“The jury gave their verdict without proof,” he said finally.
“Child! you want to argue when they are waiting to cut off your hair——”
“But I might have been sent to spout the wedge.—And that is the way they judge you!—and in Paris too!”
“But how did you do the job?” asked Trompe-la-Mort.
“Ah! there you are.—Since I saw you I made acquaintance with a girl, a Corsican, I met when I came to Paris.”
“Men who are such fools as to love a woman,” cried Jacques Collin, “always come to grief that way. They are tigers on the loose, tigers who blab and look at themselves in the glass.—You were a gaby.”
“But——”
“Well, what good did she do you—that curse of a moll?”
“That duck of a girl—no taller than a bundle of firewood, as slippery as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey—got in at the top of the oven, and opened the front door. The dogs were well crammed with balls, and as dead as herrings. I settled the two women. Then when I got the swag, Ginetta locked the door and got out again by the oven.”
“Such a clever dodge deserves life,” said Jacques Collin, admiring the execution of the crime as a sculptor admires the modeling of a figure.