He told me he had
never had any intention of doing so; that our discovery of it in
the little inn at Epinay had much embarrassed him. If you will
remember, he told us then that the cane had been given him in London.
Why did we not immediately say to ourselves: 'Fred is lying. He
could not have had this cane in London. He was not in London. He
bought it in Paris'? Then you found out, on inquiry at Cassette's,
that the cane had been bought by a person dressed very like Robert
Darzac, though, as we learned later, from Darzac himself, it was
not he who had made the purchase. Couple this with the fact we
already knew, from the letter at the poste restante, that there was
actually a man in Paris who was passing as Robert Darzac, why did
we not immediately fix on Fred himself?
"Of course, his position at the Surete was against us; but when we
saw the evident eagerness on his part to find convicting evidence
against Darzac, nay, even the passion he displayed in his pursuit
of the man, the lie about the cane should have had a new meaning
for us.
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