Part 40 (1/2)

Leva.s.seur, nor did he send for her. He caught sight of her several times giving orders to the new servants. She must afterward have gone back to her room, for he did not see her again.

In the afternoon he rang for his car and drove to the house on the Boulevard Suchet, to pursue with Mazeroux, by the Prefect's instructions, a search that led to no result whatever.

It was ten o'clock when he came in. The detective sergeant and he had some dinner together. Afterward, wis.h.i.+ng also to examine the home of the man with the ebony stick, he got into his car again, still accompanied by Mazeroux, and told the man to drive to the Boulevard Richard-Wallace.

The car crossed the Seine and followed the right bank.

”Faster,” he said to his new chauffeur, through the speaking-tube. ”I'm accustomed to go at a good pace.”

”You'll have an upset one fine day, Chief,” said Mazeroux.

”No fear,” replied Don Luis. ”Motor accidents are reserved for fools.”

They reached the Place de l'Alma. The car turned to the left.

”Straight ahead!” cried Don Luis. ”Go up by the Trocadero.”

The car veered back again. But suddenly it gave three or four lurches in the road, took the pavement, ran into a tree and fell over on its side.

In a few seconds a dozen people were standing round. They broke one of the windows and opened the door. Don Luis was the first.

”It's nothing,” he said. ”I'm all right. And you, Alexandre?”

They helped the sergeant out. He had a few bruises and a little pain, but no serious injury.

Only the chauffeur had been thrown from his seat and lay motionless on the pavement, bleeding from the head. He was carried into a chemist's shop and died in ten minutes.

Mazeroux had gone in with the poor victim and, feeling pretty well stunned, had himself been given a pick-me-up. When he went back to the motor car he found two policemen entering particulars of the accident in their notebooks and taking evidence from the bystanders; but the chief was not there.

Perenna in fact had jumped into a taxicab and driven home as fast as he could. He got out in the square, ran through the gateway, crossed the courtyard, and went down the pa.s.sage that led to Mlle. Leva.s.seur's quarters. He leaped up the steps, knocked, and entered without waiting for an answer.

The door of the room that served as a sitting-room was opened and Florence appeared. He pushed her back into the room, and said, in a tone furious with indignation:

”It's done. The accident has occurred. And yet none of the old servants can have prepared it, because they were not there and because I was out with the car this afternoon. Therefore, it must have been late in the day between six and nine o'clock, that somebody went to the garage and filed the steering-rod three quarters through.”

”I don't understand. I don't understand,” she said, with a scared look.

”You understand perfectly well that the accomplice of the ruffians cannot be one of the new servants, and you understand perfectly well that the job was bound to succeed and that it did succeed, beyond their hopes.

There is a victim, who suffers instead of myself.”

”But tell me what has happened, Monsieur! You frighten me! What accident?

What was it?”

”The motor car was overturned. The chauffeur is dead.”

”Oh,” she said, ”how horrible! And you think that I can have--Oh, dead, how horrible! Poor man!”

Her voice grew fainter. She was standing opposite to Perenna, close up against him. Pale and swooning, she closed her eyes, staggered.