d
that his mind had never perceived the connection between the two
skeletons hanging in the barn and the series of crimes resulting from the
Mornington inheritance. Stranger still, how was it that the almost
certain murder of Langernault, Hippolyte Fauville's old friend, had not
afforded him all the clues which it contained? The crux of the sinister
plot lay in that.

Who could have intercepted, on Fauville's behalf, the letters of
accusation which Fauville was supposed to write to his old friend
Langernault, except some one in the village or some one who had lived in
the village?

And now everything was clear. It was the nameless scoundrel who had
started his career of crime by killing old Langernault and then the
Dedessuslamare couple. The method was the same as later on: it was not
direct murder, but anonymous murder, murder by suggestion. Like
Mornington the American, like Fauville the engineer, like Marie, like
Gaston Sauverand, old Langernault had been craftily done away with and
the Dedessuslamare couple driven to commit suicide in the barn.

It was from there that the tiger had come to Paris, where later he was to
find Fauville and Cosmo Mornington and plot the tragic affair of the
inheritance.

And it was there that he was now returning!

There was no doubt about that. To begin with, the fact that he had
administered a narcotic to Florence constituted an indisputable proof.
Was he not obliged to put Florence to sleep in order to prevent her from
recognizing the landscape at Alencon and Damigni, or the Old Castle,
which she had explored with Gaston Sauverand?

On the other hand, the Le Mans-Angers-Nantes route, which had been taken
to put the police on a false track, meant only an extra hour or two, at
most, for any one motoring to Alencon. Lastly, that coach-house near a
big town, that limousine waiting, ready charged with petrol, showed that
the villain, when he intended to visit his retreat, took the precaution
of stopping at Le Mans, in order to go from there, in his limousine, to
Langernault's deserted estate.

He would therefore reach his lair at ten o'clock that morning. And he
would arrive there with Florence Levasseur dead asleep!

The question forced itself upon him, the terrible persistent
question--what did he mean to do with Florence Levasseur?

"Faster! Faster!" cried Don Luis.

Now that he knew the scoundrel's haunt, the man's scheme became
hideously evident to him. Feeling himself hu