“M’sieur understands me perfectly. Mademoiselle must have fallen to the floor lifeless immediately after I had let you out. She made no sound, and had Jean not entered with her letters, which the concierge had brought, my poor young mistress might be lying there now.”
The average Frenchwoman of the lower class is always dramatic wherever a domestic calamity is concerned, and this worthy bonne was no exception. She punctuated all her remarks with references to the sacred personages of the Roman Catholic religion.
“You haven’t searched the room, I suppose?”
“No, m’sieur. Madame gave orders that nothing was to be touched.”
This reply was eminently satisfactory. I glanced again around the place, now dim in the falling twilight, and ordered her to throw back the sun-shutters.
The woman went to the window and opened them, admitting a flood of mellow light, the last crimson of the glorious afterglow. Up from the boulevard came the dull roar of the traffic, mingling with the sound of distant bells ringing the Ave Maria. The bonne—an Alsatian, from her accent—crossed herself from force of habit, and retreated towards the door.
“You may go,” I said. “I will remain here until the doctor arrives.”
“Bien, m’sieur,” answered the woman, disappearing and closing the door after her.
My object in dismissing her was to make a thorough search of the apartment, in order to discover whether any of Yolande’s private possessions were there. She had been denounced by Kaye and Anderson as a spy, and it occurred to me that I might possibly discover the truth. But she was dead. The painful fact seemed absolutely incredible.
The room was not a large one, but well furnished, with considerable taste and elegance. There was the broad, silk-covered couch, upon which Yolande had sat in the full possession of health and spirits only a couple of hours before; the skin rug, upon which her tiny foot had been stretched so coquettishly; the small table, by which she had stood supporting herself after I had made the fatal announcement that Wolf was in Paris.