Through the window I could see Rouletabille and the Lady in Black entering the Square Tower. Never had the young reporter walked with such solemn stateliness. His demeanor might have made one smile, if instead, at this tragic moment, it had not added to our apprehensions. Never had magistrate or counsellor, wearing the purple or the ermine, entered the court room where the accused waited him with more of threatening yet tranquil majesty. But I fancy, too, that never had a judge looked so pale.

As to the Lady in Black, it could easily be seen that she was making a powerful effort to hide the sentiments of horror which, in spite of all, pierced through her troubled glance, and to hide from us the emotion which made her cling feverishly to the arm of her young companion. Robert Darzac, too, had the sombre and resolute mien of a judge. But that which most of all added to our surprise and affright was the entrance of Pere Jacques, Walter and Mattoni into the Square Tower. All three were armed with muskets, and placed themselves in silence before the door, where they stood with military precision while they received from the lips of Rouletabille the order to let no person go out from the Old château. Edith was overwhelmed with terror, and demanded of Mattoni and Walter, both of whom were greatly attached to her, what their presence signified and what their weapons threatened; but, to my great astonishment, they returned no answer. Then the little woman rushed to the door which gave access to Old Bob’s room, and, extending her two arms across the threshold, as if to bar the passage, she cried:

“What are you going to do? You do not mean to kill him?”

“No, Madame,” replied Rouletabille, gravely. “We are going to judge him. And in order to be sure that the judges shall not be executioners we are all going to swear upon the body of Pere Bernier, after having laid down our arms, that each of us will keep guard over himself.”

And he led us into the chamber where Mere Bernier continued to groan beside the bier of her spouse whom “the oldest knife known to the human race” had smitten. There we laid aside our revolvers and took the oath which Rouletabille exacted. Mrs. Rance alone made some difficulties about giving up the weapon which Rouletabille was well aware that she had concealed in her clothing. But upon the urging of the reporter who made her understand that the general disarming ought to reassure her, she finally consented.

The oath having been taken, Rouletabille, with the Lady in Black still on his arm, went from the funereal chamber into the corridor; but instead of directing our steps toward the apartment of Old Bob as we expected him to do, he went straight to the door which afforded entrance to the chamber of “the body too many.” And, drawing from his pocket the little special key of which I have spoken, he opened the door.

We were all astonished in entering the rooms which had been occupied by M. and Mme. Darzac to see upon M. Darzac’s desk the drawing board, the wash drawing upon which our friend had worked at the side of Old Bob in the latter’s workshop in the Court of the Bold, and also the little dish full of red paint and the tiny brush drenched with the paint. And, lastly, in the middle of the desk, there was placed, appearing very much at its ease, upon its bloody jaws, “the oldest skull of humanity.”

Rouletabille locked and bolted the door and said to us, himself greatly affected, while we listened with stupefaction:

“Sit down, if you please, ladies and gentlemen.”

Some chairs were arranged around the table and in these we seated ourselves, a prey to the most disquieting fancies—I might almost say to an agony of suspense. A secret presentiment warned us that all the familiar appurtenances of drawing which were displayed before us might hide, under their apparent commonplace tranquility, the terrible causes which helped to bring about this most fearful of dramas. And as we looked upon it, the skull seemed to smile like Old Bob.

“You will acknowledge,” began Rouletabille, “that there is here, around this table one chair too many, and, in consequence, one person too few—to particularize, M. Arthur Rance, for whom we cannot wait much longer.”

“Perhaps at this very moment my husband possesses the proofs of Old Bob’s innocence!” observed Mme. Edith, whom all these preparations had disturbed more than anyone else. “I entreat Mme. Darzac to join me in imploring these gentlemen to do nothing until Arthur’s return.”

The Lady in Black had no opportunity to intervene, for before Mme. Edith finished speaking, we heard a loud noise outside the door of the corridor. A knock came at the door and we heard the voice of Arthur Rance begging us to open immediately. He cried:

“I have brought the pin with the ruby head!”

Rouletabille opened the door.

“Arthur Rance, you are come then at last!” he exclaimed.

Edith’s husband seemed plunged in the deepest melancholy.

“What have you to tell me? What has happened? Some new misfortune? Ah, I feared so—feared that I had arrived too late when I saw the iron gate closed and heard the prayers for the dead chanted in the tower. Yes—I knew that you had executed Old Bob!”

Rouletabille, who had closed and bolted the door behind Arthur Rance turned to the American and said:

“Old Bob is alive and Pere Bernier is dead. Be seated, Monsieur.”

Arthur Rance stared at the speaker in amazement; then looked in consternation at the drawing board, the dish of paint and the bloody skull and demanded:

“Who killed him?”

