"A moment," I interrupted in agitation. "Doctor Louis is safe?"
"Quite safe, sir."
"And his wife and daughter?"
"Quite safe, sir."
"Go on."
"The villains couldn't hear what we said, no more than we could hear what they were whispering about. But they had laid their plans, and tried to hatch them--worse luck for one, if not for both the scoundrels; but the other will be caught and made to pay for it. What they did between the time they left the Three Black Crows and the time they made an attempt to break into Doctor Louis's is at present a mystery. Don't be alarmed, sir; I see that my news has stirred you, but they have only done harm to themselves. No one else is a bit the worse for their roguery. Doctor Louis and his good wife and daughter slept through the night undisturbed; nothing occurred to rouse or alarm them. They got up as usual, the doctor being the first--he is known as an early riser. As it happened, it was fortunate that he was outside his house before his lady, for although we in Nerac have an idea that she is as brave as she is good, a woman, after all, is only a woman, and the sight of blood is what few of them can stand."
"The sight of blood!" I exclaimed. But that I was assured that Lauretta was safe and well, I should not have wasted a moment on the landlord, eager as I was to learn what he had come to tell. My mind, however, was quite at ease with respect to my dear girl, and the next few minutes were not so precious that I could not spare them to hear the landlord's strange story.
"That," he resumed, "is what the doctor saw when he went to the back of his house. Blood on the ground--and what is more, what would have given the ladies a greater shock, there before him was the body of a man--dead."
"What man?" I asked.
"That I can't for a certainty say, sir, because I haven't seen him as yet. I'm telling the story second-hand, as it was told to me a while ago by one who had come straight from the doctor's house. There was the blood, and there the man; and from the description I should say it was one of the men who were drinking in my place last night. It is not ascertained at what time of the night he and his mate tried to break into the doctor's house, but the attempt was made. There is the evidence of it. They commenced to bore a hole in one of the shutters at the back; the hole made, it would have been easy to enlargen it, and so to draw the fastenings. However, they did not get so far as that. They could scarcely have been at their scoundrelly work a minute or two before it came to an end."