A minute later, M. Jorancé's servant replied that she had just noticed that her master was not in. His bed had not been touched either.
"Oh!" said Suzanne, trembling all over. "My poor father!... Can anything have happened to him?... My poor father! I ought to have...."
They stood for a moment as though paralyzed, all three, and incapable of taking a resolution. The man-servant went out saying that he would saddle the horse and gallop to the Col du Diable.
Marthe, who was nearest to the telephone, rang up the mayor's office at Saint-Élophe, on the off-chance, and asked for news. They knew nothing there. But two gendarmes, it seemed, had just crossed the square at a great pace. Thereupon, at the suggestion of Mme. Morestal, who had taken up the second receiver, she asked to be put on to the gendarmery. As soon as she was connected, she explained her reason for telephoning and was informed that the sergeant was on his way to the frontier with a peasant who declared that he had found the body of a man in the woods between the Butte-aux-Loups and the Col du Diable. That was all they were able to tell her....
Mme. Morestal let go the receiver and fell in a dead faint. Marthe and Suzanne tried to attend to her. But their hands trembled and, when Catherine, the maid-servant, appeared upon the scene, they both ran out of the room, roused by a sudden energy and an immense need of doing something, of walking, of laying eyes upon that dead body whose blood-stained image obsessed their minds.
They went down the stairs of the terrace and scurried in the direction of the Étang-des-Moines. They had not gone fifty yards, when they were passed by Victor, who galloped by on horseback and shouted:
"Go in, go in! What's the use? I shall be back again!"
They went on nevertheless. But two roads offered: Suzanne wanted to take the one leading to the pass, on the left; Marthe, the one on the right, through the woods. They exchanged sharp words, blocking each other's way.
Suddenly, Suzanne, without knowing what she was saying, flung herself into her friend's arms, blurting out: