“Tell us what you heard,” put in Madame Dulaurens. Annoyed at the course of the conversation, she had given up all hope of diverting it and was resigned to hearing the whole story.
“Well, here you are! While they were mending my car at Cognin I went into the Café National. There were only the mayor, the schoolmaster, and three or four municipal councillors there. When they saw me they looked at me mysteriously. ‘Hallo,’ I said to them, ‘are you holding a meeting?’ ‘No, we are just chatting,’ the mayor said. And that was as far as we got.”
“And then?”
“That was all that concerned me. I went out, and sent my chauffeur to have a drink in his turn. He is very thick with the schoolmaster. They are both anarchists.”
“Anarchists!” repeated Mademoiselle de Songeon wrathfully.
“Certainly. Everybody is nowadays. It is the fashion. My chauffeur came back. ‘I know what it is,’ he said. ‘They have had a wire from the Minister about Commander Guibert’s death in Africa.’ ‘Are you sure? I said. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘He was killed by savages defending a town called Timou—Timmimun?—that’s it. Then of course they had to tell his people the news. They were very puzzled how to do it. At last they sent a policeman.’”
“A policeman?” said M. Dulaurens, a stickler for legalities. “But the mayor should have taken the fatal telegram in person.”
“The Guiberts are conservatives,” said M. de Lavernay. “These republicans will not trouble themselves in such cases.”
“But the Guiberts are not interested in politics.”
“The grandfather was a councillor, of conservative views, and the father was mayor of Cognin. That is quite enough.”