“So I believe,” I said; “at least I engaged for the office that's something of a sinecure, to tell the truth.”
And then Buhot told me a strange story.
He told me that Father Hamilton was now a prisoner, and on his way to the prison of Bicêtre. He was—this Buhot—something of the artist and loved to make his effects most telling (which accounts, no doubt, for the romantical nature of the accounts aforesaid), and sitting upon the table-edge he embarked upon a narrative of the most crowded two hours that had perhaps been in Father Hamilton's lifetime.
It seemed that when the priest had left the Cerf d'Or, he had gone to a place till recently called the Bureau des Carrosses pour la Rochelle, and now unoccupied save by a concierge, and the property of some person or persons unknown. There he had ensconced himself in the only habitable room and waited for a visitor regarding whom the concierge had his instructions.
“You must imagine him,” said the officer, always with the fastidiousness of an artist for his effects, “you must imagine him, Monsieur, sitting in this room, all alone, breathing hard, with a pistol before him on the table, and—”
“What! a pistol!” I cried, astounded and alarmed. “Certainement” said Buhot, charmed with the effect his dramatic narrative was creating. “Your friend, mon ami, would be little good, I fancy, with a rapier. Anyway, 'twas a pistol. A carriage drives up to the door; the priest rises to his feet with the pistol in his hand; there is the rap at the door. 'Entrez!' cries the priest, cocking the pistol, and no sooner was his visitor within than he pulled the trigger; the explosion rang through the dwelling; the chamber was full of smoke.”
“Good heavens!” I cried in horror, “and who was the unhappy wretch?”
Buhot shrugged his shoulders, made a French gesture with his hands, and pursed his mouth.
“Whom did you invite to the room at the hour of ten, M. Greig?” he asked.
“Invite!” I cried. “It's your humour to deal in parables. I declare to you I invited no one.”