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Words: 101175 in 78 pages
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CHAPTER
A BLOOD-RED SKY
It was late in the afternoon of a hot July day, the hottest day Paris had known that year and M. Coquenil, followed by a splendid white-and-brown shepherd dog, was walking down the Rue de la Cit?, past the somber mass of the city hospital. Before reaching the Place Notre-Dame he stopped twice, once at a flower market that offered the grateful shade of its gnarled polenia trees just beyond the Conciergerie prison, and once under the heavy archway of the Prefecture de Police. At the flower market he bought a white carnation from a woman in green apron and wooden shoes, who looked in awe at his pale, grave face, and thrilled when he gave her a smile and friendly word. She wondered if it was true, as people said, that M. Coquenil always wore glasses with a slightly bluish tint so that no one could see his eyes.
Il nous faut-o Beau Cocono-o!
And then what a change within a week! What bitterness and humiliation! M. Paul Coquenil, after scores of brilliant successes, had withdrawn from the police force for personal reasons, said the newspapers. His health was affected, some declared; he had laid by a tidy fortune and wished to enjoy it, thought others; but many shook their heads mysteriously and whispered that there was something queer in all this. Coquenil himself said nothing.
M. Coquenil had reached this point in his musings when he caught sight of a red-faced man, with a large purplish nose and a suspiciously black mustache , coming forward from the prefecture to meet him.
"Ah, Papa Tignol!" he said briskly. "How goes it?"
"Always croaking!" laughed the other. "Why, it's a fine sunset, man!"
Tignol answered slowly, with objecting nod: "It's too red. And it's barred with purple!"
"Like your nose. Ha, ha!" And Coquenil's face lighted gaily. "Forgive me, Papa Tignol."
It was true, Coquenil's look had deepened into one of somber reminiscence.
"You mean the murders in the Rue Montaigne?"
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