"You silly boy, how can you? Delapine can bring half a dozen witnesses to prove that he was in my house when the shot was fired. Besides, he had no revolver."
Pierre put on a puzzled look, and scratched his head as if to awaken his thoughts, "I don't know what to make of it."
"No more do I. It is very mysterious," said Villebois.
THE ANALYST
Two days after the episode related in the last chapter, a fiacre might have been seen rolling along the embankment of the Seine in the direction of Notre Dame.
It had been raining all day, and streams of water descended through the long pipes from the roofs of the houses to form miniature cascades which flowed with a gurgling noise down the gratings placed at intervals along the edge of the kerbstone. The cochers with their varnished top hats might be seen from time to time shaking off the water which poured from the brims in little streams down their overcoats. Everything seemed sodden with rain. Women leading little children by the hand, who were crying on account of the rain, which streamed from the parental umbrellas down their necks, might be observed hurrying along the street, or disappearing into narrow passages apparently leading to nowhere. The second-hand bookstalls along the river had long since been shut up, or covered with tarpaulins to keep off the wet. Here and there a few truant fowls, or a half-starved cat would scuttle out of the way of the carriage as it splashed along. The driver cracked his long whip in a temper, as if attempting to chastise the elements for their bad behaviour. On the carriage went, past groups of workmen in their blue blouses, who could be seen through the window of the fiacre standing in front of the musty smelling bars drinking their absinthe or vin ordinaire, while in the larger cafés others, better dressed, were whiling away their time playing dominoes, or indulging in a game of billiards with absurdly large balls on very small tables.
Suddenly the fiacre turned across the Pont Neuf towards the Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine. The solitary passenger poked his head out of the window.