When once at ease in his room, he exclaimed: "Potstausend, René, I am out of debt. The years I used to count to be paid are settled. Two days' watching that delirious swine and bottling up the gossiping little demon Chovet! A pipe, a pipe, and then I shall tell you."
"Indeed, I have waited long."
"Chovet told Fauchet at my request of this regrettable affair. He is uneasy, and he well may be, concerning all there is left of his secretary."
"Then he is alive," said René; "and will he live?"
"Alive? Yes, very much alive, raving at times like a madman haunted by hell fiends. I had to stay. After a day he was clear of head, but as weak as a man can be with the two maladies of a ball in a palsied shoulder and a doctor looking for it. Yes, he will live; and alive or dead will make mischief."
"Did he talk to you?"
"Yes. He has no memory of my coming at the time he was shot. I think he did not see me at all."
"Well, what else?"
"I told him the whole story, and what I had seen him do. I was plain, too, and said that I had found his despatch, and you, being a gentleman, must needs see that it went. He saw, I suspect, what other motive you had—if he believed me at all."
"But did he believe you? Does he?"