“But the number?”
“It tallied. It was enough for him.”
“They must find it out—to-morrow, when the prisoners are arraigned.”
“Probably. And in the meantime we will drink to our poor Gardel’s acquittal.”
“No,” she said, shrinking back, with an extraordinary look. “If I wish him well, I wish him eternal forgetfulness.”
It was the evening of the day succeeding. Shorn of our partners in “Quadrille,” Madame and I had been playing “Piquet.”
We were only two, but the four lights flickered in their bottles.
La Marquise de Kercy had been musing. Suddenly she looked up. Her eyes were full of an inhuman mockery.
“The candles!” she said, with a little laugh. “We are no longer using them. To save my pocket, François!”
Pouf! a candle went out—another, another, another; between each the fraction of time occupied by something unseen moving round systematically.