And, without waiting for another question,

“But don’t let us stay here,” said the commissary.

“Whilst Maxence runs to the drug-store, let us go into the Fortins’ office.”

The husband was alone there, the wife being at that moment with Mlle. Lucienne.

“Do me the favor to go and take a walk for about fifteen minutes,” said the commissary to him.  “We have to talk, this gentleman and myself.”

Humbly, without a word, and like a man who does himself justice, M. Fortin slipped off.

And at once,—­“It is clear, M. le Marquis, it is manifest, that a crime has been committed.  Listen, and judge for yourself.  I was just rising from dinner, when I was notified of what was called our poor Lucienne’s accident.  Without even changing my clothes, I ran.  The carriage was lying in the street, broken to pieces.  Two policemen were holding the horses, which had been stopped.  I inquire.  I learn that Lucienne, picked up by Maxence, has been able to drag herself as far as the Hotel des Folies, and that the driver has been taken to the nearest drug-store.  Furious at my own negligence, and tormented by vague suspicions, it is to the druggist’s that I go first, and in all haste.  The driver was in a backroom, stretched on a mattress.

“His head having struck the angle of the curbstone, his skull was broken; and he had just breathed his last.  It was, apparently, the annihilation of the hope which I had, of enlightening myself by questioning this man.  Nevertheless, I give orders to have him searched.  No paper is discovered upon him to establish his identity; but, in one of the pockets of his pantaloons, do you know what they find?  Two bank-notes of a thousand francs each, carefully wrapped up in a fragment of newspaper.”

M. de Tregars had shuddered.

“What a revelation!” he murmured.

It was not to the present circumstance that he applied that word.  But the commissary naturally mistook him.

“Yes,” he went on, “it was a revelation.  To me these two thousand francs were worth a confession:  they could only be the wages of a crime.  So, without losing a moment, I jump into a cab, and drive to Brion’s.  Everybody was upside down, because the horses had just been brought back.  I question; and, from the very first words, the correctness of my presumption is demonstrated to me.  The wretch who had just died was not one of Brion’s coachmen.  This is what had happened.  At two o’clock, when the carriage ordered by M. Van Klopen was ready to go for Mlle. Lucienne, they had been compelled to send for the driver and the footman, who had forgotten themselves drinking in a neighboring wine-shop, with a man who had called to see them in the morning.  They were slightly under the influence of wine, but not enough so to make it imprudent to trust them with horses; and it was even probable that the fresh air would sober them completely.  They had then started; but, they had not gone very far, for one of their comrades had seen them stop the carriage in front of a wine-shop, and join there the same individual with whom they had been drinking all the morning.”