Madame Guerin's eyes glinted, but her lips parted in a smile.
"Oh, he is always buying clothes," she said indifferently, "and he likes to keep them clean and dry when travelling. He told me yesterday he had ordered a new trunk. It is a hobby of his."
The truth was that that trunk had been purchased to hold the doctor's corpse!
There was quite a little party at the Villa that night, and all the time the huge box was waiting in the next room for its victim. The visitor had no suspicion that anything was wrong. He knew by now that Madame Guerin would expect a commission for having introduced him to the great heiress, but he thought none the less of her for that. Cesbron, too, was respectful and attentive, and all appeared to be looking forward with intense satisfaction to the marriage celebration. Miss Smith was not, of course, at the Villa. She was now in Paris selecting her trousseau, and her fiancé had to be content with a charming little love-letter which came to him every morning.
The day before the one fixed for the tragedy Cesbron and the doctor happened to be in the little garden, when the former playfully started a discussion as to their respective physical conditions, and before long the two men had agreed to a friendly wrestling match to see which of them was the stronger.
To Cesbron's surprise and annoyance, he discovered that the doctor was by far the better of the two. This put him out, for it meant that he would have to resort to fire-arms to achieve his object—the murder of the guest.
Cesbron did not like using a revolver. It made a lot of noise, and, lonely as the Villa was, there was always the danger that some one might be passing at the moment of the crime. However, the risk had to be taken. He knew now for certain that he was quite incapable of seizing the doctor by the throat and strangling him, and that if it came to a fight he would be no match for his opponent.
On November 9, 1906, the doctor was alone writing a letter in the drawing-room. The house was very quiet, and he was under the impression that Madame Guerin and Cesbron had gone out. At this time of the year it was dark at half-past four, and the doctor wrote leisurely, pausing occasionally to improve a phrase before committing it to writing.
Suddenly an explosion seemed to take place in the room, and simultaneously he felt something sting him. The next moment he knew that a bullet had passed into his neck behind his left ear, cutting through the tongue and soft palate, and breaking several teeth.
But the wound was not sufficient to prevent his rising and confronting Cesbron, who was standing near the door with a smoking revolver in his hand. Only for a fraction of a second did the two men pause. Then the injured man made a dash at Cesbron, who, recalling his playful encounter of the day before, took to flight, well aware that he would be helpless if the doctor got his fingers round his throat.