“No: the wretch was killed on the spot.”
And, without waiting for another question,
“But don’t let us stay here,” said the commissary.
“Whilst Maxence runs to the drug-store, let us go into the Fortins’ office.”
The husband was alone there, the wife being at that moment with Mlle. Lucienne.
“Do me the favor to go and take a walk for about fifteen minutes,” said the commissary to him. “We have to talk, this gentleman and myself.”
Humbly, without a word, and like a man who does himself justice, M. Fortin slipped off.
And at once,—“It is clear, M. le Marquis, it is manifest, that a crime has been committed. Listen, and judge for yourself. I was just rising from dinner, when I was notified of what was called our poor Lucienne’s accident. Without even changing my clothes, I ran. The carriage was lying in the street, broken to pieces. Two policemen were holding the horses, which had been stopped. I inquire. I learn that Lucienne, picked up by Maxence, has been able to drag herself as far as the Hotel des Folies, and that the driver has been taken to the nearest drug-store. Furious at my own negligence, and tormented by vague suspicions, it is to the druggist’s that I go first, and in all haste. The driver was in a backroom, stretched on a mattress.
“His head having struck the angle of the curbstone, his skull was broken; and he had just breathed his last. It was, apparently, the annihilation of the hope which I had, of enlightening myself by questioning this man. Nevertheless, I give orders to have him searched. No paper is discovered upon him to establish his identity; but, in one of the pockets of his pantaloons, do you know what they find? Two bank-notes of a thousand francs each, carefully wrapped up in a fragment of newspaper.”
M. de Tregars had shuddered.