The Lieutenant’s sword pointed the direction in which the slim, upright, soldierly figure had vanished. The Colonel growled:
“Why should he choose that route?...”
And the Lieutenant thought, but did not answer:
“Possibly because he hopes to meet Death upon the way!...”
Colonel de Roux, with clank of trailing scabbard and jingle of gilt spurs, stormed up the double line of abashed and drooping red képis. Interrogated, Monsieur the Captain in command of the company posted at the eastern angle of the courtyard enclosure, gave in substance the information already supplied.
“A pistol-shot came from behind us—a stranger’s voice gave the order ‘Fire!’—the discharge followed.... One would have said it was an arranged thing. One would——”
“Chut!”
De Roux glanced over his gold-encrusted shoulder at the façade of broken windows and chipped stone ornaments. The Captain, the same lively de Kerouatte who had paid Dunoisse that ancient moss-grown debt of three thousand francs upon the steps of Rothschild’s, continued, as though the note of warning had not reached his ear:
“Madame de Roux would be able to corroborate. I saw Madame—previously to the deplorable accident—in the Hotel vestibule, conversing with an official in diplomatic uniform. She——”
“You are mistaken, sir!” said the Colonel, purple where he had been crimson, mulberry-black where he had been purple, and screwing with a rasping sound at his bristling mustache: “Madame de Roux is on a visit to some young relatives at Bagneres. This perturbed and disaffected capital is no place for a soul so sensitive, a nature so impressionable as Madame’s. I have begged her to remain absent until these disturbances are calmed.”