He listened a moment and
hissed out:
"They _both_ were, you idiot! How can I tell for certain whether you are
my son or not? It all comes to the same. Of course I wrote the letter.
Come on, you cowardly assassin, you bastard parricide!" ... and he
advanced on me with his creese low down in his right hand, the point
upward, and made a thrust, shrieking out, "Break open the door! quick!"
They did; but too late!
[Illustration: "BASTARD! PARRICIDE!"]
I saw crimson!
He missed me, and I brought down my stick on his left arm, which he held
over his head, and then on his head, and he fell, crying:
"O my God! O Christ!"
I struck him again on his head as he was falling, and once again when he
was on the ground. It seemed to crash right in.
That is why and how I killed Uncle Ibbetson.
Part Five
[Illustration]
"_Grouille, greve, greve, grouille,
File, file, ma quenouille!
File sa corde au bourreau
Qui siffle dans le preau..._"
So sang the old hag in _Notre Dame de Paris!_
So sang to me night and day, for many nights and days, the thin small
voice that always went piping inside me, now to one tune, now to
another, but always the same words--that terrible refrain that used to
haunt me so when I was a school-boy at Bluefriars!
Oh, to be a school-boy again in a long gray coat and ridiculous pink
stockings--innocent and free--with Esmeralda for my only love, and Athos
and Porthos and D'Artagnan for my bosom friends, and no worse
tribulation than to be told on a Saturday afternoon that the third
volume was in hand--_volume trois en lecture_'.
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