as since disappeared, with a thousand-franc note. The will,
as it happened, was Cosmo Mornington's; and in it Cosmo Mornington
bequeathed his immense wealth to the heirs of the Roussel sisters and of
Victor Sauverand....

"Jean Vernocq saw his chance. A hundred million francs! To get hold of
that sum, to obtain riches, luxury, power, and the means of buying health
and strength from the world's great healers, all that he had to do was
first to put away the different persons who stood between the inheritance
and Florence, and then, when all the obstacles were overcome, to make
Florence his wife.

"Jean Vernocq went to work. He had found among the papers of Hippolyte
Fauville's old friend Langernault particulars relating to the Roussel
family and to the discord that reigned in the Fauville household. Five
persons, all told, were in his way: first, of course, Cosmo Mornington;
next, in the order of their claims, Hippolyte Fauville, his son Edmond,
his wife Marie, and his cousin Gaston Sauverand.

"With Cosmo Mornington, the thing was easy enough. Introducing himself to
the American as a doctor, Jean Vernocq put poison into one of the phials
which Mornington used for his hypodermic injections.

"But in the case of Hippolyte Fauville, whose good will he had secured
through his acquaintance with old Langernault, and over whose mind he
soon obtained an extraordinary influence, he had a greater difficulty to
contend with. Knowing on the one hand that the engineer hated his wife
and on the other that he was stricken with a fatal disease, he took
occasion, after the consultation with the specialist in London, to
suggest to Fauville's terrified brain the incredible plan of suicide of
which you were subsequently able to trace the Machiavellian execution.

"In this way and with a single effort, anonymously, so to speak, and
without appearing in the business, without Fauville's even suspecting the
action brought to bear upon him, Jean Vernocq procured the deaths of
Fauville and his son, and got rid of Marie and Sauverand by the devilish
expedient of causing the charge of murder, of which no one could accuse
him, to fall upon them. The plan succeeded.

"There was only one hitch at the present time: the intervention of
Inspector Verot. Inspector Verot died. And there was only one danger in
the future: the intervention of myself, Don Luis Perenna, whose conduct
Vernocq was bound to foresee, as I was the residuary legatee by the term