“Pardon me for asking you to wait a few moments, Madame,” interrupted Rouletabille. “What I have yet to say may be of special interest to you.”
“Very well, monsieur, but speak out, please. Don’t drag the recital along so.”
She was perfectly justified in her remarks. Did Rouletabille realize it? At all events, he certainly made up for his previous deliberation by the rapidity and clearness with which he retraced the events of the night. In no other words could the problem of the “body too many” have been presented before us with such mysterious horror. Mme. Edith shivered—and if her shudder was counterfeit, I never saw a real one! As for Arthur Rance, he sat with his chin resting on the head of his cane, murmuring with a truly American coolness, but in accents of the strongest conviction: “What a devilish history! The story of the body which could not have gotten into the room is a page from the notebook of Satan himself!”
While he was speaking, he was gazing at the tip of Mme. Darzac’s shoe which peeped out from the hem of her gown. In the moment which followed the closing of Rouletabille’s narration, conversation became a little more general; but it was less a conversation than such a confused mixture of exclamations and interruptions, of interjections and indignation and demands for explanations on one point or another that the confusion seemed more increased than ever before. They spoke also of the horrible departure of “the body too many” in the potato sack, and at this point, Mme. Edith took occasion to once more express her admiration for M. Robert Darzac as a hero and a gentleman. Rouletabille never opened his lips during this torrent of words. It was plain to be seen that he despised this verbal manifestation of perturbation of spirits, but he endured it with the air of a professor who permits a few moments relaxation to pupils who have been well behaved in school. This was a mannerism of his which often vexed me and with which I sometimes reproached him, but without having any effect on him, for Rouletabille was likely to give himself whatever airs he chose.
At length—probably when it appeared to him that the recreation had lasted long enough, he asked abruptly of Mrs. Rance:
“Well, Madame, do you think we ought to inform the authorities?”
“I think so more than ever,” she replied. “That which we are powerless to discover, they would certainly find out.” (This allusion to the intellectual incapacity of my friend left him profoundly indifferent). “And I warn you of one thing, M. Rouletabille, and that is that we may already be too late in seeking out the officers of justice. If we had told them of our fears at the very beginning, you would have been spared some long hours of watching and sleepless nights which have profited you nothing, since, as now appears, they did not prevent what you dreaded from coming to pass.”
Rouletabille seated himself, evidently conquering some strong emotion which made him tremble as though he were chilled to the bone. Then with a wave of the hand which he strove to render careless, he motioned Mme. Edith to a chair and again picked up the cane which M. Rance had laid down upon a sofa. I said to myself: “What is he trying to do with that stick? This time, I won’t touch it, I’m certain. I must keep a lookout.”
Playing with the cane, Rouletabille replied to Mme. Edith with an attack almost as sharp as her own.
“Madame, you are wrong in asserting that all the precautions which I had taken for the safety of M. and Mme. Darzac have been useless. If I am obliged to acknowledge the unexplainable presence of one body too many, I am also compelled to refer to the absence—perhaps less inexplicable—of one member of our own party.”