"Look--look yonder--between the floating bath and the bank!"
The sergeant stood motionless, his revolver ready cocked--the water swirled and eddied, eddied and parted--a dark dot rose for a second to the surface!
Three shots fired at the same moment (one by the sergeant, two by the soldiers) rang sharply through the air, and were echoed with startling suddenness again and again from the buttressed walls of Notre Dame. Ere the last echo had died away, or the last faint smoke-wreath had faded, two boats were pulling to the spot, and all the quays were alive with a fast-gathering crowd. The sergeant beckoned to the gendarme who had come upon the box.
"Bid the boatmen drag the river just here between the two bridges," he said, "and bring the body up to the Préfecture." Then, turning to Müller and myself, "I am sorry to trouble you again, Messieurs," he said, "but I must ask you to come back once more to the Quai des Orfèvres, to depose to the facts which have just happened."
"But is the man shot, or has he escaped?" asked a breathless bystander.
"Both," said the sergeant, with a grim smile, replacing his revolver in his belt. "He has escaped Toulon; but he has gone to the bottom of the Seine with something like six ounces of lead in his skull."
CHAPTER XL.
THE ENIGMA OF THE THIRD STORY.
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?--MARLOWE.