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Updated: June 22, 2025
Whereupon M. de Simoncourt honored me with a passing bow, and took his departure. Being near the window, I saw him spring into an elegant cabriolet, and drive off with the showiest of high horses and the tiniest of tigers. He was no sooner gone than Dalrymple took me by the shoulders, placed me in an easy chair, poured out a couple of glasses of hock, and said:
It was not De Simoncourt, however, but a tall man with a grizzled beard, who crossed over, apprehensively, at our approach, but recrossed and went into the white house at the corner as soon as he thought us out of sight. "One of the gang," said Dalrymple, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "We had better go back to our doorway, and wait till the right man comes." We had not long to wait.
The door opened immediately, and, after we had passed in, closed behind us without any visible agency. Still following at the heels of M. de Simoncourt, we then went up a spacious staircase dimly lighted, and, leaving our hats in an ante-room, entered unannounced into an elegant salon, where some twenty or thirty habitués of both sexes had already commenced the business of the evening.
For a moment he once more stood upright. His eye burned; his lips contracted; he seemed to gather up all his strength for one last effort. Slowly, steadily, surely, he raised his pistol then swaying heavily back, fired, and fell again. "Dead this time, sure enough," said De Simoncourt, bending over him. "Indeed, I fear so," replied Dalrymple, in a low, grave voice.
De Caylus took his pistols one by one, weighed and poised them, examined the priming, and finally, after much hesitation, decided. Dalrymple took the first that came to hand. The combatants then took their places De Caylus with his hat pulled low over his eyes; Dalrymple still smoking carelessly. They exchanged bows. "Major Dalrymple," said De Simoncourt, "it is for you to fire first."
They both looked up as I was announced, and Dalrymple, welcoming me with a hearty grasp, introduced this gentleman as Monsieur de Simoncourt. M. de Simoncourt bowed, knocked the ash from his cigar, and looked as if he wished me at the Antipodes. Dalrymple was really glad to see me. "I have been expecting you, Arbuthnot," said he, "for the last week.
"Fifteen hundred may be half its cost," said he; "but I doubt if I am paying much less than its full value. Just see that these are right." M. de Simoncourt ruffled the papers daintily over, and consigned them to his pocket-book. As he did so, I could not help observing the whiteness of his hands and the sparkle of a huge brilliant on his little finger.
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