M. le Préfet, it appeared, was absent at the time—opportunely for M. le Préfet, in the light of a certain amazing discovery. There were those, indeed—a boon friend, a sympathising official or two—who would have liked to urge, by secret message, upon M. le Préfet, wherever he might be found, the wisdom of confirming his own absence, practically and for ever. But no one knew where he was. For the rest—M. Léotade being long identified with the popular movement, and personally a local favourite—the change, per se, was accepted with an easy resignation. Events, to be sure, had made such a change problematically inevitable. The wonder was that it had come to occur at the intensely psychologic moment. For how could a Prefect, shown guilty, though on circumstantial evidence, of a startling crime, be made to bring about his own arrest? The advent of the newcomers had resolved that difficulty. Mr Trix was M. le Préfet no longer.
The story, as poured by agitated officialdom into the ears of Dr Bonito and his protégé, was soon related. That very morning, it appeared, a goatherd, emerging from the woods over against the ice-fall of the Glacier of the Winds, had been halted petrified before a sight, the like of which had surely never before astounded human vision. For there, embedded in one of the toppling glassy pinnacles, hung poised, before the very eyes of the man, a human body.
Dumbfoundered, he had presently taken out his spyglass, to inquire more closely into this wonder—only to recoil aghast before the revelation it brought him. The obscene thing, huddled in semi-transparency, appeared squatting like a great toad. There was something horribly unseemly in its attitude—an extravagant pose of limb, which in a mass of its bulk was sickeningly abnormal. It might have been an arm flung over its head, until one saw that it ended in a boot. Its face, twisting from under anywhere, came very close to the surface of the ice. It looked as if flattened against a window, grinning out on the observer. As he, that observer, had brought its features into focus, he had uttered a startled cry, and leapt back. The face was the face of Augias, Marquess di Rocco.
There was no mistaking it, by anyone who had once been familiar with its loathed enormity. The man had stood staring and trembling before it, in a deadly fascination. Possibly it was due to the phenomenal weather that the glacier had thus early yielded up its secret. At any rate it had yielded it—the murder was out.
Yes, and literally murder, it appeared. The dead, slowly travelling down through these years, had claimed at last to be his own damning witness. Even while the onlooker gazed spell-bound, the great ice-turret had tilted over, sunk, torn away, and, still holding to its secret in the main, had gone shattering and waltzing down the slope until it had brought upon against a heap of brash. Whereupon, seeing it settled for the time, the peasant had girded up his terrified wits, and pounded down into the village, half-demented with his news.
He had been heard with incredulity; his urgency had compelled his listeners; in a little, half the village was trooping up the moraine. One of the party, the place being pointed out to him, had descended hurriedly upon the glacier to investigate. The venture was not without peril; death was for ever thundering down in the wash of that icy weir. But he had succeeded in reaching the spot in safety; and the next moment a strange cry was carried from him to the watchers on the moraine. Then they had seen him running furiously back to them.
Young Balmat it was. His face was death-ashy; there was an exultant fury in his eyes; his breath hissed from his lungs.
“It is true,” he had gasped: “and he was murdered! The knife is still sticking in him. I know that knife well—it was M. le Préfet’s.”
It was this news which had run down into Le Prieuré, carried by those who were despatched thither for ropes. Within the next hour or two, the block containing the body, like a hideous mass of spawn, had been salvaged and drawn to the edge of the moraine. Then all, who had the stomach to look, might satisfy themselves.
Even as the tale was ended into the ears of Dr Bonito and the other, there came down the village street a hushed and solemn company bearing its awful burden. Silence sowed itself before them, even as if Death walked there, scattering his grain. They carried it to the Church, and laid it on the stone floor of the vestry. There it rested alone, like an infected thing shut away into quarantine. Not a soul would approach it, when once it was delivered to the law.