United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With some editing in the way of punctuation, it follows: "Dear old bean: Please advise Prefecture de Police without revealing your source of information, unidentified man found murdered on rapide arriving Gare de Lyon eight-thirty this morning stopped yesterday Hôtel Terminus, Lyons, under name of Comte de Lorgnes.
"De Lorgnes ?" Lanyard inclined his head. The woman breathed an invocation to the Deity and sank back against the wall, her face ghastly beneath its paint. "You know this?" "I was a passenger aboard the rapide, and saw the body before it was removed." Liane Delorme made an effort to speak, but only her breath rustled harshly on her dry lips.
Nor should I have lived through the dreadful moment when that British officer at Gibraltar held up those papers, neatly folded and sealed and bound with bright, inappropriately cheerful red tape, and with an icy eye demanded an explanation beyond human power to afford. All this would have been spared me. But, on the other hand, I could not now look back to that dinner on the Turin-Paris rapide.
Quietly, briefly, Lanyard told her of seeing the Comte de Lorgnes at dinner in Lyons; of the uneasiness he manifested, and the cumulative feeling of frustration and failure he so plainly betrayed as the last hours of his life wore on; of the Apaches who watched de Lorgnes in the café and the fact that one of them had contrived to secure a berth in the same carriage with his victim; of seeing the presumptive murderer slinking away from the train at Laroche; and of the discovery of the body, on the arrival of the rapide at the Gare de Lyon.
So he sat there hour after hour as the rapide roared westward, until it halted at the great echoing station of Châlons, where all four entered the buffet and hastily swallowed their café-au-lait. Afterwards they resumed their seats, and the train, with its two long, dusty wagons-lit, moved onward again, with Paris for its goal. The prisoner said little.
You will no doubt recollect the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of the Crédit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the château of Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon."
In spite of his extreme fatigue he woke up every time the rapide stopped. He was awake at Dijon, at four in the morning, and again at Laroche, about a quarter after six. There, peering out of the window to identify the station, he was startled to see the broad, round-shouldered back of Albert Dupont making away across the rails leaving the train!
Moreover, nothing could have suited his own purpose better than to proceed to Paris by way of Lyons. Nothing hindered the carrying out of his design. Still lost in thought and inattentive, Dupont entrained for Nimes and at that station changed to the rapide for Lyons, where duly at four o'clock with Lanyard still a discreet shadow he alighted in the Gare de Perrache.
Germain, is the man who I believe murdered Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes on the Lyons rapide, and who I know tried last night to murder Mademoiselle Delorme." "And I suppose that, in his big-hearted, wholesaler's way, he wouldn't mind making a bag of the lot of us tonight." "I'm afraid you have reason..."
But he is a serious man all the same and most fearfully busy always. 'We're going to meet him in the town, said Jimbo carelessly. 'You see, the Paris Rapide doesn't stop here. We shall come back with him by the 6.20. It gets here at 6.50, so he'll be in time for supper, if it's punctual. It usually is. And accordingly they went to Neuchatel and met the Paris train.
Word Of The Day