“André, when did that fire break out?” Dennis drew a deep breath.
“Last night? It must have been but a moment or two after the departure of Hughes for it is still less than eight hours when it is finish, before the three gentlemen arrive.”
“Before you knew of it, then,—say, a few minutes after Hughes left; did you hear anything?” Dennis pursued carefully. “A kind of a bang! it would be, like a firecracker going off, if you know what that is.”
“The red fire toys of Fu Moy which explode when he lights them? I know!” André responded grimly. Then a reflective look came over his round countenance. “It appears that I did hear a single, quick noise, like the violent closing of a door somewhere above which make the house to tremble! Me, I am occupied with the chateaubriand, that it cook not too fast, and I think not of it again. But what—”
“Nothing. That’s all I wanted to know.” Dennis turned to his companion. “Let’s be moving, Mac.”
He started along the corridor but McCarty stopped him at the foot of a narrow, winding staircase.
“We’ll go up here, Denny, for a minute. I want a look around.”
“No more than I do, myself!” Dennis returned promptly. “It’s beginning to come to me that Hughes was not over popular around here. I wonder what this Jean thought of him?”
What Jean thought was speedily ascertained for they came upon him in the upper hall, energetically waxing the floor; a slim, dark, youngish man with a deep scar across his smooth-shaven face and a nervous, jerky manner as though every muscle and nerve were strung on wires.
“It was unfortunate that Hughes should have died so suddenly but what would you? A man so gross, who ate like a great pig and drank like a sot and took no care of himself,” Jean replied to his own observation with a shrug and applied his energies anew to his task.