“I now come to a very important circumstance, and one which I should,
at the trial, make a decisive question, if it should be favorable to our
side. Your valet, my dear client,--your old Anthony,--told me that he
had cleaned and washed your breech-loader the night before the crime.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Jacques.
“Well, I see you appreciate the importance of the fact. Between that
cleaning and the time when you set a cartridge on fire, in order to burn
the letters of the Countess Claudieuse, did you fire your gun? If you
did, we must say nothing more about it. If you did not, one of the
barrels of the breech-loader must be clean, and then you are safe.”
For more than a minute, Jacques remained silent, trying to recall the
facts; at last he replied,--
“It seems to me, I am sure, I fired at a rabbit on the morning of the
fatal day.”