Then, condescending to notice that his wife was there, he pressed her hand, but his eyes were fixed upon the Lady in Black.

“Before his death, Bernier accused Frederic Larsan,” answered M. Darzac.

“Do you mean to say by that that he accused Old Bob?” interrupted M. Rance indignantly. “I will not suffer that. I, too, had some doubts in regard to the personality of our beloved uncle, but I tell you that I have the ruby-headed pin!”

What was he talking about with his “little ruby-headed pin”? I remembered that Mme. Edith had told us that Old Bob had snatched one from her hand when she had playfully pricked him with it on the night of the drama of the Square Tower. But what relation could there be between this pin and the adventure of Old Bob? Arthur Rance did not wait for us to ask him, but hurried on to tell us that this little pin had disappeared at the same time as Old Bob and that he had found it in the possession of “the Hangman of the Sea,” fastening a sheaf of bank notes which the old uncle had paid him on that fated night for his complicity and his silence in having brought him in the fisher boat to the grotto of Romeo and Juliet. And M. Rance told us moreover that Tullio had withdrawn from the spot at dawn, greatly disquieted at the non-appearance of his passenger. Rance concluded, triumphantly:

“A man who gives a ruby pin to another man in a boat cannot be at the same moment tied up in a potato sack in the Square Tower.”

Upon which Mrs. Rance inquired:

“What gave you the idea of going to San Remo? Did you know that Tullio was to be found there?”

“I received an anonymous letter informing me of his whereabouts.”

“It was I who sent it to you,” said Rouletabille, tranquilly. And, then, turning to the rest of us, he said in frigid tones:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I congratulate myself upon the prompt return of M. Arthur Rance. At the present moment there are reunited around this table all the members of the house party of the Château of Hercules for whom my corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the ‘body too many’ may have some interest. I entreat you to give me your undivided attention.”

But Arthur Rance halted him with a quick movement.

“What do you mean by the expression: ‘There are united around this table all the members of the party for whom the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the body too many can have any interest’?”

“I mean,” declared Rouletabille, “all those among whom we may hope to find Larsan.”

The Lady in Black, who had up to this time not uttered a word, arose trembling to her feet.

“Do you mean,” she breathed, her eyes filled with agonized apprehension, “that Larsan is now among us?”

“I am sure of it,” Rouletabille replied, gravely.

There was an awful silence during which none of us dared look at each other.

The reporter continued, still in the same frigid tone:

“I am sure of it—and there is no reason why the idea should surprise you, Madame, since it has not for a moment left your own mind. As to the rest of us, is it not true, gentlemen, that the idea has occurred to each one of us at the same moment on the day when we took luncheon on the terrace of the Bold when all our eyes were hidden by the black glasses? If I except Mrs. Rance, who is there among us that did not feel the presence of Larsan at that time?”

“That is a question which ought to be propounded to Professor Stangerson as well as to the rest of us,” interposed Arthur Rance, instantly. “For from the moment when we begin any course of reasoning along these lines, I can see no object in not having the Professor, who was at the table at luncheon with us on that day, here at this time also.”

“Mr. Rance!” cried the Lady in Black.

“Yes, I must repeat it, if you will pardon me,” replied Edith’s husband, haughtily. “Monsieur Rouletabille was wrong to generalize when he said, ‘All the members of the house party——’”

“Professor Stangerson is so far from us in spirit that I have no need of his presence here,” pronounced Rouletabille in a tone so stern and solemn that it fell impressively on the ears of each and every one among us. “Although Professor Stangerson had lived with us in the Château of Hercules, he was not one of us in regard to feeling the presence of Larsan on that day. And Larsan is here among us.”

This time we stole stealthy glances at each other as though we suspected each other of stealing, and the idea that Larsan might really be among us appeared to me so mad that I exclaimed, forgetting that I had promised not to address Rouletabille:

“But at that luncheon on the terrace, there was still another person whom I do not see here.”

Rouletabille cast an angry look at me as he answered:

“Still Prince Galitch! I have already told you, Sainclair, with what task the Prince is occupying himself on this frontier and I swear to you that it is not the trouble of Professor Stangerson’s daughter which concerns him. Leave Prince Galitch to his humanitarian labors!”

“All that is not reasonable,” I remarked almost mechanically.

“To tell the truth, Sainclair, your nonsense prevents me from reasoning.”

But I had launched out, and, forgetting that I had promised Mme. Edith to defend Old Bob, I started in to attack him for the pleasure of proving Rouletabille in the wrong—and, besides, I felt, Edith would not bear rancor against me for very long.

