or she swore she would do
it again."

"She has made no confession?"

"No. She persists in proclaiming her innocence."

"And what do they think at the public prosecutor's? At the Prefect's?"

"Why should they change their opinion, Chief? The inquiries confirm every
one of the charges brought against her; and, in particular, it has been
proved beyond the possibility of dispute that she alone can have touched
the apple and that she can have touched it only between eleven o'clock at
night and seven o'clock in the morning. Now the apple bears the
undeniable marks of her teeth. Would you admit that there are two sets of
jaws in the world that leave the same identical imprint?"

"No, no," said Don Luis, who was thinking of Florence Levasseur. "No,
the argument allows of no discussion. We have here a fact that is clear
as daylight; and the imprint is almost tantamount to a discovery in the
act. But then how, in the midst of all this, are we to explain the
presence of -----"

"Whom, Chief?"

"Nobody. I had an idea worrying me. Besides, you see, in all this there
are so many unnatural things, such queer coincidences and
inconsistencies, that I dare not count on a certainty which the reality
of to-morrow may destroy."

They went on talking for some time, in a low voice, studying the question
in all its bearings.

At midnight they switched off the electric light in the chandelier and
arranged that each should go to sleep in turn.

And the hours went by as they had done when the two sat up before, with
the same sounds of belated carriages and motor cars; the same railway
whistles; the same silence.

The night passed without alarm or incident of any kind. At daybreak the
life out of doors was resumed; and Don Luis, during his waking hours, had
not heard a sound in the room except the monotonous snoring of his
companion.

"Can I have been mistaken?" he wondered. "Did the clue in that volume of
Shakespeare mean something else? Or did it refer to events of last year,
events that took place on the dates set down?"

In spite of everything, he felt overcome by a strange uneasiness as the
dawn began to glimmer through the half-closed shutters. A fortnight
before, nothing had happened either to warn him; and yet there were two
victims lying near him when he woke.

At seven o'clock he called out:

"Alexandre!"

"Eh? What is it, Chief?"

"You're not dead?"

"What's that? Dead? No, Chief; why should I be?"

"Quite sur