“You’ll denounce me? What’s this new game?”
“I shall denounce all three of you.”
“All three of us?” said Beaumagnan with a chuckle. “And what are you going to accuse us of, my young friend?”
“The murder of Josephine Balsamo, Countess of Cagliostro!”
There was no word of protest, no gesture of revolt. Godfrey d’Etigues and Oscar de Bennetot seemed to sink into paralyzed heaps on their chairs. Beaumagnan turned livid and his chuckle ended in a horrible grimace.
He rose, dashed to the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. It had the effect of putting a little life into his associates. They sat upright again.
Ralph had the audacity to make a joke of it: “My dear sir,” he said, “when a conscript joins his regiment they put him on a horse without stirrups till he learns to stick on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I have sworn never to carry a revolver till I find myself confronted by a situation which I cannot handle just with the help of my brain,” said Ralph. “So you are warned. I haven’t any stirrups; that is to say I haven’t any revolver. You are three, all armed; and I am alone. Therefore——”