While they were talking Mother Bonneton had gone to the window attracted by sounds from below, and as she peered down her face showed surprise and then intense excitement.
"Kind saints!" she muttered. "The courtyard is full of policemen." Then with sudden understanding she exclaimed: "Perhaps we will know now what he has been doing." As she spoke a heavy tread was heard on the stairs and the murmur of voices.
"It's nothing," said Alice weakly.
"Nothing?" mocked the old woman. "Hear that!"
An impatient hand sounded at the door while a harsh voice called out those terrifying words: "Open in the name of the law."
With a mingling of alarm and satisfaction Mother Bonneton obeyed the summons, and a moment later, as she unlatched the door, a fat man with a bristling red mustache and keen eyes pushed forward into the room where the lovers were waiting. Two burly policemen followed him.
"Ah!" exclaimed Gibelin with a gesture of relief as his eye fell on Kittredge. Then producing a paper he said: "I am from headquarters. I am looking for"—he studied the writing in perplexity—"for M. Lo-eed Keetredge. What is your name?"
"That's it," replied the American, "you made a good stab at it."
"You are M. Lo-eed Keetredge?"
"Yes, sir."
"You must come with me. I have a warrant for your arrest." And he showed the paper.
But Alice staggered forward. "Why do you arrest him? What has he done?"
The man from headquarters answered, shrugging his shoulders: "I don't know what he's done, he's charged with murder."
"Murder!" echoed the sacristan's wife. "Holy angels! A murderer in my house!"
"Take him," ordered the detective, and the two policemen laid hold of Kittredge on either side.
"Alice!" cried the young man, and his eyes yearned toward her. "Alice, I am innocent."
"Come," said the men gruffly, and Kittredge felt a sickening sense of shame as he realized that he was a prisoner.
"Wait! One moment!" protested the girl, and the men paused. Then, going close to her lover, Alice spoke to him in low, thrilling words that came straight from her soul:
"Lloyd, I believe you, I trust you, I love you. No matter what you have done, I love you. It was because my love is so great that I refused you this afternoon. But you need me now, you're in trouble now, and, Lloyd, if—if you want me still, I'm yours, all yours."
"O God!" murmured Kittredge, and even the hardened policeman choked a little. "I'm the happiest man in Paris, but—" He could say no more except with a last longing look: "Good-by."
Wildly, fiercely she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately on the mouth—their first kiss. And she murmured: "I love you, I love you."
Then they led Kittredge away.
Chapter V.
Coquenil Gets in the Game
It was a long night at the Ansonia and a hard night for M. Gritz. France is a land of infinite red tape where even such simple things as getting born or getting married lead to endless formalities. Judge, then, of the complicated procedure involved in so serious a matter as getting murdered—especially in a fashionable restaurant! Long before the commissary had finished his report there arrived no less a person than M. Simon, the chief of police, round-faced and affable, a brisk, dapper man whose ready smile had led more than one trusting criminal into regretted confidences.
And a little later came M. Hauteville, the judge in charge of the case, a cold, severe figure, handsome in his younger days, but soured, it was said, by social disappointments and ill health. He was in evening dress, having been summoned posthaste from the theater. Both of these officials went over the case with the commissary and the doctor, both viewed the body and studied its surroundings and, having formed a theory of the crime, both proceeded to draw up a report. And the doctor drew up his report. And already Gibelin (now at the prison with Kittredge) had made elaborate notes for his report. And outside the hotel, with eager notebooks, were a score of reporters all busy with their reports. No doubt that, in the matter of paper and ink, full justice would be done to the sudden taking off of this gallant billiard player!
Meantime the official police photographer and his assistants had arrived (this was long after midnight) with special apparatus for photographing the victim and the scene of the crime. And their work occupied two full hours owing largely to the difficult manipulation of a queer, clumsy camera that photographed the body from above as it lay on the floor.
In the intervals of these formalities the officials discussed the case with a wide variance in opinions and conclusions. The chief of police and M. Pougeot were strong for the theory of murder, while M. Hauteville leaned toward suicide. The doctor was undecided.
"But the shot was fired at the closest possible range," insisted the judge; "the pistol was not a foot from the man's head. Isn't that true, doctor?"
"Yes," replied Joubert, "the eyebrows are badly singed, the skin is burned, and the face shows unmistakable powder marks. I should say the pistol was fired not six inches from the victim."
"Then it's suicide," declared the judge. "How else account for the facts? Martinez was a strong, active man. He would never have allowed a murderer to get so close to him without a struggle. But there is not the slightest sign of a struggle, no disorder in the room, no disarrangement of the man's clothing. It's evidently suicide."
"If it's suicide," objected Pougeot, "where is the weapon? The man died instantly, didn't he, doctor?"
"Undoubtedly," agreed the doctor.
"Then the pistol must have fallen beside him or remained in his hand. Well, where is it?"
"Ask the woman who was here. How do you know she didn't take it?"
"Nonsense!" put in the chief. "Why should she take it? To throw suspicion on herself? Besides, I'll show you another reason why it's not suicide. The man was shot through the right eye, the ball went in straight and clean, tearing its way to the brain. Well, in the whole history of suicides, there is not one case where a man has shot himself in the eye. Did you ever hear of such a case, doctor?"
"Never," answered Joubert.
"A man will shoot himself in the mouth, in the temple, in the heart, anywhere, but not in the eye. There would be an unconquerable shrinking from that. So I say it's murder."
The judge shook his head. "And the murderer?"
"Ah, that's another question. We must find the woman. And we must understand the rôle of this American."
"No woman ever fired that shot or planned this crime," declared the commissary, unconsciously echoing Coquenil's opinion.
"There's better reason to argue that the American never did it," retorted the judge.
"What reason?"
"The woman ran away, didn't she? And the American didn't. If he had killed this man, do you think anything would have brought him back here for that cloak and bag?"
"A good point," nodded the chief. "We can't be sure of the murderer—yet, but we can be reasonably sure it's murder."
Still the judge was unconvinced. "If it's murder, how do you account for the singed eyebrows? How did the murderer get so near?"
"I answer as you did: 'Ask the woman.' She knows."
"Ah, yes, she knows," reflected the commissary.