“Old Bob,” I began, in the clearest and most assured tones that I could command, “was also at that luncheon on the terrace and you take him entirely out of your calculations on account of this little ruby pin. But of what use is this little pin to prove to us that Old Bob was rowed away by Tullio, who waited for him at the orifice of a gallery leading from the shaft to the sea, if we cannot discover how Old Bob could, as he said, have gone by way of the shaft which we found closed from above and on the outside?”

“Which you found closed, you mean,” returned Rouletabille, fixing his eyes upon me with a strange expression which somehow embarrassed me. “I, on the contrary, found the shaft open. I had sent you after Mattoni and Pere Jacques. When you came back, you found me in the same place in the Court of the Bold, but I had had time to run to the shaft and find out that it had been opened.”

“And to close it again!” I cried. “And why did you close it? Whom did you wish to deceive?”

“You, monsieur!”

He pronounced these two words with a contempt so crushing that the blood rushed to my face. I arose. Every eye was turned upon me and as I remembered the rudeness with which Rouletabille had treated me a little while ago before M. Darzac, I had the horrible feeling that every eye was suspecting me—accusing me! Yes! I felt myself entirely wrapped around by the atrocious fancy in the mind of each and all that I might be Larsan!

I! Larsan!

I looked at each one in turn. Rouletabille did not lower his eyes while my own were seeking to make him feel the fierce protestation of my whole being and my indignation against such a monstrous supposition. Anger ran through my veins like a flame.

“Now, it is high time to end this farce!” I cried. “If Old Bob is removed from consideration and Professor Stangerson and Prince Galitch, there remain only ourselves—we who are locked up in this room—and if Larsan is among us, show us to him, Rouletabille!”

I repeated the words furiously, for the eyes of the boy, although they were piercing through me, seemed to be fixed upon something outside of and apart from me.

“Show him to us! Name him! You are as slow here as you were at the Court of Assizes.”

“Had I not good reason at the Court of Assizes for being as slow as I was?” he replied, without betraying any emotion.

“You want him to escape this time, too, then?”

“No! I swear to you that this time he shall not escape.”

Why did his voice continue to be so threatening when he addressed me? Could it be really—really that he suspected me of being Larsan? My eyes wandered to those of the Lady in Black. She was gazing on me in terror.

“Rouletabille!” I cried madly, feeling my voice almost smothered in my throat. “You do not—you cannot suspect——!”

At this moment, a pistol shot sounded outside, very near to the Square Tower. We all leaped to our feet, remembering the order given by the reporter to the three servants to fire upon anyone who should attempt to go out of the Square Tower. Edith uttered a cry and tried to run out of the room, but Rouletabille, who had not made so much as a gesture, calmed her with a word.

“If anyone had drawn upon him,” he said, “the three men would have fired together. That pistol shot was merely a signal—a direction for me to begin.”

Turning to me, he continued:

“M. Sainclair, you ought to know that I never suspect any person or anything without previously having satisfied myself upon the ‘ground of pure reason.’ That is a solid staff which has never yet failed me on the road and on which I invite you all to lean with me. Larsan is here among us, and the power of pure reason is going to show him to you; so be seated again, if you please, and do not take your eyes from me, for I am going to begin on this paper the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of ‘the body too many’!”

First of all, he investigated to make sure that the bolts of the door behind him were closely drawn; then, returning to the table, he took up a compass.

“I have the intention of making my demonstration,” he said, “along the same lines on which the ‘body too many’ has produced itself. It will be, thereby, only the more irrefutable.”

And, with his compass, he took, upon M. Darzac’s drawing, the measure of the radius of the circle which represented the space occupied by the Tower of the Bold, so that he was immediately afterward able to trace the same circle upon an immaculate piece of white paper which he had fastened with copper-headed nails to another drawing board.

When the circle was traced, Rouletabille, putting down his compass, picked up the tiny dish of red paint and asked M. Darzac whether he recognized it as the coloring matter he had used. M. Darzac, who, from all appearances, understood the significance of the young man’s words and actions no better than the rest of us, replied that, to the best of his belief, it was the same paint which he had mixed for his wash drawing.

A good half of the paint had dried up in the bottom of the dish, but, according to the opinion expressed by M. Darzac, the part which remained would, upon paper, give nearly the same tint with which he had “washed” the drawing of the peninsula of Hercules.

“No one has touched it,” said Rouletabille very gravely, “and nothing has been added to it, save a single tear. Besides, you will see that a tear more or less in the paint cup would detract nothing from the value of my demonstration.”

Thus saying, he dipped the brush in the paint and began carefully to “wash” all the space occupied by the circle which he had previously traced. He did this with the care and exactitude which had already astonished me in the Tower of the Bold when I had been nearly stupefied in seeing him absorbed in a drawing when we knew that someone had been assassinated.

