He shrugged his shoulders; and then, turning to his two companions, he said:
“I see no alternative: we must organize, stage as it were, some ingenious situation, fit to deceive those investigators, who, for that matter, start with no prepossessions, and are a very ordinary lot of numbskulls into the bargain. It will not be so difficult to arrange something. All we need is a corpse, at the foot of a precipice; a safe distance from here, naturally, and not too far from the Mort de Gauthier....”
Again he relapsed into thought, his eyes fixed on the floor.
But the Vicomte Antoine raised an objection.
“A corpse, yes! But we haven’t one, Monsieur. Where can we get a corpse? Can you be thinking of breaking a grave, somewhere?”
The marquis came out of his revery, and laughed aloud:
“Antoine, there you are again—the inevitable touch of Gothic! Will you never get cured of your romanticism? What a thrill! A dark night! A cemetery! Three men stealing up to a vault with pick-axes.... The idea is not only romantic: it is asinine. Do you suppose the stupidest police sergeant, even, would stop at the first skull and cross bones he came to, and immediately draw up the death certificate of our friend, the captain, here? And that death certificate, precisely, we are looking for, are we not! For the world, for every living person in it, Monsieur le capitaine must be a dead man, and of a death as simple and as easily explainable as possible. Then only can we feel secure!”
His jocular mood vanished. He looked up at me again with deepest concern.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I am profoundly sympathetic with you! I realize how hard it must seem to lose one’s self—one’s name, one’s professional and social position, one’s very individuality. That, alas, is the lot in store for you! You will be allowed to live—that I have promised, and I reiterate the promise now. But you will nevertheless have, in some cemetery, a grave with a stone and an epitaph upon it, and under the sod, a coffin with your mortal remains. There is no escape from that; and I beg you to be as resigned as possible!”