“So I knew the moment you entered this room,” was Monsieur Bouchard’s rejoinder.
“Then, sir,” said de Meneval, recovering his spirits now that the murder was out, “I wish you had said so in the beginning. It would have saved me a very bad quarter of an hour.”
“Young man,” severely replied Monsieur Bouchard, “I had not the slightest wish to save you a bad quarter of an hour.”
“So it seems; but I will tell you just how it stands. You know I am stationed at Melun——”
“I have known that fact ever since I knew you.”
“Very well, sir. There is a music hall at Melun—the Pigeon House—with a garden back of it, kept by one Michaux, a rascal, if ever I saw one. Now, it’s very dull at Melun the evenings I am on duty and can’t get back to Léontine in Paris, and it’s a small place, and quite naturally, when one hears the music going at the Pigeon House, and sees the lights flashing and the people eating and drinking under the trees on the terrace garden, it’s quite natural, I say, to drop in there for the evening.”
“Quite natural for you, sir. Go on, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
De Meneval restrained his impulse to brain Monsieur Bouchard, sitting so sternly and primly before him, and kept on:
And the girls are permitted to come out in their stage costumes, to have an ice or a glass of wine.