He smiled sadly.

“And no reward,” pursued he, “for the perils which we brave.  If I should fall to-morrow, they would take up my body, carry it to my house, and that would be the end.”  The detective’s tone had become bitter, the irritation of his voice betrayed his rancor.  “My precautions happily are taken.  While I am performing my duties, I suspect everything, and when I am on my guard I fear no one.  But there are days when one is tired of being on his guard, and would like to be able to turn a street corner without looking for a dagger.  On such days I again become myself; I take off my false beard, throw down my mask, and my real self emerges from the hundred disguises which I assume in turn.  I have been a detective fifteen years, and no one at the prefecture knows either my true face or the color of my hair.”

Master Robelot, ill at ease on his lounge, attempted to move.

“Ah, look out!” cried M. Lecoq, suddenly changing his tone.  “Now get up here, and tell us what you were about in the garden?”

“But you are wounded!” exclaimed Plantat, observing stains of blood on M. Lecoq’s shirt.

“Oh, that’s nothing—­only a scratch that this fellow gave me with a big cutlass he had.”

M. Plantat insisted on examining the wound, and was not satisfied until the doctor declared it to be a very slight one.

“Come, Master Robelot,” said the old man, “what were you doing here?”

The bone-setter did not reply.

“Take care,” insisted M. Plantat, “your silence will confirm us in the idea that you came with the worst designs.”

But it was in vain that M. Plantat wasted his persuasive eloquence.  Robelot shut himself up in a ferocious and dogged silence.  M. Gendron, hoping, not without reason, that he might have some influence over his former assistant, spoke: 

“Answer us; what did you come for?”

Robelot made an effort; it was painful, with his broken jaw, to speak.

“I came to rob; I confess it.”

“To rob—­what?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you didn’t scale a wall and risk the jail without a definite object?”

“Well, then, I wanted—­”

He stopped.

“What?  Go on.”

“To get some rare flowers in the conservatory.”

“With your cutlass, hey?” said M. Lecoq.  Robelot gave him a terrible look; the detective continued: 

“You needn’t look at me that way—­you don’t scare me.  And don’t talk like a fool, either.  If you think we are duller than you, you are mistaken—­I warn you of it.”

“I wanted the flower-pots,” stammered the man.

“Oh, come now,” cried M. Lecoq, shrugging his shoulders, “don’t repeat such nonsense.  You, a man that buys large estates for cash, steal flower-pots!  Tell that to somebody else.  You’ve been turned over to-night, my boy, like an old glove.  You’ve let out in spite of yourself a secret that tormented you furiously, and you came here to get it back again.  You thought that perhaps Monsieur Plantat had not told it to anybody, and you wanted to prevent him from speaking again forever.”