"There's news, Ya-Bon, there's news!" said Patrice. "The plot is thickening. The woman is obviously one of the Essares' servants and she has come for her mistress by the commissary's orders. Therefore the colonel's disclosures are having their effect. House searched; magistrate's inquest; every sort of worry for Little Mother Coralie; and you have the cheek to advise me to be careful! You imagine that I would leave her to her own devices at such a moment! What a mean nature you must have, my poor Ya-Bon!"

An idea occurred to him; and he exclaimed:

"Heavens! I hope that ruffian of an Essares hasn't allowed himself to be caught! That would be a disaster! But he was far too sure of himself. I expect he's been trifling away his time. . . ."

All through the drive this fear excited Captain Belval and removed his last scruples. In the end his certainty was absolute. Nothing short of Essares' arrest could have produced the servant's att.i.tude of panic or Coralie's precipitate departure. Under these conditions, how could he hesitate to interfere in a matter in which his revelations would enlighten the police? All the more so as, by revealing less or more, according to circ.u.mstances, he could make his evidence subservient to Coralie's interests.

The two cabs pulled up almost simultaneously outside the Essares' house, where a car was already standing. Coralie alighted and disappeared through the carriage-gate. The maid and Simeon also crossed the pavement.

"Come along," said Patrice to the Senegalese.

The front-door was ajar and Patrice entered. In the big hall were two policemen on duty. Patrice acknowledged their presence with a hurried movement of his hand and pa.s.sed them with the air of a man who belonged to the house and whose importance was so great that nothing done without him could be of any use.

The sound of his footsteps echoing on the flags reminded him of the flight of Bournef and his accomplices. He was on the right road.

Moreover, there was a drawing-room on the left, the room, communicating with the library, to which the accomplices had carried the colonel's body. Voices came from the library. He walked across the drawing-room.

At that moment he heard Coralie exclaim in accents of terror:

"Oh, my G.o.d, it can't be! . . ."

Two other policemen barred the doorway.

"I am a relation of Mme. Essares'," he said, "her only relation. . . ."

"We have our orders, captain . . ."

"I know, of course. Be sure and let no one in! Ya-Bon, stay here."

And he went in.

But, in the immense room, a group of six or seven gentlemen, no doubt commissaries of police and magistrates, stood in his way, bending over something which he was unable to distinguish. From amidst this group Coralie suddenly appeared and came towards him, tottering and wringing her hands. The housemaid took her round the waist and pressed her into a chair.

"What's the matter?" asked Patrice.

"Madame is feeling faint," replied the woman, still quite distraught.

"Oh, I'm nearly off my head!"

"But why? What's the reason?"

"It's the master . . . just think! . . . Such a sight! . . . It gave me a turn, too . . ."

"What sight?"

One of the gentlemen left the group and approached:

"Is Mme. Essares ill?"

"It's nothing," said the maid. "A fainting-fit. . . . She is liable to these attacks."

"Take her away as soon as she can walk. We shall not need her any longer."

And, addressing Patrice Belval with a questioning air:

"Captain? . . ."

Patrice pretended not to understand:

"Yes, sir," he said, "we will take Mme. Essares away. Her presence, as you say, is unnecessary. Only I must first . . ."

He moved aside to avoid his interlocutor, and, perceiving that the group of magistrates had opened out a little, stepped forward. What he now saw explained Coralie's fainting-fit and the servant's agitation. He himself felt his flesh creep at a spectacle which was infinitely more horrible than that of the evening before.

On the floor, near the fireplace, almost at the place where he had undergone his torture, Essares Bey lay upon his back. He was wearing the same clothes as on the previous day: a brown-velvet smoking-suit with a braided jacket. His head and shoulders had been covered with a napkin.

But one of the men standing around, a divisional surgeon no doubt, was holding up the napkin with one hand and pointing to the dead man's face with the other, while he offered an explanation in a low voice.

And that face . . . but it was hardly the word for the unspeakable ma.s.s of flesh, part of which seemed to be charred while the other part formed no more than a bloodstained pulp, mixed with bits of bone and skin, hairs and a broken eye-ball.

"Oh," Patrice blurted out, "how horrible! He was killed and fell with his head right in the fire. That's how they found him, I suppose?"

The man who had already spoken to him and who appeared to be the most important figure present came up to him once more:

"May I ask who you are?" he demanded.

"Captain Belval, sir, a friend of Mme. Essares, one of the wounded officers whose lives she has helped to save . . ."

"That may be, sir," replied the important figure, "but you can't stay here. n.o.body must stay here, for that matter. Monsieur le commissaire, please order every one to leave the room, except the doctor, and have the door guarded. Let no one enter on any pretext whatever. . . ."

"Sir," Patrice insisted, "I have some very serious information to communicate."

"I shall be pleased to receive it, captain, but later on. You must excuse me now."

VII

TWENTY-THREE MINUTES PAST TWELVE

The great hall that ran from Rue Raynouard to the upper terrace of the garden was filled to half its extent by a wide staircase and divided the Essares house into two parts communicating only by way of the hall.

On the left were the drawing-room and the library, which was followed by an independent block containing a private staircase. On the right were a billiard-room and the dining-room, both with lower ceilings. Above these were Essares Bey's bedroom, on the street side, and Coralie's, overlooking the garden. Beyond was the servants' wing, where old Simeon also used to sleep.

Patrice was asked to wait in the billiard-room, with the Senegalese. He had been there about a quarter of an hour when Simeon and the maid were shown in.

The old secretary seemed quite paralyzed by the death of his employer and was holding forth under his breath, making queer gestures as he spoke. Patrice asked him how things were going; and the old fellow whispered in his ear:

"It's not over yet . . . There's something to fear . . . to fear! . . .

To-day . . . presently."