We turned him over. The eyes were open—large, liquid eyes, of a peculiarly gentle expression. I had seen them before, in Radley's Hotel at Southampton, under a gay little Parisian hat. I was down on my knees in the snow in a moment—all cold with the thought that I had killed a woman.
But Charles Miste was a man—and a dead one at that. My relief was so great that I could have shouted aloud. Miste had therefore been within my grasp at Southampton, only eluding me by a clever trick, carried out with consummate art. The dead face seemed to wear a smile as I looked at it.
Alphonse opened the man's shirt, and we looked at the small blue hole through which my bullet had found his heart. Death must have been very quick. I closed the gentle eyes, for they seemed to look at me from a woman's face.
"And now for his pockets!" I said, hardening my heart.
We turned them out one by one. His purse contained but little, and in an inner pocket some Italian silver, for use across the frontier. He had thought of everything, this careful scoundrel. In a side pocket, pinned to the lining of it, I found a flat packet enveloped in newspaper. This we unfolded hastily. It contained a number of papers. I opened one of them—a draft for five thousand pounds, drawn by John Turner on Messrs. Sweed & Carter of New York! I counted the drafts aloud and had a long task, for they numbered seventy-nine.
"AND NOW FOR HIS POCKETS!" I SAID, HARDENING MY HEART.
"That," I said, handing them to Giraud, "is the half of your fortune. If we have luck we shall find the remainder in Sander's hands at Genoa."
And Alphonse Giraud must needs embrace me, hurting my shoulder most infernally, and pouring out a rapid torrent of apology and self-recrimination.