"But to think that I drove that rascally murderer in my cab, and put him down safe and sound not ten minutes ago!" came with the adjunct of a loud oath from the irate chauffeur. "How did it all occur?" The _gardiens_ tried to stem the flow of the driver's eloquence; such details should first be given to the police. _Voyons!_ But what were two fat _mouchards_ against twenty stalwart idlers all determined to hear--and then there were the women--they were determined to know more. Louisa bent her ear to listen. She was just outside the crowd--not a part of it--and there was no really morbid curiosity in her. It was only the call of the imagination which is irresistible on these occasions--the prosy, matter-of-fact, high-bred girl could not, just then, tear herself away from that cab and the tragedy which had been enacted therein, in the mysterious darkness whilst the unconscious driver sped along, ignorant of the gruesome burden which he was dragging to its destination. "_Voila!_" he was saying with many ejaculations and expletives, and a volley of excited gestures. "Outside the _Parc_ near the theatre two bourgeois hailed me, and one of them told me to draw up at the top of the Galerie St. Hubert, which I did. The same one--the one who had told me where to go--got out, clapped the door to and spoke a few words to his friend who had remained inside." "What did he say?" "Oh! I couldn't hear and I didn't listen. But after that he told me to drive on to Boulevard Waterloo No. 34 and here I am." "You suspected nothing?" "Nothing, how should I? Two bourgeois get into my cab; I see nothing; I hear nothing. One of them gets out and tells me to drive on farther. How should I think there's anything wrong?" "What was the other man like? The one who spoke to you?" "_Ma foi!_ I don't know. . . . It was raining so fast and pitch dark just outside the _Parc_ lights--and he did seem to keep in the shadow--now I come to think of it--and his cap--he wore a cap--was pulled well over his face--and the collar of his coat was up to his nose. It was raining so, I didn't really see him properly. I saw the other one better--the one who has been murdered." But the rotund _gardiens_ had had enough of this. Moreover, they would hear all about it at full length presently. As for the crowd--it had no business to know too much. They hustled the excited driver back on to his box, and themselves got into the cab beside it--the dead man, stabbed in the neck from ear to ear--the wound quite small as if it had been done with a skewer. The _gardiens_ ordered the chauffeur to drive to the commissariat, and Louisa turned away with a slight shiver down her spine and her throat choked with the horror of what she had only guessed. CHAPTER II ONCE MORE THE OBVIOUS