It was the woman of Marseilles still working like a demon at his heart and brought into full life by the drink. The feeling that another man had done him out. That another man had been preferred to him. That another man was a better animal, even though that man was dead. Alcohol told him that he was glorious, supreme, a man amongst men. Anisette like a pale, sneering ghost said “Pshaw. Where is Yves. You, you are nothing to a woman.”
“And it was worth seven thousand dollars American gold coin,” Sagesse was saying in the course of his yarn, when Gaspard, whipping the belt and pouch from his waist, brought them down on the table with a bang, so that the gold coins rolled out.
“Look at that,” cried Gaspard. “What you say? Wasn’t that worth the thrust of a knife?” The coins danced before him as he sat rocking in his seat, an abstemious man as a rule, the weariness and the strong old rum had done their work.
Sagesse stopped short in his story, stared at the belt and the gold and then at the man before him. Sagesse, though he chattered of his own doings, never by any chance gave a man a handle to use against him; his tales were as vague, all save the villainy of them, as clouds; his one weakness was talking and he knew it and guarded against it, the villainies he boasted of were all apocryphal; based they were on black deeds, just as clouds are based on mountains, the scoundrel in him had to boast, but to bring Sagesse to book on one of his stories would be like attempting to bring a bird to earth by grasping at its shadow on the ground.
Men had tried to blackmail this raconteur on the strength of his statements; to bring the vulture to earth by catching at his shadow, only to find themselves in the vulture’s clutch, blackmailed themselves most cruelly. And he never let go as long as his clutch held, and there was a feather on the victim. But though he chattered fables, he knew when to be silent in face of facts. He was silent now. He laughed but said nothing for a moment, whilst Gaspard gathering the coins together in a heap, reiterated his question.
“What you say—isn’t that worth the thrust of a knife?—given in fair fight, mind you, man to man, and the better man wins.” Sagesse held out his hand, took a coin, examined it and handed it back.
“Bon Dieu, yes. So you killed him—but where did he get these things from, they are not coins of to-day. Had he, then, been robbing a museum?”
Gaspard nodded with drunken gravity.
“That’s it, you’ve hit it, he robbed someone of them and wouldn’t share, it was over there on the island.”
“Aha,” said Sagesse. “So you killed him on the island, vé, but you are a man after my own heart, the island—and the name of your man you said was—”