LITMIR.BIZ

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and weeks. But, all the same, these two are dead; and I was there, I, Lupin, was there! The thing has been done under my eyes; and I saw nothing! I saw nothing! How is it possible?"

      He uncovered the poor boy's shoulders, showing the mark of a puncture at the top of the arm.

      "The same mark—the same mark obviously that we shall find on the father…. The lad does not seem to have suffered, either…. Poor little chap! He did not look very strong…. Never mind, it's a nice face; what a terrible blow for his mother when she learns!"

      The detective sergeant wept with anger and pity, while he kept on mumbling:

      "Dash it all!… Dash it all!"

      "We shall avenge them, eh, Mazeroux?"

      "Rather, Chief! Twice over!"

      "Once will do, Mazeroux. But it shall be done with a will."

      "That I swear it shall!"

      "You're right; let's swear. Let us swear that this dead pair shall be avenged. Let us swear not to lay down our arms until the murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son are punished as they deserve."

      "I swear it as I hope to be saved, Chief."

      "Good!" said Perenna. "And now to work. You go and telephone at once to the police office. I am sure that M. Desmalions will approve of your informing him without delay. He takes an immense interest in the case."

      "And if the servants come? If Mme. Fauville—?"

      "No one will come till we open the doors; and we shan't open them except to the Prefect of Police. It will be for him, afterward, to tell Mme. Fauville that she is a widow and that she has no son. Go! Hurry!"

      "One moment, Chief; we are forgetting something that will help us enormously."

      "What's that?"

      "The little drab-cloth diary in the safe, in which M. Fauville describes the plot against him."

      "Why, of course!" said Perenna. "You're right … especially as he omitted to mix up the letters of the lock last night, and the key is on the bunch which he left lying on the table."

      They ran down the stairs.

      "Leave this to me," said Mazeroux. "It's more regular that you shouldn't touch the safe."

      He took the bunch, moved the glass case, and inserted the key with a feverish emotion which Don Luis felt even more acutely than he did. They were at last about to know the details of the mysterious story. The dead man himself would betray the secret of his murderers.

      "Lord, what a time you take!" growled Don Luis.

      Mazeroux plunged both hands into the crowd of papers that encumbered the iron shelf.

      "Well, Mazeroux, hand it over."

      "What?"

      "The diary."

      "I can't Chief."

      "What's that?"

      "It's gone."

      Don Luis stifled an oath. The drab-cloth diary, which the engineer had placed in the safe before their eyes, had disappeared.

      Mazeroux shook his head.

      "Dash it all! So they knew about that diary!"

      "Of course they did; and they knew plenty of other things besides. We've not seen the end of it with those fellows. There's no time to lose. Ring up!"

      Mazeroux did so and soon received the answer that M. Desmalions was coming to the telephone. He waited.

      In a few minutes Perenna, who had been walking up and down, examining different objects in the room, came and sat down beside Mazeroux. He seemed thoughtful. He reflected for some time. But then, his eyes falling on the fruit dish, he muttered:

      "Hullo! There are only three apples instead of four. Then he ate the fourth."

      "Yes," said Mazeroux, "he must have eaten it."

      "That's funny," replied Perenna, "for he didn't think them ripe."

      He was silent once more, sat leaning his elbows on the table, visibly preoccupied; then, raising his head, he let fall these words:

      "The murder was committed before we entered the room, at half-past twelve exactly."

      "How do you know, Chief?"

      "M. Fauville's murderer or murderers, in touching the things on the table, knocked down the watch which M. Fauville had placed there. They put it back; but the fall had stopped it. And it stopped at half-past twelve."

      "Then, Chief, when we settled ourselves here, at two in the morning, it was a corpse that was lying beside us and another over our heads?"

      "Yes."

      "But how did those devils get in?"

      "Through this door, which opens on the garden, and through the gate that opens on the Boulevard Suchet."

      "Then they had keys to the locks and bolts?"

      "False keys, yes."

      "But the policemen watching the house outside?"

      "They are still watching it, as that sort watch a house, walking from point to point without thinking that people can slip into a garden while they have their backs turned. That's what took place in coming and going."

      Sergeant Mazeroux seemed flabbergasted. The criminals' daring, their skill, the precision of their acts bewildered him.

      "They're deuced clever," he said.

      "Deuced clever, Mazeroux, as you say; and I foresee a tremendous battle.

      By Jupiter, with what a vim they set to work!"

      The telephone bell rang. Don Luis left Mazeroux to his conversation with the Prefect, and, taking the bunch of keys, easily unfastened the lock and the bolt of the door and went out into the garden, in the hope of there finding some trace that should facilitate his quest.

      As on the day before, he saw, through the ivy, two policemen walking between one lamp-post and the next. They did not see him. Moreover, anything that might happen inside the house appeared to be to them a matter of total indifference.

      "That's my great mistake," said Perenna to himself. "It doesn't do to entrust a job to people who do not suspect its importance."

      His investigations led to the discovery of some traces of footsteps on the gravel, traces not sufficiently plain to enable him to distinguish the shape of the shoes that had left them, yet distinct enough to confirm his supposition. The scoundrels had been that way.

      Suddenly he gave a movement of delight. Against the border of the path, among the leaves of a little clump of rhododendrons, he saw something red, the shape of which at once struck him. He stooped. It was an apple, the fourth apple, the one whose absence from the fruit dish he had noticed.

      "Excellent!" he said. "Hippolyte Fauville did not eat it. One of them must have carried it away—a fit of appetite, a sudden hunger—and it must have rolled from his hand without his having time to look for it and pick it up."

      He took up the fruit and examined it.

      "What!" he exclaimed, with a start. "Can it be possible?"

      He stood dumfounded, a prey to real excitement, refusing to admit the inadmissible thing which nevertheless presented itself to his eyes with the direct evidence of actuality. Some one had bitten into the apple; into the apple which was too sour to eat. And the teeth had left their mark!

      "Is it possible?" repeated Don Luis. "Is it possible that one of them can have been guilty of such an imprudence! The apple must have fallen without his knowing … or he must have been unable to find it in the dark."

      He could not get over his surprise. He cast about for plausible explanations. But the fact was there before him. Two rows of teeth, cutting through the thin red peel, had left their regular, semicircular bite clearly in the pulp of the fruit. They were clearly marked on the top, while the lower row had melted into a single curved line.

      "The teeth of the tiger!" murmured Perenna, who could not remove his eyes from

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