h you have carried out your
official duties."

The secretary and the police agent, Madame Simonneau showing the way,
carried the body up to the first floor.

Monsieur Josse-Arbrissel was biting his nails and looking into space.

"A tragedy of jealousy," he remarked, "nothing is more common. We have
here in Neuilly a steady average of self-inflicted deaths. Out of a
hundred suicides thirty are caused by gambling. The others are due to
disappointment in love, poverty, or incurable disease."

"Chevalier?" inquired Dr. Hibry, who was a lover of the theatre,
"Chevalier? Wait a minute! I have seen him; I saw him at a benefit
performance, at the Varietes. Of course! He recited a monologue."

The dog howled outside the garden gate.

"You cannot imagine," resumed the commissary, "the disasters caused in
this municipality by the _pari mutuel_. I am not exaggerating when I
assert that at least thirty per cent of the suicides which I have to
look into are caused by gambling. Everybody gambles here. Every
hairdresser's shop is a clandestine betting agency. No later than last
week a concierge in the Avenue du Roule was found hanging from a tree in
the Bois de Boulogne. Now, working men, servants, and junior clerks who
gamble do not need to take their own lives. They move to another
quarter, they disappear. But a man of position, an official whom
gambling has ruined, who is overwhelmed by clamorous creditors,
threatened with distraint, and on the point of being dragged before a
court of justice, cannot disappear. What is to become of him?"

"I have it!" exclaimed the physician. "He recited _The Duel in the
Prairie_. People are rather tired of monologues, but that is very funny.
You remember! 'Will you fight with the sword?' 'No, sir.' 'The pistol?'
'No, sir.' 'The sabre, the knife?' 'No, sir.' 'Ah, then, I see what you
want. You are not fastidious. What you want is a duel in the prairie. I
agree. We will replace the prairie by a five-storied house. You are
permitted to conceal yourself in the vegetation.' Chevalier used to
recite _The Duel in the Prairie_ in a very humorous manner. He amused me
greatly that night. It is true that I am not an ungrateful audience; I
worship the theatre."

The commissary was not listening. He was following up his own train of
thought.

"It will never be known, how many fortunes and lives are devoured each
year by the _pari mutuel_. Gambling never releases its victims; when it
has despoiled the