“Just so.”
“You did not scratch those letters yourself?”
Gaspard laughed.
“Did I know at that time anything about Serpente?”
“That is true.”
Sagesse’s face had flushed, he sat with his fingers drumming on the table and his eyes fixed on his fingers.
He seemed plunged in reverie of an exciting nature, then, suddenly recovering himself, he brought his great fist down with a bang on the table.
“That’s luck—one can’t doubt—He went to his hive—He’d have been making for Europe, something happened to his ship and sunk it, who knows what, but one may swear that he left his bones close to his money.”
Then to Gaspard: “Can’t you see?”
“What?”