When he had finished he looked at his immense silver watch and said:

“You may see, ladies and gentlemen, that the coating of paint which covers my circle is neither more nor less thick than that which covers the circle of M. Darzac. It is almost the same thing—the same tint.”

“Undoubtedly,” rejoined M. Darzac. “But what does all this signify?”

“Wait!” replied the reporter. “It is understood, then, that it is you who have made this plan and this painting?”

“I was certainly in enough of an ill humor when I found the state it was in that time I went with you into Old Bob’s cabinet when we came out of the Square Tower. Old Bob had ruined my drawing by letting his skull roll over it.”

“We are there!” spoke up Rouletabille, quick as a flash. And he lifted from the bureau the “oldest skull of the human race.” He turned it over and showed the crimsoned jaws to M. Darzac. Then he inquired:

“Is it your opinion that the red which we see upon that under jaw is no different from the red which would be taken off by any object coming in contact with your plan?”

“I don’t see how there could be any doubt of it! The skull was upside down on my drawing when we entered the workshop.”

“Let us continue then to remain of the same opinion!” said the reporter.

Then he arose, holding the skull in the crook of his arm, and went into the alcove in the wall, lighted by a large window and crossed by bars, which had been a loophole for cannon in the ancient times, and which M. Darzac had used as a dressing room. There he struck a match and lighted a lamp filled with spirits of wine which stood upon a little table. Upon this lamp he set a little pot which he had previously filled with water. The skull still lay in the crook of his arm.

During this weird cookery, we never took our eyes off him. Never had Rouletabille’s behavior appeared to us so incomprehensible nor so mysterious nor so disturbing. The more he explained matters to us and the more he did, the less we understood. And we were afraid because we felt that someone—someone among us—one of ourselves—had reason for fear. Who was this one? Perhaps the most calm of us all!

But the calmest of all was Rouletabille between his skull and his casserole.

But what? Why did we all suddenly recoil with a single movement? Why were the eyes of M. Darzac wide with a new terror—why did the Lady in Black—Arthur Rance—I, myself—utter the same syllable—a name which expired on our lips: “Larsan!”?

Where had we seen him? Where had we discovered him this time, we who were gazing at Rouletabille? Ah, that profile, in the red shadow of the approaching twilight, that brow in the background of the alcove upon which the sunset rays stream as did the dawn on the morning of the crime! Oh, that stern jaw, bespeaking an iron will, which appeared before us, not, as in the light of day, gentle though a little bitter, but evil and threatening. How like Rouletabille was to Larsan! How in that moment the son resembled his father! It was Larsan’s very self!

Another transformation. At a moan from his mother Rouletabille came out of his funereal frame and appeared before us as a bandit, and as he hurried toward us, he was Rouletabille once more. Mme. Edith, who had never seen Larsan, could not understand. She whispered to me, “What is going on?”

Rouletabille was there before us with his hot water in the casserole, a napkin and his skull. And he washed the skull.

It was soon done. The paint disappeared. He made us bear witness to the fact. Then, placing himself in front of the bureau, he stood in mute contemplation before his own drawing. This lasted for ten minutes, during which he had, by a sign, ordered us to keep silence—ten minutes which seemed as long as the same number of hours. What was he waiting for? What did he expect? Suddenly, he seized the skull in his right hand, and with the gesture familiar to those who play at bowling, he tossed it about so that it rolled hither and yon over the drawing; then he showed us the skull and bade us notice that it bore no trace of red paint. Rouletabille drew out his watch again.

“The paint has dried upon the plan,” he said. “It has taken a quarter of an hour to dry. Upon the 11th of April we saw at five o’clock in the afternoon, M. Darzac entering the Square Tower and coming from out of doors. But M. Darzac, after having entered the Square Tower, and after having fastened behind him the bolts of his door, as he tells us, has not gone out again until we came to fetch him after six o’clock. As to Old Bob, we had seen him enter the Square Tower at six o’clock and there was no paint on this skull then!

“How was this paint which has taken only a quarter of an hour to dry upon this plan, fresh enough still—more than an hour after M. Darzac had left it—to stain Old Bob’s skull when the savant, with a movement of anger, threw it down on the plan as he entered the Round Tower? There is only one explanation of this, and I defy you to find another—and that is that the Robert Darzac who entered the Square Tower at five o’clock and whom no one has seen going out again, was not the same as the one who came to paint in the Round Tower before the arrival of Old Bob at six o’clock and whom we found in the room in the Square Tower without having seen him enter there and with whom we went out. In one word—he was not the same man as the M. Darzac here present before us. The testimony of pure reason shows that there are two personalities appearing in the guise of Robert Darzac!”

And Rouletabille turned his eyes full upon the man whose name he had uttered.

