, moved by
fear and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the
horrible, which haunts the soul of every woman. One of them, paler than
the others, said during a pause:

"It's terrible. It verges on the supernatural. The truth will never be
known."

The judge turned to her:

"True, madame, it is likely that the actual facts will never be
discovered. As for the word 'supernatural' which you have just used, it
has nothing to do with the matter. We are in the presence of a very
cleverly conceived and executed crime, so well enshrouded in mystery that
we cannot disentangle it from the involved circumstances which surround
it. But once I had to take charge of an affair in which the uncanny
seemed to play a part. In fact, the case became so confused that it had
to be given up."

Several women exclaimed at once:

"Oh! Tell us about it!"

M. Bermutier smiled in a dignified manner, as a judge should, and went
on:

"Do not think, however, that I, for one minute, ascribed anything in the
case to supernatural influences. I believe only in normal causes. But if,
instead of using the word 'supernatural' to express what we do not
understand, we were simply to make use of the word 'inexplicable,' it
would be much better. At any rate, in the affair of which I am about to
tell you, it is especially the surrounding, preliminary circumstances
which impressed me. Here are the facts:

"I was, at that time, a judge at Ajaccio, a little white city on the edge
of a bay which is surrounded by high mountains.

"The majority of the cases which came up before me concerned vendettas.
There are some that are superb, dramatic, ferocious, heroic. We find
there the most beautiful causes for revenge of which one could dream,
enmities hundreds of years old, quieted for a time but never
extinguished; abominable stratagems, murders becoming massacres and
almost deeds of glory. For two years I heard of nothing but the price of
blood, of this terrible Corsican prejudice which compels revenge for
insults meted out to the offending person and all his descendants and
relatives. I had seen old men, children, cousins murdered; my head was
full of these stories.

"One day I learned that an Englishman had just hired a little villa at
the end of the bay for several years. He had brought with him a French
servant, whom he had engaged on the way at Marseilles.

"Soon this peculiar person, living alone, only going out to hunt and
fish, arou