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“Yes, it was I. So you see very well that you can expect no clemency if you do not tell the whole truth.”

“Kindly listen to me then, and you will know all of it.”

“I’m listening.”

“I had been warned by the authorities that a notorious counterfeiter would be coming to my inn with several of his companions, all of them disguised as guards or musketeers. Your horses, your lackeys, your looks, my lords, had all been described to me.”

“And then, and then?” said d’Artagnan, who quickly realized where so exact a description had come from.

“Following the orders of the authorities, who sent me a reinforcement of six men, I took such measures as I believed necessary to secure the persons of the presumed counterfeiters.”

“Go on!” said d’Artagnan, whose ears burned terribly at the word “counterfeiters.”

“Forgive me, Monseigneur, for saying such things, but they are precisely my excuse. The authorities had frightened me, and you know that an innkeeper must get along with the authorities.”

“But, once again, where is this gentleman? What has become of him? Is he dead or alive?”

“Patience, Monseigneur, I’m coming to that. What happened then you know, and your precipitous departure,” the host added, with a subtlety that was by no means lost on d’Artagnan, “seemed to authorize the outcome. This gentleman friend of yours defended himself desperately. His valet, who, by an unforeseen misfortune, had picked a quarrel with some agents of the authorities, who were disguised as stable boys…”

“Ah, you wretch!” cried d’Artagnan. “You were all in it together, and I don’t know what keeps me from exterminating you all!”

“Alas, no, Monseigneur, we were not in it together, as you shall soon see. Monsieur your friend (forgive me for not calling him by the honorable name he undoubtedly bears, but I do not know that name), Monsieur your friend, after having put two men out of combat with two pistol shots, beat a retreat while defending himself with his sword, with which he disabled another of my men and knocked me out with a blow of the flat side.”

“You torturer, will you never finish?” said d’Artagnan. “Athos, what became of Athos?”

“While beating a retreat, as I have told Monseigneur, he found behind him the stairway to the cellar, and as the door was open, he took the key with him and barricaded it from inside. Since we knew where to find him, we left him there.”

“Yes,” said d’Artagnan, “you didn’t insist on killing him outright, you only wanted to imprison him.”

“Good God! imprison him, Monseigneur? Why, he imprisoned himself, I swear to you. First of all, he had made a nice job of it: one man had been killed on the spot, and two others had been seriously wounded. The dead man and the two wounded ones were carried off by their comrades, and I haven’t heard another word about any of them. As for me, when I came to my senses, I went to find the governor, told him everything that had happened, and asked what I should do with the prisoner. But the governor seemed to have dropped from the sky. He told me he had no idea what I was talking about, that the orders I had received had not come from him, and that if I was so unfortunate as to tell anyone that he had something to do with this brawl, he would have me hanged. It seems I was mistaken, Monsieur, that I had arrested the wrong man, and that the one who should have been arrested had escaped.”

“But Athos?” cried d’Artagnan, whose impatience was doubled by the authorities’ abandoning of the thing. “What has become of Athos?”

“As I was in haste to repair the wrongs I had done the prisoner,” the innkeeper went on, “I headed for the cellar in order to set him free. Ah, Monsieur, this was no longer a man, this was a devil! To the proposal of freedom, he replied that it was a trap set for him, and that he intended to lay down his conditions before coming out. I told him quite humbly, for I did not conceal from myself the bad position I had put myself in by laying hands on one of His Majesty’s musketeers, I told him that I was ready