anding his connection with
the affair, she asked herself if her testimony might not prove his
death-warrant. Accordingly, she answered all M. Segmuller's questions
with "no" or "I don't know"; and retracted everything she had previously
stated to Lecoq. She swore that she had been misunderstood, that her
words had been misconstrued; and vowed on her mother's memory, that she
had never heard the name of Lacheneur before. At last, she burst into
wild, despairing sobs, and pressed her frightened child against her
breast.

What could be done to overcome this foolish obstinacy, as blind and
unreasoning as a brute's? M. Segmuller hesitated. "You may retire, my
good woman," said he kindly, after a moment's pause, "but remember that
your strange silence injures your husband far more than anything you
could say."

She left the room--or rather she rushed wildly from it as though only
too eager to escape--and the magistrate and the detective exchanged
glances of dismay and consternation.

"I said so before," thought Goguet, "the prisoner knows what he's about.
I would be willing to bet a hundred to one in his favor."

A French investigating magistrate is possessed of almost unlimited
powers. No one can hamper him, no one can give him orders. The entire
police force is at his disposal. One word from him and twenty agents, or
a hundred if need be, search Paris, ransack France, or explore Europe.
If there be any one whom he believes able to throw light upon an obscure
point, he simply sends an order to that person to appear before him, and
the man must come even if he lives a hundred leagues away.

Such is the magistrate, such are his powers. On the other hand, the
prisoner charged with a crime, but as yet un-convicted, is confined,
unless his offense be of a trivial description, in what is called a
"secret cell." He is, so to say, cut off from the number of the living.
He knows nothing of what may be going on in the world outside. He can
not tell what witnesses may have been called, or what they may have
said, and in his uncertainty he asks himself again and again how far the
prosecution has been able to establish the charges against him.

Such is the prisoner's position, and yet despite the fact that the
two adversaries are so unequally armed, the man in the secret cell not
unfrequently wins the victory. If he is sure that he has left behind
him no proof of his having committed the crime; if he has no guilty
antecedents to b