"But Grandmont, Captain! Grandmont."
"Ah! Grandmont. Well, he was a filibuster--privateer--buccaneer--pirate--what you will! Burnt up all their woods at Campeachy--the old man spake true--because the commandant wouldn't pay the ransom he and his crew demanded; also because the commandant said that when he had slaughtered them all, if he did so, he would never find out where their buried wealth was. Then he took a Pink one day with four hundred thousand francs' worth of goods and money on board, and slew every soul in the ship. Tied dead and living together, back to back, and flung them into the sea. Oh! He was a devil," he concluded. "A wicked villain! My word! If only some of our ships of war could have caught him."
"Yet he is dead?"
"Dead enough, the Lord be praised."
"And if this is a friend of his--this Cuddiford, or Carstairs--he must needs be a villain, too."
"Needs be! Nay, is, for a surety. And, Mr. Crespin," he said, speaking slowly, "you have heard his shrieks and singings--could you doubt what he has been?"
"Doubt? No," I answered. "Who could? Yet, I wonder who were the dead men looking down the stairs, as they came in from the garden."
"Who? Only a few of their victims. If he and Grandmont worked together they could not count 'em. Well, one is dead; good luck when the other goes too. And, when he does, what a meeting they will have there!" and he pointed downward.