President of the Court, and held a short
discussion. Then they returned to their places and the President
announced their decision. It was that after consideration of the
statement of the witness Juve, their opinion was that it rested merely
upon hypotheses, and their decision was that there was no occasion for a
supplementary enquiry.

And the President immediately called upon the Public Prosecutor to
address the Court.

Neither in the lengthy address of that functionary, nor in the ensuing
address of Maitre Barberoux on behalf of the defendant, was the
slightest allusion made to the fresh facts adduced by the detective. The
theories he put forward were so unexpected and so utterly astonishing
that nobody paid the least attention to them! Then the sitting was
suspended while the jury considered their verdict. The judges retired
and guards removed the prisoner, and Juve, who had accepted the
dismissal of his application for a further enquiry with perfect
equanimity, went up to the press-box and spoke to a young journalist
sitting there.

"Shall we go out for a quarter of an hour, Fandor?" and when they were
presently in the corridor, he smote the young fellow in a friendly way
on the shoulder and enquired: "Well, my boy, what do you say to all
that?"

Jerome Fandor seemed to be overwhelmed.

"You accuse my father? You really accuse Etienne Rambert of being Gurn?
Surely I am dreaming!"

"My dear young idiot," Juve growled, "do pray understand one thing: I am
not accusing your father, your real father, but only the man who
represented himself to be your father! Just think: if my contention is
right--that the Etienne Rambert who killed the Marquise is Gurn--it is
perfectly obvious that Gurn is not your father, for he is only
thirty-five years of age! He has merely represented himself to be your
father."

"Then who is my real father?"

"I don't know anything about that," said the detective. "That's a matter
we will look into one of these fine days! You take it from me that we
are only just at the beginning of all these things."

"But the Court has refused a supplementary enquiry."

"'Gad!" said Juve, "I quite expected it would! I have not got the proofs
to satisfy the legal mind; and then, too, I had to hold my tongue about
the most interesting fact that I knew."

"What was that?"

"Why, that you are not dead, Charles Rambert! I had to conceal that
fact, my boy, for the melancholy reason that I am a poor ma