Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/195

 between six and nine o'clock, that somebody went to the garage and filed the steering-rod three quarters through."

"I don't understand. I don't understand," she said, with a scared look.

"You understand perfectly well that the accomplice of the ruffians cannot be one of the new servants, and you understand perfectly well that the job was bound to succeed and that it did succeed, beyond their hopes. There is a victim, who suffers instead of myself."

"But tell me what has happened, Monsieur! You frighten me! What accident? What was it?"

"The motor car was overturned. The chauffeur is dead."

"Oh," she said, "how horrible! And you think that I can have Oh, dead, how horrible! Poor man!"

Her voice grew fainter. She was standing opposite to Perenna, close up against him. Pale and swooning, she closed her eyes, staggered.

He caught her in his arms as she fell. She tried to release herself, but had not the strength; and he laid her in a chair, while she moaned, repeatedly:

"Poor man! Poor man!"

Keeping one of his arms under the girl's head, he took a handkerchief in the other hand and wiped her forehead, which was wet with perspiration, and her pallid cheeks, down which the tears streamed.

She must have lost consciousness entirely, for she surrendered herself to Perenna's cares without the least resistance. And he, making no further movement, began anxiously to examine the mouth before his eyes, the mouth with the lips usually so red, now bloodless and discoloured.

Gently passing one of his fingers over each of them,