"You will please stand quite still," said Madame, speaking the slightly tinged Irish-English of her birth, "for if I shoot, le Capitaine Rouille will be no more. See! Upon my dressing-table behind you is a small vase supporting a rose. I will cut off its stem," She quickly moved the pistol, and fired. "You may turn round." He obeyed, and saw that the vase was unbroken, but that the rose, cut off at the stem, lay upon the dressing-table. Behind it appeared a bullet-hole in the plaster of the wall.
Madame flicked the spent cartridge off her counterpane, where it had fallen upon ejection, and resumed. "I have rung the bell, and in a moment there will be a most interested audience. You will then please explain what brings you to my bedroom."
He had faced round towards her again, and his poor mind was a blank. The situation was too big for him. He had fallen into a trap, but why it had been set he could not guess. Who was this calmly capable, straight-shooting widow who, with the copper hair falling over her shoulders and streaming down the front of her dainty nightdress, appeared in action even more lovely than in repose?
The first to arrive was Marie, then followed another _femme de chambre_, then came the night porter, then the boot-collector, last, with eyes opened wide at the surprising spectacle of a beautiful young woman receiving her lover at the point of a pistol, appeared _monsieur le patron_ himself. They clustered in a group by the door. "I think," said Madame serenely, "that we have enough. Marie, the house is full; shut the door and lock it." The order was obeyed. "Now," went on the commanding voice from the bed, using French for the effective shutting out of the English boot-cleaner and night porter, "if you men will turn your backs, and Marie will hand me my dressing-gown, I will prepare myself for the examination of Monsieur le Capitaine Rouille. It is not seemly that a court of inquiry should be conducted in a nightdress."
The men turned round, or were pushed round. Marie--gasping with wonder at the whole incredible business, so unlike that which she had suggested--brought the silk dressing-gown and robed Madame, who skipped out of bed for the purpose. Then the fair _juge d'instruction,_ wrapped to the neck in blue silk, and looking prettier than ever, propped herself upon the pillows and opened the court.