Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/131

 "Thanks, friends," replied Daddy Faucheux, "a glass is not to be refused; but, as to sitting down, and taking it easy with you—the service forbids."

"The service! that's a good one. Today is Sunday, and thieves require a day of rest as well as other folks."

"Thieves, possibly; but it's different with assassins."

"Assassins! What do you mean by that, Daddy Faucheux?"

"Haven't you heard about the affair at Saint Didier?

"No; tell us about it."

"The more willingly, because I came in here to give you all a description of the scoundrel we are hunting."

The heart of the murderer throbbed heavily enough to burst his chest.

"He's a stone-mason, named Pierre Picard," the brigadier continued.

"And who has he murdered?"

"His wife."

"The beggar! What had she done to him?"

"Cried without complaining when he beat her; only sometimes she went to the tavern to ask him to give her some money to buy food for her little ones, whom she could not bear to see dying of starvation. That was the whole of her crime, poor creature! It was for that he killed her on Thursday night last. She was only five-and-twenty. He ought to have kissed the ground she walked on, the wretch! She spent her life in working and caring for him and the children, and she had never received any other reward save blows and misery."

"The infernal villain!" cried a young man, striking his fist violently on the table before him; "I'd think it a pleasure to go and see his head chopped off."

"That's why you all ought to know his description, so as to be able to arrest him if you come upon him; for we know that he is skulking somewhere hereabouts."

There was a deep silence.

The murderer, he too listened, mastering by a superhuman effort the fever raging in his blood and bewildering his brain.

"This is the description of Pierre Picard," said the brigadier, unfolding a paper: "Middle height, short neck, broad shoulders, high cheek bones, large nose, black eyes, sandy beard, thin lips, a brown mole on the forehead."

Folding up the paper, he added:

"Now you'll be sure to recognise him if you meet him!"

"With such a description, it would be impossible to mistake him."

"Then, as the song says, 'good night, my friends'; I leave you to go and hunt my game."

The murderer ceased to breathe. While listening to the brigadier's departure, he calculated that a few hours only separated him from the frontier, and already he saw himself in safety.

He was about raising his head, when the heavy boots of the gendarme, taking a new direction, resounded suddenly in his ears.

The gendarme stopped, two paces from the table at which he was seated; and the murderer felt his look turned upon him.

His blood seemed to freeze in his veins. A cold perspiration burst from all his pores, and his heart appeared to him to cease beating.

"By the way," cried the brigadier, "here's a party who is sleeping pretty soundly."

And he struck him on the shoulder.

"Hallo, my friend, hold your head up a little; I want to see your phiz."

Pierre Picard raised his head sharply; the expression of his face was frightful. His livid features were horribly contracted, his blood-shot eyes darted flames, and a nervous trembling agitated his thin and close-pressed lips.

"It's he!" cried ten voices at once.

The brigadier put out his hand to seize him by the collar, but before he could touch him, the murderer struck him two heavy blows with his fist in the eyes and blinded him; then, springing through the window into the garden, he disappeared.

Recovered from the surprise which had at first paralysed them, twenty young men dashed off in pursuit of him. At a bound he cleared the garden hedge, gained the fields, and in less than ten minutes was half a league away from the village.

After making sure that the unevenness of the ground prevented him from being seen, he paused for a moment to take breath, for he was quite exhausted and would have sunk down senseless if this furious flight had continued twenty seconds longer.

But he had hardly seated himself, before confused cries struck upon his ears. He rose and listened.

It was his pursuers.

What was he to do? Exhausted, breathless, he could run no further and they