“I am afraid of nothing, and I do not regret coming, for I have a very strong intuition that we can, that we are bound to, come to an understanding.”

“An understanding!” protested Don Luis with a start.

“Why not?”

“A compact!  An alliance between you and me!”

“Why not?  It is a thought which I had already entertained more than once, which took a more precise shape in the magistrates’ corridor, and which finally decided me when I read the announcement which you caused to be made in the special edition of this paper:  ’Sensational declaration by Don Luis Perenna.  Mme. Fauville is innocent!’”

Gaston Sauverand half rose from his chair and, carefully picking his words, emphasizing them with sharp gestures, he whispered: 

“Everything lies, Monsieur, in those four words.  Do those four words which you have written, which you have uttered publicly and solemnly—­’Mme. Fauville is innocent’—­do they express your real mind?  Do you now absolutely believe in Marie Fauville’s innocence?”

Don Luis shrugged his shoulders.

“Mme. Fauville’s innocence has nothing to do with the case.  It is a question not of her, but of you, of you two and myself.  So come straight to the point and as quickly as you can.  It is to your interest even more than to mine.”

“To our interest?”

“You forget the third heading to the article,” cried Don Luis.  “I did more than proclaim Marie Fauville’s innocence.  I also announced—­read for yourself—­The ‘imminent arrest of the criminals,’”

Sauverand and Florence rose together, with the same unguarded movement.

“And, in your view, the criminals are—?” asked Sauverand.

“Why, you know as well as I do:  they are the man with the ebony walking-stick, who at any rate cannot deny having murdered Chief Inspector Ancenis, and the woman who is his accomplice in all his crimes.  Both of them must remember their attempts to assassinate me:  the revolver shot on the Boulevard Suchet; the motor smash causing the death of my chauffeur; and yesterday again, in the barn—­you know where—­the barn with the two skeletons hanging from the rafters:  yesterday—­you remember—­the scythe, the relentless scythe, which nearly beheaded me.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, the game is lost.  You must pay up; and all the more so as you have foolishly put your heads into the lion’s mouth.”

“I don’t understand.  What does all this mean?”

“It simply means that they know Florence Levasseur, that they know you are both here, that the house is surrounded, and that Weber, the deputy chief detective, is on his way.”

Sauverand appeared disconcerted by this unexpected threat.  Florence, standing beside him, had turned livid.  A mad anguish distorted her features.  She stammered: 

“Oh, it is awful!  No, no, I can’t endure it!”

And, rushing at Don Luis: