M. Popeau was standing behind M. Bouton, and Lily was astonished to see how upset he looked—he even made a sign to her to stop talking. She hesitated. But M. Bouton looked straight into her face and said sharply: “I don’t understand! I thought Mademoiselle had come across the dead body of an unknown man. I had no idea that she knew who the man was.”
He turned on M. Popeau. “You did not tell me that!” he exclaimed.
“There was nothing to tell,” said M. Popeau quietly. “Mademoiselle did not see the dead man’s face. She thinks it possible the body she saw was that of a man who dined at La Solitude about a fortnight ago. That is all.”
“Only a week ago!” corrected Lily. “And I am sure it was the man I saw. He wore a peculiar kind of gold bangle or bracelet on his wrist, and there was a gold bangle on the wrist of——” she faltered, overcome with the vision her own words evoked of that stiff, stark arm lying across her path.
“What was his name and nationality?” asked M. Bouton, taking a writing pad and pencil off the table.
“His name was Ponting,” said Lily slowly, “P.O.N.T.I.N.G., and I think he said he came from Pernambuco.”
M. Bouton suddenly uttered an exclamation of mingled surprise and relief. He rapidly unlocked a drawer in his writing-table, and took a packet out of it. “Your discovery, Mademoiselle, sets a mystery at rest! I was a fool not to think of it at once, for we have had urgent inquiries all this last week about this very man. But it never occurred to any of us that he had committed suicide—everything seemed against it! This is another proof that in a place like Monte Carlo you never can tell,” he went on, addressing his French friend. “People come here when they are desperate—not only desperate with regard to money—though, of course, that is the most common case—but desperate with regard to other things; they come to drown disappointment and sorrow—they fail in doing so, and then they kill themselves! Perhaps that is what happened to this man Ponting.”
“Yet he seemed quite happy,” observed Lily thoughtfully.
M. Bouton hardly heard what she said. He was showing his friend and colleague the little packet of letters he held in his hand.
Lily waited a moment or two. “Then I may tell the Count and Countess Polda?” she asked.