The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

CHAPTER XI

Next morning, by daylight, the whole region was aroused. Count Delorme had been found dead, robbed and murdered, in the park of the Château Bernard. The police appeared in swarms. No one had seen him at the château, and old Madame Bernard had fainted when told of the murdered man being found in the park, and had taken to her bed very ill, so she could not be disturbed. Delorme’s identity was easily established, and it was surmised that he was on his way to the château when he had met his fate.

Toni listened, with a blanched face, to all the excited talk and colloquy that went on among the villagers as well as the circus people about the strange murder. Suspicion at once fell on the circus people, but Pierre and Nicolas were old hands at the business and knew how to manage such little affairs. They had promptly proceeded, the first thing next morning, to try for an advance of money from the manager of the circus, and being refused, they had tried to borrow money from several of their fellow employees to disguise the fact that their pockets were well-lined at that very moment with Delorme’s money. Toni had never thought of this subterfuge, and did not attempt to borrow a franc. He spent the day in one long spasm of terror, and in the evening, when the performance was over and he was going back to his lodging, his two friends joined him.

“Toni,” said Nicolas, with a laughing devil in his eye as he spoke, “you must be very careful, for suspicion might fall on you for the part you took in our little escapade. You struck the blow, you know.”

Toni stopped, stared, and threw his arms up above his head in a wild passion of despair.

“I did not—I did not—I did not,” he cried.

Then Nicolas, slipping his hand in Toni’s pocket, drew out a twenty-franc gold piece, a coin which Toni had seldom in his life owned.

“‘This is what you took out of the man’s pocket.’”

“This was what you took out of the man’s pocket,” said Pierre. It was too much for Toni. They were walking along the highway toward the village, in the soft May evening. Toni, quite unsteady on his legs, sat down by the roadside. He was so stunned and dazed that he could neither move nor think nor speak. Pierre and Nicolas walked off laughing, Pierre, meanwhile having put the twenty-franc piece in Toni’s pocket. When Toni felt this, he threw the money after them frantically, and it fell in the road behind them, but they did not see it. Toni, without knowing this at the time, thereby accomplished a stroke of justice to these wretches.