"You must be a stranger. Why, the whole world knows the scandal. It made a commotion, I can tell you. But the poor lad! He's paid for all his evil deeds. Why, sir, he was dead when he walked out into the street. He must have been a corpse even when I took him for a merrymaker. Strange things do happen on these carnival days. They must have finished him with one stroke. Ugh!"
"They? Whom do you mean?"
The old woman winked, and wagged her head sagely. "Oh! You'll never learn who, but we know. You think the gang was broken up when Emile went to prison, but where do all these counterfeits come from, eh? Answer me that. There's not a week goes by that one of them doesn't find its way into my store. They're perfect, or nearly so; it would take a bank-teller to find a flaw. I'm always frightened to death till I work them off again. For all I know, this very ten-dollar bill you gave me is bad, but I'll risk it. Some people don't seem to mind them at all, and so long as there's a chance to get rid of them, why, I don't object. But that's how it all came about—through counterfeit money, sir. They used Emile for a cat's-paw, so I've heard, but when he was caught they let him take his punishment. It was his cousin, Alfred Le Duc, who got him to confess, under promise of a light sentence. They do say the old rascal fooled him into it, for what reason nobody ever knew. Anyhow, they sent Emile away for ten years. He threatened to turn state's evidence, and perhaps he would have done so if he hadn't escaped."
"Ah! So he broke jail?"
"Exactly! And they've been hunting him ever since, with a reward on his head, and all the time the counterfeits are still coming in, and the police are as far from the truth as ever. Poor boy! There he lies, dead, with a flower over his heart. And I saw him fall! This will kill his mother. She's blind, you know, and very feeble."
"He has a cousin, Madelon, I believe," Roly ventured.
"Eh? Then you know her? A blessed angel, with a face like a picture and a heart of pure gold. Hark!" The old lady listened. "There go the clocks striking six. That means masks off and the end of the carnival. Too bad! Too bad! And Emile with a flower over his heart."
Like one in a dream Roland Van Dam emerged from the foreign quarter into the broad reaches of Canal Street. He had been gone nearly three hours. The pavements were strewn with confetti and the litter of a Mardi Gras crowd, but nowhere was a masker to be seen. Directly ahead of him loomed the Grunewald, a splendid tower of white brick and terra-cotta. Inside were his friends, awaiting him, perhaps. He realized, with a sinking sensation, that Eleanor Banniman was among them and that he had asked her to be his wife. What a change three hours had brought to him! Why, in that brief interval he had lived through all those very emotions the existence of which they had both denied earlier in the day. Life had opened for him, and he had seen it in the raw. On his hands was the blood of a fellow-man; on his lips the fragrance of a kiss that set his veins afire.
"I say, Roly, where have you been?" Miss Banniman's strident voice demanded, as he entered the café.