CHAPTER XVII

PHILLIS’S FEARS

On Tuesday, a little before five o’clock, as she had promised, Phillis rang at Saniel’s door, and he left his laboratory where he was at work, to let her in.

She threw herself on his neck.

“Well?” she asked, in a trembling voice.

He told her how he had played and won, without stating the exact sum; also the propositions of the Prince Mazzazoli, the meeting with Duphot, and the telegram to Jardine.

“Oh!  What happiness!” she said, pressing him in her arms.  “You are free!”

“No more creditors!  I am my own master.  You see it was a good inspiration.  Justice willed it.”

Then interrupting him: 

“Apropos of justice, you did not speak of Caffie the morning of your departure.”

“I was so preoccupied I had no time to think of Caffie.”

“Is it not curious, the coincidence of his death with the condemnation that we pronounced against him?  Does it not prove exactly the justice of things?”

“If you choose.”

“As the money you won at Monaco proves to you that what is just will happen.  Caffie is punished for all his rascalities and crimes, and you are rewarded for your sufferings.”

“Would it not have been just if Caffie had been punished sooner, and if I had suffered less?”

She remained silent.

“You see,” he said smiling, “that your philosophy is weak.”

“It is not of my philosophy that I am thinking, but of Caffie and ourselves.”

“And how can Caffie be associated with you or yours?”

“He is, or rather he may be, if this justice in which I believe in spite of your joking permits him to be.”

“You are talking in enigmas.”

“What have you heard about Caffie since you went away?”

“Nothing, or almost nothing.”

“You know it is thought that the crime was committed by a butcher.”

“The commissioner picked up the knife before me, and it is certainly a butcher’s knife.  And more than that, the stroke that cut Caffie’s throat was given by a hand accustomed to butchery.  I have indicated this in my report.”

“Since then, more careful investigations have discovered a trousers’ button—­”

“Which might have been torn off in a struggle between Caffie and his assassin, I read in a newspaper.  But as for me, I do not believe in this struggle.  Caffie’s position in his chair, where he was assaulted and where he died, indicates that the old scamp was surprised.  Otherwise, if he had not been, if he had struggled, he could have cried out, and, without doubt, he would have been heard.”

“If you knew how happy I am to hear you say that!” she cried.

“Happy!  What difference can it make to you?” and he looked at her in surprise.  “Of what importance is it to you whether Caffie was killed with or without a struggle?  You condemned him; he is dead.  That should satisfy you.”