“Ce pauvre Dalibard! He was not mixed up with the Terrorists, nevertheless.”
“Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps; a sly man was Olivier Dalibard!”
“What’s the matter?” said an employee, lounging up to the group. “Are you talking of Olivier Dalibard? It is but the other day he had Marsan’s appointment. He is now to have Pleyel’s. I heard it two days ago; a capital thing! Peste! il ira loin. We shall have him a senator soon.”
“Speak for yourself,” quoth a ci-devant abbe, with a laugh; “I should be sorry to see him again soon, wherever he be.”
“Plait-il? I don’t understand you!”
“Don’t you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered, found stabbed,—in his own house, too!”
“Ciel! Pray tell me all you know. His place, then, is vacant!”
“Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to medicine, was still fond of chemical experiments. He hired a room at the top of the house for such scientific amusements. He was accustomed to spend part of his nights there. They found him at morning bathed in his blood, with three ghastly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone. He had struggled hard with the knife that butchered him.”
“In his own house!” said a lawyer. “Some servant or spendthrift heir.”
“He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche a millions, and is now but a schoolboy at Lyons. No; it seems that the window was left open, and that it communicates with the rooftops. There the murderer had entered, and by that way escaped; for they found the leads of the gutter dabbled with blood. The next house was uninhabited,—easy enough to get in there, and lie perdu till night.”