“Very well,” I said, though my heart sank a little at this sudden rupture with those kind friends.
My visitor rose to depart, and just then his eye fell on two immense packing-cases placed against the wall.
“Ah,” he said, “they are safe, I see.”
I took a lamp in my hand and came up to examine the latest arrived of those mysterious gifts, whose source I now plainly perceived.
“I should not let that lamp fall upon this box of bonbons,” he remarked, lightly, and yet with a note of warning.
“Why not, Marquis?”
“The little packet may explode,” he laughed.
Involuntarily I started.
“It contains, then—?”
“The munitions of war,” he answered.