“No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance … on the evening when the undersecretary of state for fine arts …”
At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mame Giry:
“Yes, that’s true, I remember now! The undersecretary 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 undersecretary 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 Mame 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!”