She heard him saying:
“Well, Ya-Bon, have you kept a good watch! No news? And how’s your prisoner? … Ah, there you are, my fine fellow! Have you got your breath back? Oh, I know Ya-Bon’s hand is a bit heavy! … What’s this? Won’t you answer? … Hallo, what’s happened? Hanged if I don’t think …”
A cry escaped him. The girl ran to the hall. She met the captain, who tried to bar her way.
“Don’t come,” he said, in great agitation. “What’s the use!”
“But you’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
“I?”
“There’s blood on your shirt-cuff.”
“So there is, but it’s nothing: it’s the man’s blood that must have stained me.”
“Then he was wounded?”
“Yes, or at least his mouth was bleeding. Some blood-vessel …”
“Why, surely Ya-Bon didn’t grip as hard as that?”
“It wasn’t Ya-Bon.”
“Then who was it?”
“His accomplices.”
“Did they come back?”
“Yes; and they’ve strangled him.”
“But it’s not possible!”
She pushed by and went towards the prisoner. He did not move. His face had the pallor of death. Round his neck was a red-silk string, twisted very thin and with a buckle at either end.
II
Right Hand and Left Leg
“One rogue less in the world, Little Mother Coralie!” cried Patrice Belval, after he had led the girl back to the drawing-room and made a rapid investigation with Ya-Bon. “Remember his name—I found it engraved on his watch—Mustapha Rovalaïof, the name of a rogue!”
He spoke gaily, with no emotion in his voice, and continued, as he walked up and down the room:
“You and I, Little Mother Coralie, who have witnessed so many tragedies and seen so many good fellows die, need not waste tears over the death of Mustapha Rovalaïof or his murder by his accomplices. Not even a funeral oration, eh? Ya-Bon has taken him under his arm, waited until the square was clear and carried him to the Rue Brignoles, with orders to fling the gentleman over the railings into the garden of the Musée Galliéra. The railings are high. But Ya-Bon’s right hand knows no obstacles. And so, Little Mother Coralie, the matter is buried. You won’t be talked about; and, this time, I claim a word of thanks.”
He stopped to laugh:
“A word of thanks, but no compliments. By Jove, I don’t make much of a warder! It was clever the way those beggars snatched my prisoner. Why didn’t I foresee that your other assailant, the man in the gray-felt hat, would go and tell the third, who was waiting in his motor, and that they would both come back together to rescue their companion? And they came back. And, while you and I were chatting, they must have forced the servants’ entrance, passed through the kitchen, come to the little door between the pantry and the hall and pushed it open. There, close by them, lay their man, still unconscious and firmly bound, on his sofa. What were they to do? It was impossible to get him out of the hall without alarming Ya-Bon. And yet, if they didn’t release him, he would speak, give away his accomplices and ruin a carefully prepared plan. So one of the two must have leant forward stealthily, put out his arm, thrown his string round that throat which Ya-Bon had already handled pretty roughly, gathered the buckles at the two ends and pulled, pulled, quietly, until death came. Not a sound. Not a sigh. The whole operation performed in silence. We come, we kill and we go away. Good night. The trick is done and our friend won’t talk.”
Captain Belval’s merriment increased:
“Our friend won’t talk,” he repeated, “and the police, when they find his body tomorrow morning inside a railed garden, won’t understand a word of the business. Nor we either, Little Mother Coralie; and we shall never know why those men tried to kidnap you. It’s only too true! I may not be up to much as a warder, but I’m beneath contempt as a detective!”
He continued to walk up and down the room. The fact that his leg or rather his calf had been amputated seemed hardly to inconvenience him; and, as the joints of the knee and thighbone had retained their mobility, there was at most a certain want of rhythm in the action of his hips and shoulders. Moreover, his tall figure tended to correct this lameness, which was reduced to insignificant proportions by the ease of his movements and the indifference with which he appeared to accept it.
He had an open countenance, rather dark in color, burnt by the sun and tanned by the weather, with an expression that was frank, cheerful and often bantering. He must have been between twenty-eight and thirty. His manner suggested that of the officers of the First Empire, to whom their life in camp imparted a special air which they subsequently brought into the ladies’ drawing-rooms.
He stopped to look at Coralie, whose shapely profile stood out against the gleams from the fireplace. Then he came and sat beside her:
“I know nothing about you,” he said softly. “At the hospital the doctors and nurses call you Madame Coralie. Your patients prefer to say Little Mother. What is your married or your maiden name? Have you a husband or are you a widow? Where do you live? Nobody knows. You arrive every day at the same time and you go away by the same street. Sometimes an old serving-man, with long gray hair and a bristly beard, with a comforter round his neck and a pair of yellow spectacles on his nose, brings you or fetches you. Sometimes also he waits for you, always sitting on the same chair in the covered yard. He has been asked questions, but he never gives an answer. I know only one thing, therefore, about you, which is that you are adorably good and kind and that you are also—I may say it, may I not?—adorably beautiful. And it is perhaps, Little Mother Coralie, because I know nothing about
