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Page 63
"Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their income
tax and their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire business.
Carrambo! Diable! D--n it!"
"Hist!" suddenly says Chamounix the rag-picker, who is worth 20,000,000
francs, "some one comes!"
The cellar door opened and a man crept softly down the rickety steps.
The crowd watches him with silent awe.
He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of
absinthe, and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on
the counter and proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his
face into wrinkles, until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one
years of age.
He then went into a dark corner and watched the crowd of people with
sharp, ferret-like eyes.
Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by
the newcomer.
"Holy Saint Bridget!" he exclaims. "It is Tictocq, the detective."
Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar. Tenderly
nurtured, and accustomed to every luxury that money could procure, she
had, when a young vivandiere at the Convent of Saint Susan de la
Montarde, run away with the Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many crimes and
the knowledge that his business never allowed him to scrape his feet in
the hall or snore.
"Parbleu, Marie," snarls the Gray Wolf. "Que voulez vous? Avez-vous le
beau cheval de mon frere, oule joli chien de votre pere?"
"No, no, Gray Wolf," shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and
pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words.
Mon Dieu! You cannot be so cruel!"
"Tiens!" shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing
his gleaming knife. "Voila! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte blanche
enbonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!"
The horrifed sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes
Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly the
same size.
As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence,
the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs
forward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous
French detective, stands before them.
Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the
greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his
office.
He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point on the
wall, then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day of the
month and the year. Then drawing from his pocket a powerful microscope,
he examines a little of the blood that stands upon the floor in little
pools.
"Mon Dieu!" he mutters, "it is as I feared--human blood."
He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his
investigations, and leaves the cellar.
Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of
the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon
his brow with a gesture of impatience.
"Mille tonnerre," he mutters. "I should have asked the name of that man
with the knife in his hand."
* * * *
It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.
The apartments are flooded with a mellow light from paraffine candles in
solid silver candelabra.
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