Darzac, like all the rest of us, was under the spell of the luminous demonstration of the young reporter. We were all divided between a new horror and a boundless admiration. How clear was every word that Rouletabille had uttered! How clear—and how terrible! Here again we found the mark of his prodigious and logical mathematical intelligence!

M. Darzac cried out:

“It was thus, then, that he was able to enter the Square Tower under a disguise which made him, without doubt, my very image! It was thus that he was able to hide behind the panel in such a way that I did not see him myself when I came here to write my letters after quitting the Tower of the Bold, where I left my drawing. But how could Pere Bernier have opened to him?”

“Doubtless,” replied Rouletabille, who had taken the hand of the Lady in Black in both his own as though he wished to give her courage, “he must have believed that it was yourself.”

“That then explains the fact that when I reached my door I had only to push it open. Pere Bernier believed that I was within.”

“Exactly: that is good reasoning!” declared Rouletabille. “And Pere Bernier, who had opened to Darzac No. 1, had not troubled himself about No. 2, since he did not see him any more than yourself. You certainly reached the Square Tower at the moment that Sainclair and myself called Bernier to the parapet to see whether he could help us in understanding the strange gesticulations of Old Bob, talking at the threshold of the Barma Grande to Mrs. Rance and Prince Galitch.”

“But Mere Bernier!” cried M. Darzac. “She had gone into her lodge. Was she not astonished to see M. Darzac come in a second time when she had not seen him go out?”

“Let us suppose,” replied the young reporter with a sad smile; “let us suppose, M. Darzac, that Mere Bernier at that moment—the moment when you passed into your apartments—that is to say, when the second apparition of Darzac passed in—was occupied in picking up the potatoes and putting them back into the sack which I had emptied upon her floor—and we shall suppose the truth.”

“Well, then, I can congratulate myself on the fact that I am still upon earth!”

“Congratulate yourself, M. Darzac? congratulate yourself!”

“When I remember that as soon as I entered my room, I drew the bolts as I have told you that I did, that I began to work and that this wretch was hidden behind my back. Why, he might have killed me without hindrance!”

Rouletabille stepped close to M. Darzac and fixed his eyes upon him with a look that seemed to read his soul.

“Why did he not kill you then?” he asked.

“You know very well that he was waiting for someone else,” replied M. Darzac, turning his face sorrowfully toward the Lady in Black.

Rouletabille was now so close to M. Darzac that their shadows on the floor looked like that of one strangely formed being. The lad put his two hands on the older man’s shoulders.

“M. Darzac,” he said, his voice again clear and strong, “I have a confession to make to you. When I began to understand how the ‘body too many’ had effected an entrance and when I had discovered that you did nothing to undeceive us in regard to the hour of five o’clock at which we had believed—at which everyone, rather, except myself, believed—that you had entered the Square Tower, I felt that I had the right to suspect that the murderer was not the man who at five o’clock entered the Square Tower under the form of Darzac. I thought, on the contrary, that that Darzac might be the true Darzac and you might be the false one. Ah, my dear M. Darzac, how I have suspected you!”

“That was madness!” cried M. Darzac. “If I did not tell you the exact hour at which I entered the Square Tower it was because the time was somewhat vague in my own mind and I did not attach any importance to it.”

“In such a manner, M. Darzac,” continued Rouletabille, without paying any attention to the interruptions of his interlocutor, the emotion of the Lady in Black and our attitude, more than ever filled with terror. “In such a manner as that you could have stolen away the true Darzac when he came from outside and, by your own carefulness and the too faithful help of the Lady in Black, could have taken his place and have been perfectly able to defy detection of your audacious enterprise. This was my imagination—only my imagination, M. Darzac; don’t let it disturb you. But in such a manner as this, I had thought that, you being Larsan, the man who was put in the sack was Darzac. Ah! the fancies that I have had! and the useless suspicions!”

“Bah!” responded Mathilde’s husband, gloomily. “We are all suspicious here!”

Rouletabille turned his back upon M. Darzac, put his hands in his pocket and said, addressing himself to Mathilde, who seemed ready to swoon before the horror of Rouletabille’s imaginings:

“Courage for a little while longer, Madame!”

And he began speaking again, in his “teacher’s” voice which I knew so well, and with the air of a professor of mathematics propounding or resolving a theorem:

“You see, M. Darzac, there are two manifestations of Robert Darzac. To know which was the true one and which was the one which formed a disguise for Larsan—my duty, M. Darzac—that which the power of pure reason showed me—was to examine, without fear or reproach, both of these manifestations—in all impartiality. Thus, I begin with you—M. Darzac.”

M. Darzac replied:

“It does not matter since you suspect me no longer. But you must tell me immediately who is Larsan. I insist upon it—I demand it!”

