The Salt Smugglers Read Online Free

his attorney, that he knew what was afoot, and that as far as provoking an incident was concerned, he certainly was a great enough gentleman to know how to take things into his own hands.
    Basse-Maison, irritated by these comments, went up to Le Pileur and, taking hold of him by the two buttonholes of his jerkin, said to him that he would thwart any attempt of his to do so; — Le Pileur put his hand to his sword, Basse-Maison did likewise ...

    Observing a safe distance from each other, Basse-Maison and Le Pileur waved their swords around a bit. Le Pileur’s wife threw herself between her husband and her brother; then the others came to her assistance and managed to drag each of the combatants into separate rooms, which were then locked.
    A moment later there was the sound of a window opening; it was Le Pileur bellowing to his servants down in the courtyard: « Go fetch my nephews! »
    The attorneys were in the process of writing up a legal report about the scuffle when the two nephews burst into the room, sabers in hand. — They were both officers of the Royal Guard; — pushing the servants aside and presenting the points of their swords to the two attorneys and the notary, they asked where Basse-Maison was.
    Nobody would tell them, whereupon Le Pileur shouted from his room: « Over here, my boys! »
    But the nephews had already battered down the door to the room at the left and were beating the hapless Binet de Basse-Maison, — who, according to the police file, was « h asthmatic », — with the flats of their sabers.
    The notary, whose name was Dionis, thinking that Le Pileur’s anger would have been appeased by this point and hoping that he would call off his nephews, decided to unlock him from his room while admonishing him to remain calm. Le Pileur lunged through the door, shouting: « Now you’ll see some fireworks! » He rushed over to where his nephews were still beating Basse-Maison and planted his sword in the latter’s belly.
    The police file relating these events is followed by a more detailed dossier containing the depositions of thirteen witnesses, — the most eminent of whom were the two attorneys and the notary.
    It should be observed that each of these thirteen
witnesses seems to have flinched at the crucial moment. As a result, none is absolutely certain that Le Pileur stabbed Basse-Maison to death with his sword.
    The first attorney swears that he can only be sure of having heard the sound of saber blows in the distance.
    The second attorney agrees with his colleague.
    A manservant by the name of Barry is somewhat more forthcoming: — he saw the murder from a distant window; but he does not know whether it was Le Pileur or someone dressed in light gray who actually delivered the fatal blow to Basse-Maison’s belly. Louis Calot, another servant, more or less corroborates this deposition.
    The last of this courageous band and the least eminent of the thirteen, namely, the notary’s clerk, claims to have seen Le Pileur’s wife make off with some of the papers of the deceased. According to him, after the crime Le Pileur calmly went to the room where his wife was and « then went off in his carriage with her and the two men who had caused the ruckus. »
    The moral of this instructive tale, at least as concerns the mores of the period, seems to be lacking, — that is, until one comes across the following remarkable conclusion at the end of the report: « There are few examples of an act of violence so odious and so criminal ... But given the fact that the heirs of the two dead brothers are at the same time the brothers-in-law of the murderer, it is safe to assume that this murder shall go unpunished and shall have no consequence other than to render his lordship Le Pileur more agreeable to the various propositions emanating from his co-legatees in those matters touching upon their mutual interests. »
    It has been observed that