There was nothing in the
barrels, nothing but the golden sunlight, which glinted along
the polished steel.
CHAPTER XIV
QUI M'AIME, AIME MON CHIEN
On making this discovery Maurice was inclined to declaim in that
vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was
no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun
barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had
been as unsuspicious as a Highland gillie. Madame had tricked
him; the countess had tricked him, the Colonel and Fitzgerald.
That Madame had tricked him created no surprise; what irritated
him most was the conviction that Fitzgerald was laughing in his
sleeve, and that he had misjudged the Englishman's capacity for
dissimulation. Very well. He threw the gun on the bed; he took
Fitzgerald's pipe from his pocket and cast it after the gun, and
with a gesture which placed all the contents of the room under
the ban of his anathema, he strode out into the corridor, thence
to the office.
Here the message to Madame from Beauvais flashed back. The
Colonel of the royal cuirassiers had lied; he had found the
certificates.
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