M. Moche was lost in astonishment at the strange attitude of the two and the amazing things they were saying! Bending down over the sink, Nini and Paulet were letting the water pour over each other’s hands, which they were soaping in feverish haste, while red soapsuds dripped between their fingers into the trough. Paulet was saying: “Buck up, Nini! Don’t let the flies grow on you ... once the stuff dries on our fingers, there’d be the devil’s own job to get it off afterwards!” “I know that,” muttered Nini in a trembling voice. Then she added: “But, look, I’ve got some on my apron, too.” “Lather it well,” her lover told her, “and if it _won’t_ come off, we’ll chuck the thing in the fire.” Paulet half turned round and reached down from a shelf a heavy hammer stained with blood, which he set to work to sponge carefully. “That’s mighty dangerous, too,” he observed, “if it’s not wiped clean.” M. Moche could form a pretty shrewd notion of what had occurred before he arrived. Mechanically he mounted the three or four steps that still separated him from the landing of the floor occupied by Paulet and Nini. The door stood ajar—a crazy piece of imprudence! M. Moche pushed it open softly and made his way stealthily along the little passage at the end of which was the kitchen. Suddenly, in the half dark, his foot struck against something. M. Moche, his sight getting accustomed to the dim light, gazed down at this “something” with haggard eyes—it was the body of a man lying quite still, face downwards on the floor!—the body of the bank collector! At the back of the neck showed a fearful wound. The thing was beyond a doubt—Paulet had murdered the employé from the Comptoir National. The unfortunate man’s wallet lay beside him, wide open, and M. Moche could see that its contents had not yet been touched. The bank notes stuck half out of the case, like the contents of a parcel that has been ripped up; you had only to stoop to help yourself. It was plain Paulet and Nini, their victim once dead, had merely shut to the door, without making sure it was fastened, calm and confident in their conviction that nobody in the house, empty at this hour of the day, would come in to surprise them. The deed once done, they had deemed the most urgent thing was to set to work instantly to cleanse their hands and clothes in order to get rid of the evidences of their guilt at the earliest possible moment. The corpse lay absolutely motionless. Not a doubt the bank employé had been killed outright with one blow.