“Not the letter? But this is terrible! Then you don’t know . . .”
A hoarse cry struck Patrice’s ear and the next thing he caught was incoherent sounds at the other end of the wire, the noise of an altercation. Then the voice seemed to glue itself to the instrument and he distinctly heard it gasping:
“Too late! . . . Patrice . . . is that you? . . . Listen, the amethyst pendant . . . yes, I have it on me. . . . The pendant. . . . Ah, it’s too late! . . . I should so much have liked to . . . Patrice. . . . Coralie. . . .”
Then again a loud cry, a heart-rending cry, and confused sounds growing more distant, in which he seemed to distinguish:
“Help! . . . Help! . . .”
These grew fainter and fainter. Silence followed. And suddenly there was a little click. The murderer had hung up the receiver.
All this had not taken twenty seconds. But, when Patrice wanted to replace the telephone, his fingers were gripping it so hard that it needed an effort to relax them.
He stood utterly dumfounded. His eyes had fastened on a large clock which he saw, through the window, on one of the buildings in the yard, marking nineteen minutes past seven; and he mechanically repeated these figures, attributing a documentary value to them. Then he asked himself—so unreal did the scene appear to him—if all this was true and if the crime had not been penetrated within himself, in the depths of his aching heart. But the shouting still echoed in his ears; and suddenly he took up the receiver again, like one clinging desperately to some undefined hope:
“Hullo!” he cried. “Exchange! . . . Who was it rang me up just now? . . . Are you there? Did you hear the cries? . . . Are you there? . . . Are you there? . . .”
There was no reply. He lost his temper, insulted the exchange, left the linen-closet, met Ya-Bon and pushed him about: