and its muscles
contracted, had a haggard expression, and he blinked his eyes like a
night bird suddenly brought into glaring sunlight. He repeated before
the Examining Magistrate what he had said to the brigadier. But his
voice, vibrant a few hours before, had become heavy, almost raucous, as
the haughty expression of his face had become sullen and tragic.

The Examining Magistrate had cited Mme. Colard, the shopkeeper, to
appear before him. She instantly recognized in this Prades the man who
had sold her the little panel by Paul Baudry.

He denied it. He did not know of what they were talking. He had never
seen this woman. He knew nothing about any portrait.

"It belonged to M. Rovere," the magistrate replied, "M. Rovere, the
murdered man; M. Rovere, who was consul at Buenos Ayres, and you spoke,
yesterday, of Buenos Ayres, in the examination at the station house in
the Rue de la Rochefoucauld."

"M. Rovere? Buenos Ayres?" repeated the young man, rolling his sombrero
around his fingers.

He repeated that he did not know the ex-Consul, that he had never been
in South America, that he had come from Sydney.

Bernardet, at this moment, interrupted him by taking his hat from him
without saying a word, and Prades cast a very angry look at the little
man.

M. Ginory understood Bernardet's move and approved with a smile. He
looked in the inside of the sombrero which Bernardet handed to him.

The hat bore the address of Gordon, Smithson & Co., Berner Street,
London.

"But, after all," thought the Magistrate, "Buenos Ayres is one of the
markets for English goods."

"That is a hat bought at Sydney," Prades (who had understood) explained.

Before the bold, decided, almost violent affirmations which Mme. Colard
made that this was certainly the seller of the portrait, the young man
lost countenance a little. He kept saying over and over: "You deceive
yourself. Madame, I have never spoken to you, I have never seen you."

When M. Ginory asked her if she still persisted in saying that this was
the man who had sold her the picture, she said:

"Do I still persist? With my neck under the guillotine I would persist,"
and she kept repeating: "I am sure of it! I am sure of it!"

This preliminary examination brought about no decisive result. It was
certain that, if this portrait had been in the possession of this young
man and been sold by him, that he, Charles Prades, was an accomplice of
Dantin's, if not the author of the