With a blow of his left fist he knocked the ticket collector down; with a blow of his right he sent Mazeroux spinning; and shaking off the porters and the station-master, he rushed along the platform to the luggage-room, where he took flying leaps over several batches of trunks, packing-cases, and portmanteaux.

“Oh, the perfect fool!” he mumbled, on seeing that Mazeroux had let the power down in the car.  “Trust him, if there’s any blunder going!”

Don Luis had driven his car at a fine rate during the day; but that night the pace became vertiginous.  A very meteor flashed through the suburbs of Le Mans and hurled itself along the highroad.  Perenna had but one thought in his head:  to reach the next station, which was Chartres, before the two accomplices, and to fly at Sauverand’s throat.  He saw nothing but that:  the savage grip of his two hands that would set Florence Levasseur’s lover gasping in his agony.

“Her lover!  Her lover!” he muttered, gnashing his teeth.  “Why, of course, that explains everything!  They have combined against their accomplice, Marie Fauville; and it is she alone, poor devil, who will pay for the horrible series of crimes!”

“Is she their accomplice even?” he wondered.  “Who knows?  Who knows if that pair of demons are not capable, after killing Hippolyte and his son, of having plotted the ruin of Marie Fauville, the last obstacle that stood between them and the Mornington inheritance?  Doesn’t everything point to that conclusion?  Didn’t I find the list of dates in a book belonging to Florence?  Don’t the facts prove that the letters were communicated by Florence?...

“Those letters accuse Gaston Sauverand as well.  But how does that affect things?  He no longer loves Marie, but Florence.  And Florence loves him.  She is his accomplice, his counsellor, the woman who will live by his side and benefit by his fortune....  True, she sometimes pretends to be defending Marie Fauville.  Play-acting!  Or perhaps remorse, fright at the thought of all that she has done against her rival, and of the fate that awaits the unhappy woman!

“But she is in love with Sauverand.  And she continues to carry on the struggle without pity and without respite.  And that is why she wanted to kill me, the interloper whose insight she dreaded.  And she hates me and loathes me—­”

To the hum of the engine and the sighing of the trees, which bent down at the approach, he murmured incoherent words.  The recollection of the two lovers clasped in each other’s arms made him cry aloud with jealousy.  He wanted to be revenged.  For the first time in his life, the longing, the feverish craving to kill set his brain boiling.

“Hang it all!” he growled suddenly.  “The engine’s misfiring!  Mazeroux!  Mazeroux!”

“What, Chief!  Did you know that I was here?” exclaimed Mazeroux, emerging from the shadow in which he sat hidden.

“You jackass!  Do you think that the first idiot who comes along can hang on to the footboard of my car without my knowing it?  You must be feeling comfortable down there!”