id not discuss, they
believed. And yet it was the most incredible truth that he was asking
them to believe.

M. Desmalions asked one last question.

"You were in that passage with Sergeant Mazeroux. There were detectives
outside the house. Admitting that M. Fauville knew that he was to be
killed that night and at that very hour of the night, who can have
killed him and who can have killed his son? There was no one within
these four walls."

"There was M. Fauville."

A sudden clamour of protests arose. The veil was promptly torn; and the
spectacle revealed by Don Luis provoked, in addition to horror, an
unforeseen outburst of incredulity and a sort of revolt against the too
kindly attention which had been accorded to those explanations. The
Prefect of Police expressed the general feeling by exclaiming:

"Enough of words! Enough of theories! However logical they may seem, they
lead to absurd conclusions."

"Absurd in appearance, Monsieur le Prefet; but how do we know that M.
Fauville's unheard-of conduct is not explained by very natural reasons?
Of course, no one dies with a light heart for the mere pleasure of
revenge. But how do we know that M. Fauville, whose extreme emaciation
and pallor you must have noted as I did, was not stricken by some mortal
illness and that, knowing himself doomed--"

"I repeat, enough of words!" cried the Prefect. "You go only by
suppositions. What I want is proofs, a proof, only one. And we are still
waiting for it."

"Here it is, Monsieur le Prefet."

"Eh? What's that you say?"

"Monsieur le Prefet, when I removed the chandelier from the plaster that
supported it, I found, outside the upper surface of the metal box, a
sealed envelope. As the chandelier was placed under the attic occupied by
M. Fauville's son, it is evident that M. Fauville was able, by lifting
the boards of the floor in his son's room, to reach the top of the
machine which he had contrived. This was how, during that last night, he
placed this sealed envelope in position, after writing on it the date of
the murder, '31 March, 11 P.M.,' and his signature, 'Hippolyte
Fauville.'"

M. Desmalions opened the envelope with an eager hand. His first glance at
the pages of writing which it contained made him give a start.

"Oh, the villain, the villain!" he said. "How was it possible for such a
monster to exist? What a loathsome brute!"

In a jerky voice, which became almost inaudible at times owing to his
amazement,