"What are you doing?" asked the Vicomte, sharply.
"I am telegraphing to Madame de Clericy to return home."
There was a silence in the room while I wrote out the message and despatched it by a servant. The Vicomte made no attempt to stop me.
"Here," he said, when the door was closed--and he handed Giraud the key of his own study. "The doctors and--the others--have placed him in my room--that is the key. You must consider this house as your own until the funeral is over; your poor father's house, I know, is in disorder."
Monsieur de Clericy would have it that the Baron should be buried from the Rue des Palmiers, which Alphonse Giraud recognised as in some sort an honour, for it proclaimed to the world the esteem in which the upstart nobleman was held in high quarters.
"I am glad," said my patron, with that air of fatherliness which he wore towards me from the first, "that you have telegraphed for my wife--the house is different when she is in it. When can she be here?"
"It is just possible that she may be with us to-morrow at this time--by driving rapidly to Toulon."
"With promptitude," muttered the Vicomte, musingly.
"Yes--such as one may expect from Madame."
The Vicomte looked up at me with a smile.
"Ah!--you have discovered that. One is never safe with you men who know horses. You find out so much from observation."
But I think it is no great thing to have discovered that one may usually look for prompt action in men and women of a quiet tongue.
Lucille's name was not mentioned between us. My own desires and feelings had been pushed into the background by the events of the last few days, and he is but half a man who cannot submit cheerfully to such treatment at the hand of Fate from time to time.
During the day we learnt further details respecting the theft of the money, amounting in all to rather more than eight hundred thousand pounds of our coinage. Miste, it appeared, had been instructed to leave Paris by the eight o'clock train that morning for London, taking with him a large sum. The Vicomte had handed him the money the previous evening.
"I carelessly replaced the remainder in the drawer of my writing-table," my patron told us, "before the eyes of that scoundrel. I went to the drawer this morning, having been uneasy about so large a sum--it was arranged that I should see Miste off from the Gare du Nord. Figure to yourselves! The drawer was empty. I hastened to the railway station. Miste was, of course, not there."