“We all demand it—and at once!” we all cried, turning upon both of them. Mathilde rushed up to her child and placed herself in front of him, as if to protect him. We felt the pathos of her attitude but the scene had endured too long and we were beyond the limits of patience.

“If he knows who is Larsan let him speak out and make an end of this!” exclaimed Arthur Rance.

And suddenly, just as the thought crossed my mind that I had heard the same cries of anger and impatience two years before at the Court of Assizes, another pistol shot sounded outside the door of the Square Tower, and we were all so seized with consternation that our anger fell away in a moment and we found ourselves not threatening Rouletabille but entreating him to put an end as soon as possible to this intolerable situation. At this moment, it actually seemed as though we were each imploring him to speak out, as though we calculated that by doing so, we would prove, not only to the others but to ourselves, that we were not Larsan.

As soon as the second shot was heard, the countenance of Rouletabille changed completely. His face seemed transformed and his whole being appeared to vibrate with a savage energy. Laying aside the half bantering manner which he had used toward M. Darzac and which we had all found extremely disagreeable, he gently released himself from the clasp of the Lady in Black, who still clung to him, walked toward the door, folded his arms and said:

“You see, my friends, in an affair like this, it does not do to neglect any point. There were two manifestations of Robert Darzac which entered the Square Tower. There were two manifestations which came out—and one of these was in the sack! That is where one loses oneself. And even now, I do not wish to make any mistakes! Will M. Darzac, here present, permit me to say that I had a hundred excuses for suspecting him?”

Then I thought to myself: “How unlucky that he did not mention his suspicions to me! I would have told him about the map of Australia!”

M. Darzac strode across the room and planted himself in front of the young reporter and said in a tone nearly inaudible from anger:

“What excuses? I ask you, what excuses?”

“You will soon understand, my friend,” said the reporter with the utmost calmness. “The first thing that I said to myself while I was examining the conditions surrounding your manifestation of Larsan, was this: ‘Nonsense! if he were Larsan, would not Professor Stangerson’s daughter have perceived it?’ That is self evident—the common sense of that thought—is it not? But when I tried to look into the mind of the lady who has become Mme. Darzac, I discovered beyond a doubt, Monsieur, that all the while she could not free herself from just this fear—the fear that you might be Larsan!”

Mathilde, who had fallen half fainting into a chair, gathered strength enough to start up and to protest against the words with a frightened, despairing gesture.

As for M. Darzac, his face was a picture of hopeless anguish. He sank upon a couch and said in a voice so low that it was scarcely audible and so full of wretchedness that it pierced our hearts:

“And could you have thought that, Mathilde?”

His wife dropped her eyes and spoke not a word.

Rouletabille, still merciless, continued:

“When I recall all the acts of Mme. Darzac after your return from San Remo, I can see now in each one of them an expression of the terror which she experienced from her fear that she should allow the secret of her suspicion and her constant agony to escape her. Ah, let me speak, M. Darzac! Everything must be said—everything must be explained here and now if there is to be peace in the future! We are about to clear up the situation. To go on then, there was nothing natural or happy in Mlle. Stangerson’s behavior. The very eagerness with which she assented to your desire to hasten the marriage ceremony proved the longing which she felt to definitely banish the torment of her soul. Her eyes—I remember it now!—used to say at that time—how often and how clearly! ‘Is it possible that I continue to see Larsan everywhere, even in the face of the man who is at my side, who is going to lead me to the altar and to take me away with him?’

“From the moment of your return from the South until the apparition at the railroad station, monsieur, she lived in the most utter misery. She was already crying for help—for help against herself—against her thoughts—and, perhaps, even against you! But she dared not reveal her thought to any person because she dreaded that any confidant might say to her——”

And Rouletabille leaned over and said in M. Darzac’s ear, not so low that I could not hear, but so softly that the words did not reach Mathilde: “Are you going mad again?”

Then, lifting his head again, he continued:

“You ought to understand everything better now, my dear M. Darzac—both the strange coldness with which you were treated occasionally and also the fits of remorseful tenderness which, in the doubt which filled her brain, would impel Mme. Darzac to surround you with every evidence of attention and affection. And, furthermore, allow me to tell you that I myself have sometimes found you so gloomy and distrait that I have fancied that you must have discovered that whenever Mme. Darzac looked at you, she could not, in spite of herself, chase from her mind the image of Larsan. It came upon her when she spoke to you and when she was silent—when you were beside her and when you were at a distance. And, consequently—let us understand each other completely—it was not the belief that Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have known it, which removed my suspicions, since, in spite of herself, she entertained the fear all the while that you and Larsan were one. No! no! my suspicions were removed by another cause!”

