“So M. Fauville wrote those letters in order to ruin his wife and the man who was in love with her?”

“Yes.”

“In that case—­”

“What?”

“Knowing, at the same time, that he was threatened with death, he wished, if ever the threat was realized, that his death should be laid to the charge of his wife and her friend?”

“Yes.”

“And, in order to avenge himself on their love for each other and to gratify his hatred of them both, he wanted the whole set of facts to point to them as guilty of the murder of which he would be the victim?”

“Yes.”

“So that—­so that M. Fauville, in one part of his accursed work, was—­what shall I say?—­the accomplice of his own murder.  He dreaded death.  He struggled against it.  But he arranged that his hatred should gain by it.  That’s it, isn’t it?  That’s how it is?”

“Almost, Monsieur le Prefet.  You are following the same stages by which I travelled and, like myself, you are hesitating before the last truth, before the truth which gives the tragedy its sinister character and deprives it of all human proportions.”

The Prefect struck the table with his two fists and, in a sudden fit of revolt, cried: 

“It’s ridiculous!  It’s a perfectly preposterous theory!  M. Fauville threatened with death and contriving his wife’s ruin with that Machiavellian perseverance?  Absurd!  The man who came to my office, the man whom you saw, was thinking of only one thing:  how to escape dying!  He was obsessed by one dread alone, the dread of death.

“It is not at such moments,” the Prefect emphasized, “that a man fits up clockwork and lays traps, especially when those traps cannot take effect unless he dies by foul play.  Can you see M. Fauville working at his automatic machine, putting in with his own hands letters which he has taken the pains to write to a friend three months before and intercept, arranging events so that his wife shall appear guilty and saying, ’There!  If I die murdered, I’m easy in my mind:  the person to be arrested will be Marie!’

“No, you must confess, men don’t take these gruesome precautions.  Or, if they do—­if they do, it means that they’re sure of being murdered.  It means that they agree to be murdered.  It means that they are at one with the murderer, so to speak, and meet him halfway.  In short, it means—­”

He interrupted himself, as if the sentences which he had spoken had surprised him.  And the others seemed equally disconcerted.  And all of them unconsciously drew from those sentences the conclusions which they implied, and which they themselves did not yet fully perceive.

Don Luis did not remove his eyes from the Prefect, and awaited the inevitable words.

M. Desmalions muttered: 

“Come, come, you are not going to suggest that he had agreed—­”

“I suggest nothing, Monsieur le Prefet,” said Don Luis.  “So far, you have followed the logical and natural trend of your thoughts; and that brings you to your present position.”