“No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope
that evening, but at the next performance...on the
evening when the under-secretary of state for fine
arts...”
At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mme.
Giry:
“Yes, that’s true, I remember now!
The under-secretary went behind the scenes.
He asked for me. I went down to the ballet-foyer
for a moment. I was on the foyer steps....The
under-secretary and his chief clerk were in the foyer
itself. I suddenly turned around...you had passed
behind me, Mme. Giry... You seemed to push
against me....Oh, I can see you still, I can see you
still!”
“Yes, that’s it, sir, that’s it.
I had just finished my little business. That
pocket of yours, sir, is very handy!”
And Mme. Giry once more suited the action to
the word, She passed behind M. Richard and, so nimbly
that Moncharmin himself was impressed by it, slipped
the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of
M. Richard’s dress-coat.
“Of course!” exclaimed Richard, looking
a little pale. “It’s very clever
of O. G. The problem which he had to solve was this:
how to do away with any dangerous intermediary between
the man who gives the twenty-thousand francs and the
man who receives it. And by far the best thing
he could hit upon was to come and take the money from
my pocket without my noticing it, as I myself did not
know that it was there. It’s wonderful!”
“Oh, wonderful, no doubt!” Moncharmin
agreed. “Only, you forget, Richard, that
I provided ten-thousand francs of the twenty and that
nobody put anything in my pocket!”
Moncharmin’s last phrase so dearly expressed
the suspicion in which he now held his partner that
it was bound to cause a stormy explanation, at the
end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield
to all Moncharmin’s wishes, with the object
of helping him to discover the miscreant who was victimizing
them.
This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act,
with the strange conduct observed by M. Remy and those
curious lapses from the dignity that might be expected
of the managers. It was arranged between Richard
and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the
exact movements which he had made on the night of
the disappearance of the first twenty-thousand francs;
and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant
lose sight of Richard’s coat-tail pocket, into
which Mme. Giry was to slip the twenty-thousand
francs.
M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical
spot where he had stood when he bowed to the under-secretary
for fine arts. M. Moncharmin took up his position
a few steps behind him.
Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard,
got rid of her twenty-thousand francs in the manager’s
coat-tail pocket and disappeared....Or rather she
was conjured away. In accordance with the instructions
received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier
took the good lady to the acting-manager’s office
and turned the key on her, thus making it impossible
for her to communicate with her ghost.
