“Are you mad, Colas? Would you become the betrayer of your friend?”
While stammering this he appeared in violent emotion. He turned pale, and his lips became livid; his eyes stared vacantly. All proved too certainly that he had confessed the previous night, in the excitement of wine, circumstances at which he was now terrified, seeing they were no longer safe in my keeping.
I put my hand on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “Bertollon! dress, take money enough with you, and flee. I will manage the rest.”
With a look threatening death, he asked, “Why?”
“Fly, I say, while there is time.”
“Why?” he replied, “Do you intend—— or have you, perhaps, already——”
“By all that is dear and sacred to you, fly!”
While I whispered these last words to him, he suddenly jumped up, looked about the room as if searching for something, which made me think he had forgotten in his consternation that his clothes lay near the bed. While I stooped to give them to him he fired a pistol at me, and the blood gushed down over my chest.
The door was burst open, and the inspector of police entered in terror. Bertollon still holding in one hand the pistol he had fired, and a second in the other, looked aghast at the unexpected appearance.
“Accursed dog!” he cried to me, with gestures of despair, and flung the discharged pistol furiously at my head. Another shot followed—Bertollon had shot himself. He reeled against me—I caught him in my arms—his head was shattered.