"I, a thief!...I, a thief, I?"
She choked with rage. She shouted:
"I never heard of such a thing!"
And, suddenly, she darted up to Richard again.
"In any case," she yelped, "you, M. Richard, ought to know better than I where the twenty thousand francs went to!"
"I?" asked Richard, astounded. "And how should I know?"
Moncharmin, looking severe and dissatisfied, at once insisted that the good lady should explain herself.
"What does this mean, Mme. Giry?" he asked. "And why do you say that M. Richard ought to know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to?"
As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmin's eyes, he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and shook it violently. In a voice growling and rolling like thunder, he roared:
"Why should I know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to? Why? Answer me!"
"Because they went into your pocket!" gasped the old woman, looking at him as if he were the devil incarnate.
Richard would have rushed upon Mme. Giry, if Moncharmin had not stayed his avenging hand and hastened to ask her, more gently:
"How can you suspect my partner, M. Richard, of putting twenty-thousand francs in his pocket?"
"I never said that," declared Mme. Giry, "seeing that it was myself who put the twenty-thousand francs into M. Richard's pocket." And she added, under her voice, "There! It's out!...And may the ghost forgive me!"
Richard began bellowing anew, but Moncharmin authoritatively ordered him to be silent.
"Allow me! Allow me! Let the woman explain herself. Let me question her." And he added: "It is really astonishing that you should take up such a tone!...We are on the verge of clearing up the whole mystery. And you're in a rage!...You're wrong to behave like that. .. I'm enjoying myself immensely."
Mme. Giry, like the martyr that she was, raised her head, her face beaming with faith in her own innocence.
"You tell me there were twenty-thousand francs in the envelope which I put into M. Richard's pocket; but I tell you again that I knew nothing about it... Nor M. Richard either, for that matter!"
"Aha!" said Richard, suddenly assuming a swaggering air which Moncharmin did not like. "I knew nothing either! You put twenty-thousand francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear it, Mme. Giry!"
"Yes," the terrible dame agreed, "yes, it's true. We neither of us knew anything. But you, you must have ended by finding out!"
Richard would certainly have swallowed Mme. Giry alive, if Moncharmin had not been there! But Moncharmin protected her. He resumed his questions:
"What sort of envelope did you put in M. Richard's pocket? It was not the one which we gave you, the one which you took to Box Five before our eyes; and yet that was the one which contained the twenty-thousand francs."
"I beg your pardon. The envelope which M. le Directeur gave me was the one which I slipped into M. le Directeur's pocket," explained Mme. Giry. "The one which I took to the ghost's box was another envelope, just like it, which the ghost gave me beforehand and which I hid up my sleeve."
So saying, Mme. Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared and similarly addressed to that containing the twenty-thousand francs. The managers took it from her. They examined it and saw that it was fastened with seals stamped with their own managerial seal. They opened it. It contained twenty Bank of St. Farce notes like those which had so much astounded them the month before.
"How simple!" said Richard.
"How simple!" repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes fixed upon Mme. Giry, as though trying to hypnotize her.
"So it was the ghost who gave you this envelope and told you to substitute it for the one which we gave you? And it was the ghost who told you to put the other into M. Richard's pocket?"
"Yes, it was the ghost."
"Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here is the envelope. Act as though we knew nothing."
"As you please, gentlemen."
Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door. She was on the point of going out when the two managers rushed at her:
"Oh, no! Oh, no! We're not going to be `done' a second time! Once bitten, twice shy!"
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the old woman, in self-excuse, "you told me to act as though you knew nothing....Well, if you knew nothing, I should go away with your envelope!"
"And then how would you slip it into my pocket?" argued Richard, whom Moncharmin fixed with his left eye, while keeping his right on Mme. Giry: a proceeding likely to strain his sight, but Mon-MME. GIRY' charmin was prepared to go to any length to discover the truth.
"I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir. You know that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the evening, and I often go with my daughter to the ballet-foyer, which I am entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about to begin...in fact, I come and go as I please....The subscribers come and go too. ... So do you, sir....There are lots of people about... I go behind you and slip the envelope into the tail-pocket of your dress-coat....There's no witchcraft about that!"
"No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. "No witchcraft! Why, I've just caught you in a lie, you old witch!"
Mme. Giry bristled, with her three teeth sticking out of her mouth.
"And why, may I ask?"
"Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope which you put there. I did not go to the ballet-foyer for a second."
"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!"
Chapter XVII The Safety-Pin Again
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.