After Dark

by Wilkie Collins

  Here the note abruptly terminated. As he folded it up and put it in hispocket, Lomaque sighed. This was a very rare expression of feeling withhim. He leaned back in his chair, and beat his nails impatiently on thetable. Suddenly there was a faint little tap at the room door, and eightor ten men--evidently familiars of the new French Inquisition--quietlyentered, and ranged themselves against the wall.

  Lomaque nodded to two of them. "Picard and Magloire, go and sit downat that desk. I shall want you after the rest are gone." Saying this,Lomaque handed certain sealed and docketed papers to the other menwaiting in the room, who received them in silence, bowed, and wentout. Innocent spectators might have thought them clerks taking billsof lading from a merchant. Who could have imagined that the givingand receiving of Denunciations, Arrest-orders, and Death-warrants--theproviding of its doomed human meal for the all-devouringguillotine--could have been managed so coolly and quietly, with suchunruffled calmness of official routine?

  "Now," said Lomaque, turning to the two men at the desk, as the doorclosed, "have you got those notes about you?" (They answered in theaffirmative.) "Picard, you have the first particulars of this affair ofTrudaine; so you must begin reading. I have sent in the reports; but wemay as well go over the evidence again from the commencement, to makesure that nothing has been left out. If any corrections are to be made,now is the time to make them. Read, Picard, and lose as little time asyou possibly can."

  Thus admonished, Picard drew some long slips of paper from his pocket,and began reading from them as follows: