The first room
evidently served for reception; there was a sideboard in one corner,
on which were the remains of a succulent repast, and dozens of empty
bottles. The second and third rooms were more especially devoted to
the business of the establishment. Long tables, covered with green
cloth, filled up the centre of each, and were strewed with cards, dice
and their boxes, croupier's rakes, and other implements of gaming.
The third room had been the scene of the crime. There upon the floor
lay the body of a man, a well-dressed man, wearing the white
kerseymere trousers, the light waistcoat, and long-tailed green coat
which were then in vogue. His clothes were all spotted and bedrabbled
with gore; his shirt was torn open, and plainly revealed the great
gaping wound from which his life's blood was quickly ebbing away.
The wounded man's head rested on the knee of the night porter, a
personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking
villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as
well as the letting them into the house.
"Oh, Anatole! my cherished one!" began the porter's wife. "Here are
the police. Tell us then, how this occurred."
"I will tell all I know," replied her husband, looking at the
police-officer. "This morning, when the clients had nearly all gone,
and I was sitting half asleep in the lodge, I heard--"
"Stop," said the police-officer, "not another word.
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