“In the mean time, return to your mother and tell her what you have learned; but, that she may not yield to an exaggerated hope, tell her, also, that if there are chances, and great ones, in favor of your brother, on the other side there are some that are unfavorable.  Tomorrow or this evening you will return to the Rue Sainte-Anne and begin your inquiries of the concierge.  If the old woman tells you nothing interesting, you must go to Madame Dammauville, and make some reason for seeing her.  Make her talk, and you will notice if her ideas are consecutive, and examine her face and eyes.  Above all, neglect nothing that appears to you characteristic.  Having taken care of your mother, you know almost as well as a doctor the symptoms of myelitis, and you could see instantly if Madame Dammauville has them.”

“If I dared!” she said timidly, after a short hesitation.

“What?”

“I would ask you to come with me to the concierge immediately.”

“You think of such a thing!” he exclaimed.

Since the evening when he had testified to the death of Caffie, he had not returned to the Rue Sainte-Anne; and it was not when the description given by Madame Dammauville was, doubtless, already spread in the quarter, that he was going to commit the imprudence of showing himself.  But he must explain this exclamation.

“How can you expect a doctor to give himself up to such an investigation?  On your part it is quite natural; on mine it would be unheard of and ridiculous; add that it would be dangerous.  You must conciliate Madame Dammauville, and this would be truly a stupidity that would give her a pretext for thinking that you are trying to find out whether she is, or is not, in her right mind.”

“That is true,” she said.  “I had not thought of that.  I said to myself that, while I could only listen to what the concierge would tell me, you would know how to question her in a way that would lead her to say what you want to learn.”

“I hope that your investigation will tell me.  In any case, let us offend in nothing.  If to-morrow you bring me only insignificant details, we will consider what to do.  In the mean time, return to the concierge this evening and question her.  If it is possible, see Madame Dammauville, and do not go home until after having obtained some news on this subject that is of such importance to us.  And I will go to see Nougarde.”

CHAPTER XXV

DAGNEROUS DETAILS

It was not to falsify Phillis’s story that Saniel insisted on going to see Nougarede.  What good would it do?  That would be a blunder which sooner or later would show itself, and in that case would turn against him.  He would have liked, with the authority of a physician, to explain that this testimony of a paralytic could have no more importance than that of a crazy woman.

But at the first words of an explanation Nougarede stopped him.