Valérie had caught Raymond's sleeve. He did not look at her. He was looking at Henri Mentone—at the look of dumb horror on the man's face—and then at a quite different figure in the prisoner's dock, whose head was bent down until it could scarcely be seen, and whose face was covered by his hands. He tried to force a grim complacence into his soul. It was absolutely certain that he had nothing to fear from the trial. Nothing! The other Henri Mentone, the other priest, was answering for the killing of that night, and—who was this speaking? The crown prosecutor? He had not thought the man could be so suave and gentle.
“Try and calm yourself, Madame Blondin. You have a perfect right to demand the punishment of the law upon the murderer of your son, and that is what we are here for now, and that is why I want you to tell us just as quietly as possible what happened that night.”
She stared truculently.
“Everybody knows what happened!” she snarled at him. “He killed my son!”
“How did he kill your son?” inquired the crown prosecutor, with a sudden, crafty note of scepticism in his voice. “How do you know he did?”
“I saw him! I tell you, I saw him! I heard my son shout 'voleur' and cry for help”—Mother Blon-din's words would not come fast enough now. “I was in the back room. When I opened the door he was fighting my son. He tried to steal my money. Some of it was on the floor. My son cried for help again. I ran and got a stick of wood. My son tried to get his revolver from the armoire. This man got it away from him. I struck the man on the head with the wood, then he shot my son, and I ran out for help.”
“And you positively identify the prisoner as the man who shot your son?”
“Yes, yes! Have I not told you so often enough!”
“And this”—the crown prosecutor handed her a revolver—“do you identify this?”
“Yes; it was my son's.”