And now it was her groans that sounded on the air, under the terrible sun of the Midi, over the bleeding corpse. We tore the shirt from the dead man’s breast and found a gaping wound just above the heart. Rouletabille looked up with the same expression which I had seen at the Glandier when he came to examine the wound of the “inexplicable body.”
“One would say that it was the same stroke of the knife!” he said. “It is the same measurement. But where is the knife?”
We looked for the weapon everywhere without finding it. The man who had struck the blow had carried the knife away. Where was the man? Who was he? What we did not know, Bernier had known before he died and it was, perhaps, because of that knowledge that his life had been forfeited. “Frederic Larsan!” We repeated the last words of the dying man in fear and trembling.
Suddenly on the threshold of the postern, we saw the Prince Galitch, a newspaper in his hand. He was reading as he came toward us. His air was jovial and his face wore a smile. But Mme. Edith rushed up to him, snatched the paper from his hands, pointed to the corpse and cried out:
“A man has been murdered! Send for the police!”
The Prince stared at the body and then at us without uttering a word and then turned hastily away, saying that he would send for the authorities immediately. Mere Bernier kept up her wild lamentations. Rouletabille seated himself on the edge of the shaft. He seemed to have lost all his strength. He spoke to Mme. Edith in a low tone:
“Let the police come then, Madame, but remember, it is you who have insisted upon it!”
Mrs. Rance gave him a withering glance from her black eyes. And I knew what her thoughts were as well as though she had spoken them out. She felt that she hated Rouletabille, who had for a single moment been able to make her suspect Old Bob. While Bernier had been assassinated, had not Old Bob been quietly in his chamber, watched over by Mere Bernier herself?
Rouletabille was examining the iron bars and heavy lid which closed the shaft, but his manner was distrait and discouraged. After he had finished what seemed to be a very careless inspection he stretched himself out on the ground as if it were a couch in which he was trying to get some rest. Turning once more to his hostess, he said in the same low voice:
“And what will you tell the police when they get here?”