We couldn't trip up Eugene Valmont.'
At these words, spoken with sincerity, I sat up in my chair, and I am
sure such an expression of enjoyment came into my face that if I had
not instantly suppressed it, I might have betrayed myself.
'Who was Eugene Valmont?' I asked, in a tone of assumed indifference.
Mixing his fifth glass he nodded sagely.
'You wouldn't ask that question if you'd been in Paris a dozen years
ago. He was the Government's chief detective, and he knew more of
anarchists, yes, and of Apaches, too, than either you or I do. He had
more brains in his little finger than that whole lot babbling there
tonight. But the Government being a fool, as all governments are,
dismissed him, and because I was his assistant, they dismissed me as
well. They got rid of all his staff. Valmont disappeared. If I could
have found him, I wouldn't be sitting here with you tonight; but he
was right to disappear. The Government did all they could against us
who had been his friends, and I for one came through starvation, and
was near throwing myself in the Seine, which sometimes I wish I had
done. Here, garcon, another absinthe. But by-and-by I came to like the
gutter, and here I am. I'd rather have the gutter and absinthe than
the Luxembourg without it.
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