is not mine."

"It is no longer a secret which can remain sacred here. A murder has
been committed, a murderer is to be found, and everything you know you
ought to reveal to justice."

"But if I give you my word of honor that it has not the slightest
bearing on the matter--with the death of Rovere?"

"I shall tell my registrar to write your very words in reply--he has
done it--I shall continue to question you, precisely because you speak
to me of a secret which has been confided to you and which you refuse to
disclose to me. Because you do refuse?"

"Absolutely!"

"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a warning; you know it
well!"

"In spite of your warning!"

"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His angry face had lost its wonted
amiability. The registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a
decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate looked directly into
Dantin's eyes and slowly said: "You remember that you were seen by the
portress at the moment when Rovere, standing with you in front of his
open safe, showed you some valuables?"

Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if measuring these words,
and searching to find out just what M. Ginory was driving at. This
silence, short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate knew it
well--that moment of agony when the question seems like a cord, like a
lasso suddenly thrown, and tightening around one's neck. There was
always, in his examination, a tragic moment.

"I remember very well that I saw a person whom I did not know enter the
room where I was with M. Rovere," Jacques Dantin replied at last.

"A person whom you did not know? You knew her very well, since you had
more than once asked her if M. Rovere was at home. That person is Mme.
Moniche, who has made her deposition."

"And what did she say in her deposition?"

The Magistrate took a paper from the table in front of him and read:
"When I entered, M. Rovere was standing before his safe, and I noticed
that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual is you) cast upon
the coupons a look which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This man
looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"

"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who had listened with frowning
brows and with an angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me of
having murdered M. Rovere!"

"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche has not said that precisely.
She was only surprised--surprised and frightened--at your ex