She took up a handful of notes. She did not bother to count them, for she knew now what she must do, then she glanced round the room as if in search of something.

Jeanne had left her dolman trimmed with jet lying over the chair in case she wished to go out during the afternoon. Beside it was her hat, gloves and a little muff of black fur. Emilie walked across the room and picked up the muff. Her hand holding the pistol slipped into it. It was a most effective place of concealment.

Next she set both her muff and the notes she held down on the dressing table. It took her but a moment to place her hat on her head, to pin it securely with its two jet hatpins, to put on the dolman over her dress of silk. Henry Dulton would not be surprised at her re-entering the room with her muff in her hand. She would tell him that she was going out.

Now she was ready. She glanced at herself in the mirror. For a moment she wondered if the stranger who faced her was herself. She had no idea that her face could look so strange or her eyes could shine so venomously.

‘Bullets are more effective than words!’

Yes, she could hear Léon’s voice distinctly. He had known the value of money. She moved across the room, held the muff under her arm for one second as she opened the door, then slipped her hand into it again and entered the sitting room.

Henry Dulton was sitting where she had left him, his legs stretched out comfortably, a cigar between his lips. He made no attempt to rise at her entrance. Fiercely she resented the gross familiarity of his ill manners.

‘Got the money?’ he asked. ‘Good for you! I’ll say that for you, Madame – you always deliver the goods.’

‘Yes, I have always managed to do that so far,’ Emilie said, and her voice was quiet and very steady.

‘Count it, will you? I have no wish to give you too much.’

‘Not much fear of that,’ Henry Dulton said jovially. ‘If I know you it’s more likely to be too little. Give it to me.’

His hands reached up for the money greedily. He took the thick wad of francs from Emilie’s hand, balanced them on his knee, and licking the first finger of his right hand, he started to flick through them with a practised air.

‘You have missed one there,’ Emilie said, coming nearer so that she could bend down and touch the notes with her left hand.

‘I bet you I didn’t,’ he replied, but he went back to the beginning, concentrating intently on counting them.

‘Five thousand – ten – fifteen – twenty – twenty five – ’

It was then that Emilie shot him through the temple.