He stamped into his boots and flung the door open, disheveled, shirt open at the neck. Astonished, he took in the strange attitudes of the others.
“What’s the answer?” he asked. “What was it you wanted, ma’am?”
Solange turned to him, her grief-ridden face stony in its hopelessness.
“Monsieur, you are my friend?”
“For mayhem, manslaughter or murder,” he answered at once. “What’s wanted?”
“Then—will you take this pistol, and kill that man for me?”
Sucatash’s eyes narrowed and his mottled hair seemed to bristle. He turned on De Launay.
“What’s he done?” he asked, with cold fury.
De Launay did not move. Solange answered dully.
“He is the man who—married me—when he was the man who had murdered my father!” 274