That was the question now, what would this hideous moving picture do to a fire-fearing assassin already on the verge of collapse?  Would it break the last resistance of his overwrought nerves or would he still hold out?

Silently, intently the three men waited, bending over the dial as the test proceeded, as the fiends of torture and death swept past in lurid triumph.

The picture machine whirled on with droning buzz, the accused sat still, eyes on the sheet, the red column pulsed steadily, up and down, up and down, now a little higher, now a little quicker, but—­for a minute, for two minutes—­nothing decisive happened, nothing that they had hoped for; yet Coquenil felt, he knew that something was going to happen, he knew it by the agonized tension of the room, by the atmosphere of pain about them.  If Groener had not spoken, he himself, in the poignancy of his own distress, must have cried out or stamped on the floor or broken something, just to end the silence.

Then, suddenly, the tension snapped, the prisoner sprang to his feet and, tearing his arm from the leather sleeve, he faced his tormentors desperately, eyes blazing, features convulsed: 

“No, no, no!” he shrieked.  “You dogs!  You cowards!”

“Lights up,” ordered Hauteville.  Then to the guard:  “Put the handcuffs on him.”

[Illustration:  “‘No, no, no!’ he shrieked.  ‘You dogs!  You cowards!’”]

But the prisoner would not be silenced.  “What does all this prove?” he screamed in rage.  “Nothing!  Nothing!  You make me look at disgusting, abominable pictures and—­why shouldn’t my heart beat?  Anybody’s heart would beat—­if he had a heart.”

The judge paid no attention to this outburst, but went on in a tone as keen and cold as a knife:  “Before you go to your cell, Groener, you shall hear what we charge against you.  Your wife perished in the Charity Bazaar fire.  She was a very rich woman, probably an American, who had been married before and who had a daughter by her previous marriage.  That daughter is the girl you call Alice.  Her true name is Mary.  She was in the fire with her mother and was rescued by Martinez, but the shock of seeing her mother burned to death and, perhaps, the shock of seeing you refuse to save her mother——­”

“It’s a lie!” yelled the prisoner.

“All this terror and anguish caused a violent mental disturbance in the girl and resulted in a failure of her memory.  When she came out of the fire it was as if a curtain had fallen over her past life, she had lost the sense of her own personality, she did not know her own name, she was helpless, you could do as you pleased with her. And she was a great heiress! If she lived, she inherited her mother’s fortune; if she died, this fortune reverted to you.  So shrinking, perhaps, from the actual killing of this girl, you destroyed her identity; you gave it out that she, too, had perished in the flames and you proceeded to enjoy her stolen fortune while she sold candles in Notre-Dame church.”