Paul Devereux and a wife had always seemed and been to me a most unheard-of conjunction. So I laconically said:
“No.”
“Well, I was once, years ago. She was my wife—that child—for a week. And then———”
I easily filled up the pause; but, as it happened, I filled it up wrongly; for he added:
“And then she was murdered.”
I was not unused to our Paul’s stony style of talk; but this last sentence was sufficiently startling.
“Eh?”
“Murdered—in her sleep. They never found the man who did it either, though I had Durbec and all the Rue de Jérusalem at work. But I forgave them that, for I found the man myself, and killed him.”
He was filling his pipe again as he told me this, and he perhaps rammed the Cavendish in a little tighter, but that was all. The thing was a matter of course; I knew my Paul, well enough to know that. Of course he killed him.
“Mind you,” he continued, kindling the black brûle-gueule the while—“mind you, I’d never seen this man before, never known of his existence, except in a way that—however, it was this way.”