The wounded man's head rested on the knee of the night porter, a personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as well as the letting them into the house.
"Oh, Anatole! my cherished one!" began the porter's wife. "Here are the police. Tell us then, how this occurred."
"I will tell all I know," replied her husband, looking at the police-officer. "This morning, when the clients had nearly all gone, and I was sitting half asleep in the lodge, I heard—"
"Stop," said the police-officer, "not another word. Keep all you have to say for the commissary. He is already on the stairs."
The next minute M. Bontoux entered, accompanied by his clerk and the official doctor of the quarter.
"A crime," said the commissary, slowly, and with as much dignity as was possible in a middle-aged gentleman pulled from his bed at daybreak, and compelled to dress in a hurry. "A crime," he repeated. "Of that there can be no doubt. But let us establish the fact formally. Where are the witnesses?"
The porter, having relinquished the care of the wounded man to the doctor, stood up slowly and saluted the commissary.
"Very well; tell us what you know. Sit down"—this to the clerk. "Produce your writing-materials and prepare the report."
"It must have been about four this morning, but I was very drowsy, and the gentlemen had nearly all gone," said the night porter, speaking fluently, "when I was disturbed by the noise of a quarrel, a fight, up here in the principal drawing-room. While I was still rubbing my eyes, for I was very drowsy, and fancied I was dreaming, I heard a scream, a second, and a third, followed by a heavy fall on the floor. I rushed upstairs then, and found this poor gentleman as you see him."
"Alone?"