"What!" I cried incredulously. "Nonsense! Do I look like a murderer? Get off your horse, you stupid, and tell me who's murdered."
Durand got down, looking very silly, and came up to me, offering his hand with a propitiatory grin.
"It was the Purple Emperor who denounced you! See, they found your handkerchief at his door——"
"Whose door, for Heaven's sake?" I cried.
"Why, the Red Admiral's!"
"The Red Admiral's? What has he done?"
"Nothing—he's only been murdered."
I could scarcely believe my senses, although they took me over to the little stone cottage and pointed out the blood-spattered room. But the horror of the thing was that the corpse of the murdered man had disappeared, and there only remained a nauseating lake of blood on the stone floor, in the centre of which lay a human hand. There was no doubt as to whom the hand belonged, for everybody who had ever seen the Red Admiral knew that the shrivelled bit of flesh which lay in the thickening blood was the hand of the Red Admiral. To me it looked like the severed claw of some gigantic bird.
"Well," I said, "there's been murder committed. Why don't you do something?"
"What?" asked Durand.