He laughed gently at her frowning face and went on in a jeering tone. “Now, don’t go pitching into Prince Lavosneff under the impression that he has let me escape again. He has not. What he and his friends carried away was simply a dummy stuffed with bran, rolled up in my blankets and mattress. As for me, I did not stir from the shelter in which I took refuge as soon as you left your post on the other side of the shutters.”
Josephine remained inert and as incapable of taking action as if she had been beaten to a jelly.
“Hang it! You don’t seem to be quite yourself,” he went on, in the same jeering tone. “Would you like a little glass of liquor to buck you up? I quite understand that you’re very much upset and I admit that I should not like to be in your place—all your little play-fellows gone—no help possible for quite a while—securely shut up in this room with a gentleman named Ralph. It certainly is not a time to see the world in rose-color. Unlucky Josephine. What a mess you have made of it!”
He stooped down and picked up the photograph of Clarice: “How pretty my fiancée is, isn’t she? It gave me the greatest pleasure to see how you were admiring her just now. You know that we’re going to get married in a few days?”
“She’s dead,” said Josephine.
“As a matter of fact, I heard about that,” he said calmly. “Your little friend who was here just now stabbed her in her bed, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“With a dagger, wasn’t it?”
“Three times—through the heart,” she said.
“Once ought to have been enough, you know,” he suggested.