"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the
Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.
So that, at the moment of meeting him, I heard Monsieur de Marquet say to the Registrar with a sigh:
The face of that gentleman clouded, and, as he saw Rouletabille approaching, hat in hand, he sprang into one of the empty carriages saying, half aloud to his Registrar, as he did so, "Above all, no journalists!"
The Registrar followed and closed the carriage door.
And he turned towards his Registrar as if he no longer knew us.
There, the magistrate and his Registrar bowed to us, and by rapidly getting into a cab that was awaiting them, made us understand that they had seen enough of us.
"It was a bit of luck, our falling in with that examining magistrate and his Registrar, eh?
There is the
registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty- bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits.
Let us fill up the certificate at once, and I shall take it myself to the
registrar and go on to the undertaker."
The
Registrar laughed, the barristers laughed, the reporters laughed, the serried ranks of the miserable depositors watching anxiously every word, laughed like one man.
I replied, with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora's father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the
registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the
registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply.