue Montmartre’?”
“An utterly false accusation, without a shadow of proof; and remember that a libel uttered in the presence of a third party is punishable by law.”
“And yet, sir,” continued Andre, “you did not hesitate for a moment in discounting these bills. Have you calculated what terrible results may come of this breach of faith on your part?--what will happen if this forged signature is presented to M. Martin Rigal?”
“Very unlikely. Gandelu is the drawer, Rigal merely the endorser. Bills, when due, are always presented to the drawer,” returned Verminet laconically.
Evidently a trap had been laid for Gaston, but the reason was still buried in obscurity.
“Then,” remarked Andre, “we have but one course to pursue: we must trace those notes to the hands in which they now are, and take them up.”
“But to enable us to do so, you must first let us know the name of the party who discounted them.”
“I don’t know; I have forgotten,” answered Verminet, with a careless wave of his hand.
“Then,” returned Andre, in a low, deep voice of concentrated fury, “let me advise you, for your own sake, to make an immediate call upon your powers of memory.”