At this moment there came a message from the banking house:  Mr. Wraxton had gone to Brussels that morning.  Fuguet did not live in Paris, and the captain had never seen him.  There were clerks whom he had met in Marseilles, but, of course, they could only say that he was the man known as Captain Horn.

The captain ground his teeth, and then, suddenly turning, he interrupted the conversation between the magistrate and Barre.  He addressed the latter and asked, “Will you tell me what this officer has been saying about me?”

“He says,” answered Barre, “that he believes you know nobody in Paris except the party at the Hotel Grenade, and that, of course, you may have deceived them in regard to your identity—­that they have been here a long time, and you have been absent, and you have not been referred to by them, which seems strange.”

“Has he not found out that Wraxton knows me?”

“He says,” answered Barre, “that you have not visited that banking house since you came to Paris, and that seems strange also.  Every traveller goes to his banker as soon as he arrives.”

“I did not need to go there,” said the captain.  “I was occupied with other matters.  I had just met my wife after a long absence.”

“I don’t wonder,” said the professor, bowing, “that your time was occupied.  It is very unfortunate that your banker cannot come to you or send.”

The captain did not answer.  This professor doubted him, and why should he not?  As the captain considered the case, it grew more and more serious.  That his marriage should be delayed on account of such a preposterous and outrageous charge against him was bad enough.  It would be a terrible blow to Edna.  For, although he knew that she would believe in him, she could not deny, if she were questioned, that in this age of mail and telegraph facilities she had not heard from him for nearly a year, and it would be hard for her to prove that he had not deceived her.  But the most unfortunate thing of all was the meeting with the London lawyers the next day.  These men were engaged in settling a very important question regarding the ownership of the treasure he had brought to France, and his claims upon it, and if they should hear that he had been charged with being the captain of a band of murderers and robbers, they might well have their suspicions of the truth of his story of the treasure.  In fact, everything might be lost, and the affair might end by his being sent a prisoner to Peru, to have the case investigated there.  What might happen then was too terrible to think of.  He turned abruptly to the professor.

“I see that you don’t believe in me,” he said, “but I see that you are a man, and I believe in you.  You are acquainted with this magistrate.  Use your influence with him to have this matter settled quickly.  Do as much as that for me.”

“What is it that you ask me to do?” said the other.