Queried His Excellency:
"By him, you mean whom?..."
"A man," said P. C. Breagh, "whom I saw moving along before me, taking cover behind snowy bushes and clumps of frosted prairie grass. When he stood up, I saw that he was short in figure and had immensely broad shoulders. I was quite sure that I had seen the fellow before. In fact——"
"In fact," the Minister sharply interrupted, "you recognized him as the man who posed as M. Charles Tessier, and who can have been nobody but M. Straz. Now tell me, whom was he watching? Madame and a companion, I venture to guess?" He added, as P. C. Breagh assented: "What was the man? A civilian or an officer?"
P. C. Breagh answered, repressing another shudder:
"A tall, fair officer of the Prussian Guard Infantry. He and Madame were at supper, or they had just finished. He had opened a fresh bottle of champagne and was leaning over to fill Madame's glass when I noticed the short man standing still, watching them closely. He seemed to have his right hand in his pocket. He drew it out and then—I don't know very well what happened. There was the heavy boom of a big gun, and a shell came shrieking like an express train.... I remember how the spitting flare of the fuse lit up the sky. And there was a terrific crash—and something hit me on the head—a bit of masonry, it must have been—for when I came to myself other shells were hurtling, and hitting, and bursting.... One smashed the stables of the chateau where the Hussars are quartered, and another has dug a crater, they tell me, in the side of the Terrace of St. Germain. The flashes made everything show up clear like lightning, and I picked myself up.... The blood was running down into my eyes, blinding me. But I'm not likely to forget what I saw. It was ... so awfully stagey ... so like a picture of the sensational, blood-curdling, highly colored kind."
"Go on!"
"It was like this. The upper story of the Villa had been shaved off—simply. There was the interior of the dining-room before me, all color and mirrors and gilding and twinkling wax candles in crystal girandoles. The French windows had been shattered, and there was a great hole in the ceiling. On the mantelshelf, just in front of me, between two Sèvres candlesticks, was a clock, the hands pointing to half-past two. There were Sèvres figures on each side of the clock—I have seen them here in the shop windows, 'Pierrot qui rit' and 'Pierrot qui pleure.' The crying Pierrot had been smashed by the shell splinter that shivered the mantel mirror, but the laughing Pierrot was untouched. He seemed to be holding his sides and screaming at Valverden sprawling across the table with his skull shattered, and Madame de Bayard sitting stone-dead in her chair. She had the cigarette in her fingers, still alight.... It must have been painless.... There was only a small blue hole in her temple—just here."
The Minister was repeating:
"Valverden!... Are you clear that you mean Count Max Valverden?... But of course you are! There is no other officer of that name in the Prussian Guard Infantry. How you came to be acquainted you shall tell me to-morrow." He laughed harshly, looking at the clock upon the mantel. "I should say to-day, at a somewhat later hour." He added, as Breagh rose: "Have you told anything of this matter to Mademoiselle de Bayard? Then, I advise you, do not enlighten her at all. Or, if you must do so, tell her after you are married!"