"You think it is clever to deny it," he remarked, "but do you imagine it isn't obvious to anyone that you are Charles Rambert, and that you were disguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
"But you are wrong," Paul insisted. "Charles Rambert is dead."
"So you know that, do you? Then you admit that you know whom I am talking about?"
The lad coloured and began to tremble. Juve looked out of the window, pretending not to notice him, and smiled gently. Then he went on in a friendly tone. "But you know it's stupid to deny what can't be denied. Besides, you should remember that if I know you are Charles Rambert I must know something else as well; and therefore----"
"Well, yes," Paul acknowledged, "I _am_ Charles Rambert, and I was disguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne. How did you know it? Why were you at the Saint-Anthony's Pig? Had you come to arrest me? And where are you taking me now--to prison?"
"You want to know too much, my boy. Besides, you ought to know Paris, and so ought to be able to guess where I told the driver to go, merely by looking at the streets we are passing through."
"That is exactly what frightens me," Charles Rambert replied. "We are on the quays, near the Law Courts."
"And the Police Station, my son. Quite so. Now it's quite useless to make a scene: you will gain nothing by attempting to get away. You are in the hands of justice, or rather in my hands, which is not quite the same thing, so come quietly. That is really good advice!"
A few minutes later the cab stopped at the Tour Pointue which has such melancholy associations for so many criminals. Juve alighted and made his companion alight as well, paid the driver, and walked up the staircase to the first floor of the building. It was daylight now, and the men were coming on duty; all of them saluted Juve as he walked along with his trembling captive. The detective went down one long passage, turned into another, and opened a door.
Charles Rambert obeyed, and found himself in a small room the nature of which he recognised immediately from the furniture it contained. It was the measuring room of the anthropometric service. So what he feared was about to happen: Juve was going to lock him up!
But the detective called out in a loud tone: "Hector, please!" and one of the men who remained on duty in the department, in case they were required by any of the detective inspectors to find the records of any previously convicted criminal, came hurrying in.