latter, however, brought up his pistol and shot the horse almost point-blank. It fell and thrashed in agony; blood splashed from the wound in pulses. Dubois turned away in disgust.
This time Inspector Leblanc wasn't content with the doctor's statement about the obvious lack of traces of murderous intent. He gave Dubois a gloomy and distrustful look and declared that he would make a careful investigation and would interrogate everyone in the house.
"Goddamn!" the owner of the house exclaimed, "Are you saying that this was a murder!"
"I'm saying nothing, monsieur," the policeman answered coldly, "I only know that it is the third sudden death on your estate in just a few days. You see, three shells which land in one place are suspicious."
"But there is no connection between these deaths... and there is no sense in them. All of them are quite explainable. It's abundantly clear that this is just an unhappy coincidence."
"By the nature of my occupation, I don't believe in coincidences," Leblanc dryly noted.
This time, Leblanc's investigation took several hours. The inspector was still unable to find evidence that the incident was anything other than an accident. At last he left the estate obviously dissatisfied, having said upon departing: "Be careful, monsieur Dubois". This phrase could be understood doubly: "beware of the unknown killer" or "beware of the truth being found out."
After Leblanc's investigation was finished, it was too late to go to Paris. Besides a new coachman would have to be found. Dubois was compelled to abandon the trip, indignantly feeling that the good bargain was slipping away through his fingers. But his troubles weren't limited to his business dealings. Several servants simultaneously declared an intention to quit their jobs. Dubois nevertheless managed to dissuade them; he promised to increase their salary, understanding that if the servants fled, it would increase the ill fame of the house and he would have to pay even more to the next ones. In addition, the coachman's death caused a scene with Jeannette, who declared a categorical unwillingness to live "under one roof with death" (she probably found this expression in one of the trashy novels which she was recently reading in large numbers). Dubois at first tried to persuade her, then shouted at her, then finally settled the issue with an expensive necklace which he had been going to give her in a more suitable situation. He thought at this moment that, had the most virtuous spouse been in Jeannette's place, the dispute still would have been solved in the same way, so contempt toward prostitutes is completely unjust: all women are equally venal.
Soon a letter informed Dubois that his worst presentiments had come true: his rival had used Dubois's canceled trip to his own advantage and what should have made profits turned into losses. It seemed that everything pushed Dubois to leave the house and to return to the city; however he was stubborn and wasn't accustomed to shrink back before obstacles–on the contrary, the more serious the impediments seemed, the stronger became his determination to overcome them; without this trait, he wouldn't have risen from a newsdealer boy to a successful businessman.
In the evening of the same day when the distressing news came, the estate owner and his paramour sat in the dining room waiting for dinner. Dubois mechanically bent and folded a napkin: half-and-half, again half-and-half... He always did such things when he was irritated. Suddenly the footman whose duties included serving at the table ran into the room out of breath.
"Monsieur, monsieur! The cook..."
"Don't say she's dead!" Dubois exclaimed.
"Not yet, monsieur... but she is very bad."
The old woman was in a really bad way: she was suffocating, her face had turned blue, and her body shuddered in spasms. On the floor lay a big spoon with morsels of food. Obviously, the cook had choked trying her own dish; Dubois, however, didn't understood it at once–at first he thought of poison. One of servants tried to help the cook while another ran for the doctor. But when Clavier arrived, everything was already over. The list of deaths grew longer.
This time Leblanc, apparently, was full of determination to arrest someone. He reviewed the incident very carefully; it became clear that at the moment of the cook's misfortune, only the footman and one of servants had no alibi. The inspector, however, didn't detain them and asked Dubois and the doctor to discuss the situation.
All three passed to Dubois's office, which previously had been the place of de Montreux's death; the