The Frontier by Maurice LeBlanc

The three women met in the drawing-room. Mme. Morestal walked up and down in dismay, hardly knowing what she was saying:

"Not in! . Philippe neither! . Victor, you must run. but where to? . Where is he to look? . Oh, it's really too terrible! ."

She suddenly stepped in front of Marthe and stammered:

"The. the shots. last night."

Marthe, pale with anxiety, did not reply. She had had the same awful thought from the first moment.

But Suzanne exclaimed:

"In any case, Marthe, you need not be alarmed. Philippe did not take the road by the frontier."

"Are you sure?"

"We separated at the Carrefour du Grand-Chene. M. Morestal and papa went on by themselves. Philippe came straight back."

"No, he can't have come straight back, or he would be here now," said Marthe. "What can he have been doing all night? He has not even set foot in his room!"

But Mme. Morestal was terrified by what Suzanne had said. She could now no longer doubt that her husband had taken the frontier-road; and the shots had come from the frontier!

"Yes, that's true," said Suzanne, "but it was only ten o'clock when we started from Saint-Elophe and the shots which you heard were fired at one or two o'clock in the morning. You said so yourself."

"How can I tell? " cried the old lady, who was beginning to lose her head entirely. "It may have been much earlier."

"But your father must know," said Marthe to Suzanne. "Did he tell you nothing?"

"I have not seen my father this morning," said Suzanne. "He was not awake."

She had not time to finish her sentence before an idea burst in upon her, an idea so natural that the two other women were struck by it also and none of them dared put it into words.

Suzanne flew to the door, but Marthe held her back. Why not telephone to Saint-Elophe, to the special commissary's house?

A minute later, M. Jorance's servant replied that she had just noticed that her master was not in. His bed had not been touched either.

"Oh! " said Suzanne, trembling all over. "My poor father! . Can anything have happened to him? . My poor father! I ought to have."

They stood for a moment as though paralyzed, all three, and incapable of taking a resolution. The man-servant went out saying that he would saddle the horse and gallop to the Col du Diable.