Evidently, in the servants’ quarters, there had been much talk about what was going on, and about the probable arrival of the police. Every time the door bell rang, they were expected. In a tone of suppressed rage the chauffeur kept saying to his companions below stairs—
“So the captain couldn’t think of anything to do but put a bullet through his head! Well this ship is going down, I tell you! Who’s going to pay us our wages?”
Robledo returned to the centre of the city for dinner, and called up Torre Bianca several times during the course of it.
At nearly twelve o’clock the butler replied that his master had just come in, and Robledo hurried back to his friend’s home.
He found Federico in the library. The latter had aged over night as though the last few hours had been so many years. Impulsively Torre embraced his friend, turning instinctively to him for support.
The poor Marquis was not only startled, he was bewildered. Never had he lived through so many emotions in so short a space of time. That morning, like Robledo, he had felt the confidence and pleasure that the golden beauty of the day inspired. What a pleasure to be alive!... And then the summons of the telephone, the ghastly news, the rush to Fontenoy’s apartment, the sight of his friend’s body on the bed; and the grisly crowd a violent death always assembles, for that detail that seems so grotesquely insignificant before the reality of death, the autopsy....
Even more painful were his impressions at Fontenoy’s office. There he found a judge installed in full possession of all the banker’s effects, examining papers, affixing seals, making out an inventory, coldly, suspiciously, implacably. The secretary—it was he who had notified Torre Bianca—was making valiant efforts to conceal his terror.
“We aren’t going to get out of this so easily,” he said, manfully trying to face the facts that had come so uncomfortably near. And then as a concession to his fears he added, “The boss ought to have tipped us off....”
Torre Bianca spent the rest of the day looking up the people who had in various ways been associated with Fontenoy. Many of them had been receiving handsome salaries for sitting on the board of directors, taking their orders of course from the man who paid them. Now they were thoroughly frightened, and Torre Bianca saw that, to save their skins, they would not hesitate to lie about him or anyone else who might be found to serve as a scapegoat....
They lost no time in making out their case against him.