Mrs. Carmac clearly meant to take no further risk of discovery. She hurried away. After a momentary indecision Ingersoll followed. His action was inexplicable, even to himself. It arose, perhaps, from a desire to make certain that his wife reached the hotel. Such a motive was at least comprehensible. It came within the bounds of that intelligence which regulates ordinary human affairs. But there is another subtler spirit essence which sends out through space its impalpable, invisible, yet compelling influences. Sometimes the storm-tossed soul makes silent appeal for help, and finds response in some other heart whence aid is unsought and unsuspected.
Howsoever that may be, John Ingersoll followed his wife, and Pont Aven was soon in an uproar, when the news spread that while Monsieur Ingersoll was rescuing l'Américaine, Madame Carmac, from the waters of the harbor, Peridot, easygoing, devil-may-care Peridot, was battering Rupert Fosdyke into a hardly recognizable corpse on the open road near the hotel.
In a village rumor of that sort seldom lies. Both these sensational statements were true; though the one became widely known far more speedily than the other. In fact, Peridot's crime had witnesses. A party of villagers, coming down the Toulifot, heard voices raised in altercation. Then there were sounds of a scuffle, and a tall man was seen to fall, while a shorter man stooped over the prostrate body and struck blow after blow with an iron belaying pin.
The women screamed; the men ran forward to seize the would-be murderer. He offered no resistance, but said calmly:
"When one meets a viper one batters its head. It is the only safe thing to do, eh?"
He seemed to find comfort in the thought. He repeated it many times, in one form or another. When the police came, and a sergeant who happened to be a great friend of his had the miserable task of arresting him and charging him with murder,—for Rupert Fosdyke was dead; would have died under any one of those half-dozen fiercely vindictive blows,—Peridot was quite cheerful.
"Cré nom!" he cried. "It is not often one finds a snake hereabouts at Christmastime. This one made a mistake. It shouldn't have come to Pont Aven, where we wear stout sabots!"
Then he broke gaily into one of Albert Larrieu's Breton songs: