"Funny thing, hunger!" he said. "Makes you feel so light-headed. I must practise getting used to it, however."

"At any rate, Chief, no one would believe that you have been fasting for nearly forty-eight hours."

"Ah, that comes of having a sound const.i.tution, with something to fall back upon! I shall be a different man in half an hour. Just give me time to shave and have a bath."

When he had finished dressing, he sat down to the breakfast of eggs and cold meat which Mazeroux had prepared for him; and then, getting up, said:

"Now, let's be off."

"But there's no hurry, Chief. Why don't you lie down for a few hours? The Prefect can wait."

"You're mad! What about Marie Fauville?"

"Marie Fauville?"

"Why, of course! Do you think I'm going to leave her in prison, or Sauverand, either? There's not a second to lose, old chap."

Mazeroux thought to himself that the chief had not quite recovered his wits yet. What? Release Marie Fauville and Sauverand, one, two, three, just like that! No, no, it was going a bit too far.

However, he took down to the Prefect's car a new Perenna, merry, brisk, and as fresh as though he had just got out of bed.

"Very flattering to my pride," said Don Luis to Mazeroux, "most flattering, that hesitation of the Prefect's, after I had warned him over the telephone, followed by his submission at the decisive moment. What a hold I must have on all those jokers, to make them sit up at a sign from little me! 'Beware, gentlemen!' I telephone to them from the bottomless pit. 'Beware! At three o'clock, a bomb!' 'Nonsense!' say they. 'Not a bit of it!' say I. 'How do you know?' 'Because I do.' 'But what proof have you?' 'What proof? That I say so.' 'Oh, well, of course, if you say so!'

And, at five minutes to three, out they march. Ah, if I wasn't built up of modesty--"

They came to the Boulevard Suchet, where the crowd was so dense that they had to alight from the car. Mazeroux pa.s.sed through the cordon of police protecting the approaches to the house and took Don Luis to the slope across the road.

"Wait for me here, Chief. I'll tell the Prefect of Police."

On the other side of the boulevard, under the pale morning sky in which a few black clouds still lingered, Don Luis saw the havoc wrought by the explosion. It was apparently not so great as he had expected. Some of the ceilings had fallen in and their rubbish showed through the yawning cavities of the windows; but the house remained standing. Even Fauville's built-out annex had not suffered overmuch, and, strange to say, the electric light, which the Prefect had left burning on his departure, had not gone out. The garden and the road were covered with stacks of furniture, over which a number of soldiers and police kept watch.

"Come with me, Chief," said Mazeroux, as he fetched Don Luis and led him toward the engineer's workroom.

A part of the floor was demolished. The outer walls on the left, near the pa.s.sage, were cracked; and two workmen were fixing up beams, brought from the nearest timber yard, to support the ceiling. But, on the whole, the explosion had not had the results which the man who prepared it must have antic.i.p.ated.

M. Desmalions was there, together with all the men who had spent the night in the room and several important persons from the public prosecutor's office. Weber, the deputy chief detective, alone had gone, refusing to meet his enemy.

Don Luis's arrival caused great excitement. The Prefect at once came up to him and said:

"All our thanks, Monsieur. Your insight is above praise. You have saved our lives; and these gentlemen and I wish to tell you so most emphatically. In my case, it is the second time that I have to thank you."

"There is a very simple way of thanking me, Monsieur le Prefet," said Don Luis, "and that is to allow me to carry out my task to the end."

"Your task?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Prefet. My action of last night is only the beginning.

The conclusion is the release of Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand."

M. Desmalions smiled.

"Oh!"

"Am I asking too much, Monsieur le Prefet?"

"One can always ask, but the request should be reasonable. And the innocence of those people does not depend on me."

"No; but it depends on you, Monsieur le Prefet, to let them know if I prove their innocence to you."

"Yes, I agree, if you prove it beyond dispute."

"Just so."

Don Luis's calm a.s.surance impressed M. Desmalions in spite of everything and even more than on the former occasions; and he suggested:

"The results of the hasty inspection which we have made will perhaps help you. For instance, we are certain that the bomb was placed by the entrance to the pa.s.sage and probably under the boards of the floor."

"Please do not trouble, Monsieur le Prefet. These are only secondary details. The great thing now is that you should know the whole truth, and that not only through words."

The Prefect had come closer. The magistrate and detectives were standing round Don Luis, watching his lips and movements with feverish impatience.

Was it possible that that truth, as yet so remote and vague, in spite of all the importance which they attached to the arrests already effected, was known at last?

It was a solemn moment. Every one was on tenterhooks. The manner in which Don Luis had foretold the explosion lent the value of an accomplished fact to his predictions; and the men whom he had saved from the terrible catastrophe were almost ready to accept as certainties the most improbable statements which a man of his stamp might make.

"Monsieur le Prefet," he said, "you waited in vain last night for the fourth letter to make its appearance. We shall now be able, by an unexpected miracle of chance, to be present at the delivery of the letter. You will then know that it was the same hand that committed all the crimes--and you will know whose hand that was."

And, turning to Mazeroux:

"Sergeant, will you please make the room as dark as you can? The shutters are gone; but you might draw the curtains across the windows and close the doors. Monsieur le Prefet, is it by accident that the electric light is on?"

"Yes, by accident. We will have it turned out."

"One moment. Have any of you gentlemen a pocket lantern about you? Or, no, it doesn't matter. This will do."

There was a candle in a sconce. He took it and lit it.

Then he switched off the electric light.

There was a half darkness, amid which the flame of the candle flickered in the draught from the windows. Don Luis protected the flame with his hand and moved to the table.

"I do not think that we shall be kept waiting long," he said. "As I foresee it, there will be only a few seconds before the facts speak for themselves and better than I could do."

Those few seconds, during which no one broke the silence, were unforgettable. M. Desmalions has since declared, in an interview in which he ridicules himself very cleverly, that his brain, over-stimulated by the fatigues of the night and by the whole scene before him, imagined the most unlikely events, such as an invasion of the house by armed a.s.sailants, or the apparition of ghosts and spirits.

He had the curiosity, however, he said, to watch Don Luis. Sitting on the edge of the table, with his head thrown a little back and his eyes roaming over the ceiling, Don Luis was eating a piece of bread and nibbling at a cake of chocolate. He seemed very hungry, but quite at his ease.

The others maintained that tense att.i.tude which we put on at moments of great physical effort. Their faces were distorted with a sort of grimace. They were haunted by the memory of the explosion as well as obsessed by what was going to happen. The flame of the candle cast shadows on the wall.

More seconds elapsed than Don Luis Perenna had said, thirty or forty seconds, perhaps, that seemed endless. Then Perenna lifted the candle a little and said:

"There you are."