“They might have been removed,” exclaimed M. Darzac, at once ironically and despairingly—“they might have been removed, it would seem, by the simple course of reasoning that if I had been Larsan, wedded to Mlle. Stangerson, having her for my wife, I would have had every cause for making her believe in Larsan’s death! And I would have never resuscitated myself! Was it not upon the day that Larsan returned to earth that I lost Mathilde?”

“Pardon, monsieur, pardon!” replied Rouletabille, whose face had grown as white as a sheet. “You are abandoning now, if I may say so, the directions of pure reason. The facts which you mentioned show us just the contrary of that which you believe we should see. For my part, it seems to me that when one has a wife who believes, or who comes very near to believing, that one is Larsan, one has every interest in showing her that Larsan exists outside of oneself!”

As Rouletabille uttered these words, the Lady in Black, supporting herself by groping with her hands against the wall as she walked, came stumblingly to the side of Rouletabille, and devoured with her eyes the face of M. Darzac which had grown frightfully harsh and strained. As to the rest of us, we were so struck by the novelty and the irrefutability of Rouletabille’s reasoning, that we experienced no other emotion than an ardent desire to know what was to follow, and we took care not to interrupt, asking ourselves to what such a formidable hypothesis might not lead. The young man, imperturbably, went on:

“And, if you had an interest in showing her that Larsan existed elsewhere than in your body, there arose an exigency in which that interest was transformed into an immediate necessity. Imagine—I say imagine, M. Darzac, that you had really brought Larsan to life once—once only—in spite of yourself—in your own rooms—before the eyes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter—and you will be, I repeat, under the necessity of bringing him to life again and yet again—outside of yourself, in order to prove to your wife that the Larsan whom she has seen returned to life is not you! Ah, calm yourself, my dear M. Darzac, I entreat you. Have I not told you that my suspicion has been banished—completely banished? But it is as well that we should divert ourselves for a few moments in reasoning the matter out a little, after these long hours of anguish when it seemed as though there would never be any place for reasoning again. See, then, where I am obliged to come in considering this hypothesis as realized (these are the procedures of mathematics which you know better than I—you who are a scholar!)—in considering, as I said, as realized the hypothesis that you are the counterfeit Darzac, the one which hides Larsan. According to my reasoning, then, you are Larsan! And I asked myself what could have happened in the railway station at Bourg to make you appear in the form of Larsan before the eyes of your wife. The fact of such an appearance is undeniable. It exists. And its occurrence at that moment cannot be explained by any desire on your part to have Larsan seen!”

He paused for a moment, but Robert Darzac did not utter a word.

“As you were saying, M. Darzac,” Rouletabille went on, “it was because of this apparition of Larsan that your cup of happiness was dashed empty to the ground. Therefore, if this resurrection should not have been voluntary there is only one other way in which it could have happened—through accident. And now just let us consider how this latter supposition clears up the entire situation. Oh, I have spent a lot of thought upon the incident at Bourg!—you see, I am still reasoning out the problem! You (the you who is Larsan, be it understood) are at Bourg in the buffet. You believe that your wife is waiting for you somewhere in the station as she told you she would do. After having finished your letters, you wish to go to your compartment in the car in order to attend to some detail of your toilet—or, shall we say to cast a critical eye over your disguise to see if in any point it might be lacking? You think to yourself: ‘A few more hours of this comedy and we shall have passed the frontier, she will be all my own—entirely alone with me, and I will throw aside this mask’—for the mask wearies you a little, we may imagine—so much so, indeed, that, once arrived in your compartment, you grant yourself the grace of a few moments of repose. You cast away your assumed character and your disguise. You relieve yourself of the false beard and the spectacles—and at that very moment the door of the section opens. Your wife, thrown into a spasm of terror at the sight of Larsan’s smooth, beardless face in the glass, does not wait to make any further investigation and rushes out into the night, her screams drowned by the noise of another train. You comprehend the danger at once. You realize that everything is lost unless you can immediately arrange matters so that your wife shall see Darzac somewhere else. You quickly resume the mask; you hurry out of the compartment and reach the buffet by a shorter route than that taken by your wife, who rushes there to look for you. She finds you standing up. You have not even had time enough to seat yourself before she enters. Is everything safe now? Alas, no! Your troubles are only beginning. For the fearful thought that you may be at one and the same time both Darzac and Larsan will not leave her mind. Upon the platform of the station, while passing beneath the gas jet, she casts a frightened glance at you, lets go your hand and runs wildly into the office of the station master. You read her thought as though she had spoken it. The abominable idea must be banished without a moment’s delay. You quit the office, leaving the lady in the care of the superintendent, and immediately return, closing the door quickly, seeking to give the impression that you, too, have seen Larsan. In order to ease her mind, and, also, for the purpose of deceiving us all, in case she dared reveal her suspicions to any one, you are the first to warn me that something unforeseen has happened—to send me a dispatch. See how clear and plain as the day your every act becomes! You cannot refuse to take her to rejoin her father. She would go without you. And, since nothing is yet really lost, you have the hope that everything may be regained. In the course of the journey, your wife continues to have alternating periods of faith in you and of fear of you. She gives you her revolver, in a sort of half delirium, which might sum itself up in some such phrase as this: ‘If he is Darzac, let him protect me; if he is Larsan, let him kill me! But in pity, let me know which he is.’ At Rochers Rouges, you realized once more how utterly she had withdrawn herself from you and in order to reassure her as to your identity, you showed her Larsan again. * * * See how in accordance with reason such a proceeding would be, my dear M. Darzac! Every fact would fit perfectly into every other under the supposition which I am placing before you. There is not a single point up to your appearance as Larsan at Mentone, during your journey as Darzac to Cannes, at the time when you came to meet us, which cannot be explained in the easiest way imaginable. You had taken the train at Mentone Garavan before the eyes of your friends, but you alighted from the train at the next station, which is Mentone, and there, after a short stay for the purpose of altering your looks, you appeared in the image of Larsan to the same friends who were promenading in the gardens at Mentone. The following train brought you to Cannes, where you met Sainclair and myself. Only, as you had on this occasion the vexation of hearing from the lips of Arthur Rance when he met us at the station at Nice, the news that Mme. Darzac had not, on this occasion, caught sight of Larsan, you were under the necessity that same evening of showing her Larsan under the very windows of the Square Tower, standing erect in the prow of Tullio’s boat. So, you see, my dear M. Darzac, how even those things which appear most complicated would have become entirely simple and logically explicable, if, by chance, my suspicions should have been confirmed.”

