a good thing!" said Mazeroux, greatly relieved and failing to see the joke. "But for that, as you saw for yourself, you would have been done for."
Don Luis entered. In the room were the public prosecutor, the examining magistrate, the chief detective, the local commissary of police, two inspectors, and three constables in uniform.
Outside, on the Boulevard Suchet, shouts were raised; and, when the commissary and his three policemen went out, by the Prefect's orders, to listen to the crowd, the hoarse voice of a newsboy was heard shouting:
"The double murder on the Boulevard Suchet! Full particulars of the death of Inspector Vérot! The police at a loss!—"
Then, when the door was closed, all was silent.
"Mazeroux was quite right," thought Don Luis. "It's I or the other one: that's clear. Unless the words that will be spoken and the facts that will come to light in the course of this examination supply me with some clue that will enable me to give them the name of that mysterious X, they'll surrender me this evening for the people to batten on. Attention, Lupin, old chap, the great game is about to commence!"
He felt that thrill of delight which always ran through him at the approach of the great struggles. This one, indeed, might be numbered among the most terrible that he had yet sustained.
He knew the Prefect's reputation, his experience, his tenacity, and the keen pleasure which he took in conducting important inquiries and in personally pushing them to a conclusion before placing them in the magistrate's hands; and he also knew all the professional qualities of the chief detective, and all the subtlety, all the penetrating logic possessed by the examining magistrate.
The Prefect of Police himself directed the attack. He did so in a straightforward fashion, without beating about the bush, and in a rather harsh voice, which had lost its former tone of sympathy for Don Luis. His attitude also was more formal and lacked that geniality which had struck Don Luis on the previous day.
"Monsieur," he said, "circumstances having brought about that, as the residuary legatee and representative of Mr. Cosmo Mornington, you spent the night on this ground floor while a double murder was being committed here, we wish to receive your detailed evidence as to the different incidents that occurred last night."
"In other words, Monsieur le Préfet," said Perenna, replying directly to the attack, "in other words, circumstances having brought about that you authorized me to spend the night here, you would like to know if my evidence corresponds at all points with that of Sergeant Mazeroux?"
"Yes."
"Meaning that the part played by myself strikes you as suspicious?"
M. Desmalions hesitated. His eyes met Don Luis's eyes; and he was visibly impressed by the other's frank glance. Nevertheless he replied, plainly and bluntly:
"It is not for you to ask me questions, Monsieur."
Don Luis bowed.
"I am at your orders, Monsieur le Préfet."
"Please tell us what you know."
Don Luis thereupon gave a minute account of events, after which M.
Desmalions reflected for a few moments and said:
"There is one point on which we want to be informed. When you entered this room at half-past two this morning and sat down beside M. Fauville, was there nothing to tell you that he was dead?"
"Nothing, Monsieur le Préfet. Otherwise, Sergeant Mazeroux and I would have given the alarm."
"Was the garden door shut?"
"It must have been, as we had to unlock it at seven o'clock."
"With what?"
"With the key on the bunch."
"But how could the murderers, coming from the outside, have opened it?"
"With false keys."
"Have you a proof which allows you to suppose that it was opened with false keys?"
"No, Monsieur le Préfet."
"Therefore, until we have proofs to the contrary, we are bound to believe that it was not opened from the outside, and that the criminal was inside the house."
"But, Monsieur le Préfet, there was no one here but Sergeant Mazeroux and myself!"
There was a silence, a pause whose meaning admitted of no doubt.
M. Desmalions's next words gave it an even more precise value.
"You did not sleep during the night?"
"Yes, toward the end."
"You did not sleep before, while you were in the passage?"
"No."
"And Sergeant Mazeroux?"
Don Luis remained undecided for a moment; but how could he hope that the honest and scrupulous Mazeroux had disobeyed the dictates of his conscience?
He replied:
"Sergeant Mazeroux went to sleep in his chair and did not wake until Mme.
Fauville returned, two hours later."
There was a fresh silence, which evidently meant:
"So, during the two hours when Sergeant Mazeroux was asleep, it was physically possible for you to open the door and kill the two Fauvilles."
The examination was taking the course which Perenna had foreseen; and the circle was drawing closer and closer around him. His adversary was conducting the contest with a logic and vigour which he admired without reserve.
"By Jove!" he thought. "How difficult it is to defend one's self when one is innocent. There's my right wing and my left wing driven in. Will my centre be able to stand the assault?"
M. Desmalions, after a whispered colloquy with the examining magistrate, resumed his questions in these terms:
"Yesterday evening, when M. Fauville opened his safe in your presence and the sergeant's, what was in the safe?"
"A heap of papers, on one of the shelves; and, among those papers, the diary in drab cloth which has since disappeared."
"You did not touch those papers?"
"Neither the papers nor the safe, Monsieur le Préfet. Sergeant Mazeroux must have told you that he made me stand aside, to insure the regularity of the inquiry."
"So you never came into the slightest contact with the safe?"
"Not the slightest."
M. Desmalions looked at the examining magistrate and nodded his head. Had Perenna been able to doubt that a trap was being laid for him, a glance at Mazeroux would have told him all about it. Mazeroux was ashen gray.
Meanwhile, M. Desmalions continued:
"You have taken part in inquiries, Monsieur, in police inquiries. Therefore, in putting my next question to you, I consider that I am addressing it to a tried detective."
"I will answer your question, Monsieur le Préfet, to the best of my ability."
"Here it is, then: Supposing that there were at this moment in the safe an object of some kind, a jewel, let us say, a diamond out of a tie pin, and that this diamond had come from a tie pin which belonged to somebody whom we knew, somebody who had spent the night in this house, what would you think of the coincidence?"
"There we are," said Perenna to himself. "There's the trap. It's clear that they've found something in the safe, and next, that they imagine that this something belongs to me. Good! But, in that case, we must presume, as I have not touched the safe, that the thing was taken from me and put in the safe to compromise me. But I did not have a finger in this pie until yesterday; and it is impossible that, during last night, when I saw nobody, any one can have had time to prepare and contrive such a determined