“The picture that girl saw in the dream!”

“Yes; I’ll never forget it.  I had my pistol ready and he was defenseless; and once I was just springing forward to take the fellow when he bent over and kissed his little girl.  I don’t know how you look at these things, Pougeot, but I couldn’t break in there and take that man away from his wife and child.  The woman had been kind to me and trusted me, and—­well, it was a breach of duty and they punished me for it; but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t do it.”

“And you let the fellow go?”

“I let him go then, but I got him a week later in a fair fight, man to man.  They gave him ten years.”

“And discharged you from the force?”

“Yes.  That is, in view of my past services, they allowed me to resign.”  Coquenil spoke bitterly.

“Outrageous!  Unbelievable!” muttered Pougeot.  “No doubt you were technically in the wrong, but it was a slight offense, and, after all, you got your man.  A reprimand at the most, at the most, was called for, and not with you, not with Paul Coquenil.”

The commissary spoke with deeper feeling than he had shown in years, and then, as if not satisfied with this, he clasped the detective’s hand and added heartily:  “I’m proud of you, old friend, I honor you.”

Coquenil looked at Pougeot with an odd little smile.  “You take it just as I thought you would, just as I took it myself—­until to-day.  It seems like a stupid blunder, doesn’t it?  Well, it wasn’t a blunder; it was a necessary move in the game.”  His face lighted with intense eagerness as he waited for the effect of these words.

“The game?  What game?” The commissary stared.

“A game involving a great crime.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Perfectly sure.”

“You have the facts of this crime?”

“No.  It hasn’t been committed yet.”

“Not committed yet?” repeated the other, with a startled glance.  “But you know the plan?  You have evidence?”

“I have what is perfectly clear evidence to me, so clear that I wonder I never saw it before.  Lucien, suppose you were a great criminal, I don’t mean the ordinary clever scoundrel who succeeds for a time and is finally caught, but a really great criminal, the kind that appears once or twice, in a century, a man with immense power and intelligence.”

“Like Vautrin in Napoleon’s day?”

“Vautrin was a brilliant adventurer; he made millions with his swindling schemes, but he had no stability, no big purpose, and he finally came to grief.  There have been greater criminals than Vautrin, men whose crimes have brought them everything—­fortune, social position, political supremacy—­and who have never been found out.”

“Do you really think so?”

Coquenil nodded.  “There have been a few like that with master minds, a very few; I have documents to prove it”—­he pointed to his bookcases; “but we haven’t time for that.  Come back to my question:  Suppose you were such a criminal, and suppose there was one person in this city who was thwarting your purposes, perhaps jeopardizing your safety.  What would you naturally do?”