At these words, I myself, who had seen and touched “the map of Australia,” was unable to repress a shudder as I looked pityingly at Robert Darzac, just as one might look at some poor man who is on the point of becoming the victim of some hideous judicial error. And all the others, seated around me, shuddered as well, whether for him or on account of him, for the arguments of Rouletabille were becoming so terribly possible that each of us was asking himself how, after having so completely established the possibility of guilt, the young reporter could prove Darzac’s innocence. As to Robert Darzac, after having at first evinced the deepest agitation, he had grown quite tranquil and calm, as he listened attentively to every word that escaped the young man’s lips. And it seemed to me that his eyes held the same expression of astonishment, amazed and frightened, and yet full of breathless interest, which I had seen in the eyes of accused men at the bar of the Assizes when they had heard the Procurer General deliver one of his wonderful disquisitions which almost convinced the prisoners themselves that they were guilty of a crime which sometimes they had never committed.

“But since you no longer have these suspicions, monsieur!” he exclaimed, his intonation singularly calm, in spite of the fact that his voice was raised, “I should be glad to know, after all this exercise of your talent of reasoning, what could have driven them away?”

“In order to have them driven away, monsieur, one thing was essential—an absolute certitude! And I found it—a simple but conclusive proof which showed me in a manner complete and undeniable which of the two manifestations of Darzac was in reality Larsan. That proof, monsieur, was, happily, furnished me by yourself at the very moment when you closed the circle—the circle in which there had been found the ‘body too many.’!—the time when, after having sworn that which was the truth—that you had drawn the bolt of your apartment as soon as you had entered your sleeping room, you had lied to us in concealing from us that you had entered that room at six o’clock instead of at five o’clock as Pere Bernier said and as we ourselves could have proved. You were then the only person except myself who knew that the Darzac who had entered at five o’clock and of whom we had spoken to you as yourself was in reality another man. But you said nothing. And you need not pretend that you did not attach any importance to that hour of five o’clock, since it explained everything to you—since it told you that another Darzac than yourself—the true Robert Darzac—had come into the Square Tower at that time. And, after your false expressions of astonishment, how quiet you kept! Your very silence lied to us! And what interest could the true Darzac have in concealing that another Darzac, who might be Larsan, had come in before you had, and was hiding in the Square Tower? Larsan alone was the only one who was interested in hiding from us that there was another manifestation of Darzac than the one he himself bore! OF THE TWO MANIFESTATIONS OF DARZAC, THE FALSE MUST HAVE NECESSARILY BEEN THAT ONE WHICH LIED! Thus my suspicions were driven away by certainty. YOU ARE LARSAN! AND THE MAN WHO WAS HIDDEN BEHIND THE PANEL WAS DARZAC!”

“You lie!” shouted the man (I could not even yet believe him to be Larsan), hurling himself upon Rouletabille.

But none of us stirred a finger and Rouletabille, who had lost nothing of his calm demeanor, extended his arm toward the panel and said:

“HE IS BEHIND THE PANEL NOW!”