was too good to refuse; and, as Daubrecq had been out to dinner, there
was not much chance of his entering the dining-room.

Lupin, therefore, waited, holding himself ready to hide behind a velvet
curtain that could be drawn across the glazed partition in case of need.

He heard the sound of doors opening and shutting. Some one walked into
the study and switched on the light. He recognized Daubrecq.

The deputy was a stout, thickset, bull-necked man, very nearly bald,
with a fringe of gray whiskers round his chin and wearing a pair of black
eye-glasses under his spectacles, for his eyes were weak and strained.
Lupin noticed the powerful features, the square chin, the prominent
cheek-bones. The hands were brawny and covered with hair, the legs bowed;
and he walked with a stoop, bearing first on one hip and then on the
other, which gave him something of the gait of a gorilla. But the face
was topped by an enormous, lined forehead, indented with hollows and
dotted with bumps.

There was something bestial, something savage, something repulsive about
the man's whole personality. Lupin remembered that, in the Chamber of
Deputies, Daubrecq was nicknamed "The Wild Man of the Woods" and that he
was so labelled not only because he stood aloof and hardly ever mixed
with his fellow-members, but also because of his appearance, his
behaviour, his peculiar gait and his remarkable muscular development.

He sat down to his desk, took a meerschaum pipe from his pocket, selected
a packet of caporal among several packets of tobacco which lay drying in
a bowl, tore open the wrapper, filled his pipe and lit it. Then he began
to write letters.