Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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Evidently, in the servants’ quarters, there had been much talk about what was going on, and about the probable arrival of the police. Every time the door bell rang, they were expected. In a tone of suppressed rage the chauffeur kept saying to his companions below stairs—

“So the captain couldn’t think of anything to do but put a bullet through his head! Well this ship is going down, I tell you! Who’s going to pay us our wages?”

Robledo returned to the centre of the city for dinner, and called up Torre Bianca several times during the course of it.

At nearly twelve o’clock the butler replied that his master had just come in, and Robledo hurried back to his friend’s home.

He found Federico in the library. The latter had aged over night as though the last few hours had been so many years. Impulsively Torre embraced his friend, turning instinctively to him for support.

The poor Marquis was not only startled, he was bewildered. Never had he lived through so many emotions in so short a space of time. That morning, like Robledo, he had felt the confidence and pleasure that the golden beauty of the day inspired. What a pleasure to be alive!... And then the summons of the telephone, the ghastly news, the rush to Fontenoy’s apartment, the sight of his friend’s body on the bed; and the grisly crowd a violent death always assembles, for that detail that seems so grotesquely insignificant before the reality of death, the autopsy....