ing you refuse to save her
mother----_"

"It's a lie!" yelled the prisoner.

"All this terror and anguish caused a violent mental disturbance in the
girl and resulted in a failure of her memory. When she came out of the fire
it was as if a curtain had fallen over her past life, she had lost the
sense of her own personality, she did not know her own name, she was
helpless, you could do as you pleased with her. _And she was a great
heiress!_ If she lived, she inherited her mother's fortune; if she died,
this fortune reverted to you. So shrinking, perhaps, from the actual
killing of this girl, you destroyed her identity; you gave it out that she,
too, had perished in the flames and you proceeded to enjoy her stolen
fortune while she sold candles in Notre-Dame church."

"You have no proof of it!" shouted Groener.

"No? What is this?" and he signaled the operator, whereupon the lights went
down and the picture of Alice and the widow appeared again. "There is the
girl whom you have wronged and defrauded. Now watch the woman, your
Brussels accomplice, watch her carefully--carefully," he motioned to the
operator and the smooth young widow faded gradually, while the face and
form of another woman took her place beside the girl. "Now we have the
picture as it was before you falsified it. Do you recognize _this_ face?"

"No," answered the prisoner, but his heart was pounding.

"It is your wife. Look!"

Under the picture came the inscription: "_To my dear husband Raoul with the
love of Margaret and her little Mary_."

"I wish we had the dial on him now," whispered Duprat to M. Paul.

"There are your two victims!" accused the magistrate. "Mary and Margaret!
How long do you suppose it will take us to identify them among the Charity
Bazaar unfortunates? It is a matter of a few hours' record searching. What
must we look for? A rich American lady who married a Frenchman. Her name is
Margaret. She had a daughter named Mary. The Frenchman's name is Raoul and
he probably has a title. We have, also, the lady's photograph and the
daughter's photograph and a specimen of the lady's handwriting. Could
anything be simpler? The first authority we meet on noble fortune hunters
will tell us all about it. And then, M. Adolf Groener, we shall know
whether it is a, marquis or a duke whose name _must be added to the list of
distinguished assassins_."

He paused for a reply, but none came. The guard moved suddenly in the
shadows and called fo