the body. The murderer
had either carried it away with him in his flight or he had thrown it
away in some other part of the apartment. They would soon know.

They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine that it was an
assassination. "That is evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the
autopsy will be made, however."

And, with an insistence which surprised the Commissary a little,
Bernardet, in courteous tones, evidently haunted by one particular idea,
begged and almost supplicated M. Desbriere to send for the Attorney for
the Republic, so that the corpse could be taken as soon as possible to
the Morgue.

"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To the Morgue! To the Morgue!"
Bernardet calmed her with a word.

"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur le Commissaire, let us do
it quickly, quickly. I will tell you why. Time will be gained--I mean to
say, saved--and the criminal found."

Then, while M. Desbriere sent an officer to the telephone office to ask
for the Attorney for the Republic to come as quickly as possible to the
Boulevard de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to the reporters in
regard to some philosophical considerations upon human destiny, which
condemned in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a good lodger,
as respectable as M. Rovere, to be laid upon a slab at the Morgue, like
a thief or a vagabond--he who went out but seldom, and who "loved his
home so much."

"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied Paul Rodier, who made a
note of his reflection.

CHAPTER V.

SOME time passed before the arrival of the Attorney, and through the
closed Venetian blinds the murmurs of the crowd collected below could be
heard. The Commissary wrote his report on the corner of a table, by the
light of a single candle, and now and then asked for some detail of
Bernardet, who seemed very impatient. A heavy silence had fallen on the
room; those who a short time before had exchanged observations in loud
tones, since the Commissary had finished with Mme. Moniche had dropped
their voices and spoke in hushed tones, as if they were in a sick room.
Suddenly a bell rang, sending shrill notes through the silent room.
Bernardet remarked that no doubt, the Attorney had arrived. He looked at
his watch, a simple, silver Geneva watch, but which he prized highly--a
present from his wife--and murmured:

"There is yet time." It was, in fact, the Attorney for the Republic,