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But there was the devil of having a mind like Duchemin's: once it conceived a notion like that, it was all but impossible for him to dislodge it unless or until something happened to persuade him of his stupidity. Now to make his suspicions seem at all reasonable, a motive was lacking. And that worried the man hugely.
But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in Duchemin's vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens.
This last was the one nearest Duchemin, who was upon him so suddenly that it would be difficult to say which was the more surprised when Duchemin's stick struck down the pistol hand of the other with such force as must have broken his wrist.
Thus definite mental irritation was added to the physical discomforts he suffered. For if anything it was hotter on the high causse than it had been in the valley. An intermittent breeze imitated to vicious perfection draughts from a furnace. And if this were a short cut to Nant, Duchemin's judgment was gravely at fault.
But alas! the Café de l'Univers is no more what it was or I am grown over critical." What now of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the curé interposed a gentle correction.
The driver-guide of La Roque turned out to have been a thorough-paced scamp, well and ill-known to the gendarmerie; the wound sustained by Monsieur d'Aubrac bore testimony to the gravity of the affair, amply excusing Duchemin's interference and its fatal sequel; while the statements of Mesdames de Sévénié et de Montalais, duly becoming public property, bade fair to exalt the local reputation of André Duchemin to heroic stature.
"It is quite possible: when one moves about the world, one is visible n'est-ce pas, monsieur? But my home," Duchemin added, "is Paris." "I guess," said Phinuit in a tone of singular disappointment, "it must have been there I saw you." Duchemin's bow signified that he was content to let it go at that. Moreover, Monk was signalling to Phinuit with his expressive eyebrows.
At the end of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin's side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality.
"Mademoiselle de Montalais, monsieur: my granddaughter. And Eve ..." She turned to the third, to her whose voice of delightful accent was not in Duchemin's notion wholly French: "Madame de Montalais, my daughter by adoption, widow of my grandson, who died gloriously for his country at La Fère-Champenoise."
In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies. Duchemin's cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands.
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