“This time the work was completed.  Fate was about to be fulfilled.  Between the ‘hater’ and his victims there was but the distance of one act.  The act was performed.  M. Fauville died.”

Don Luis ceased.  His words were followed by a long silence; and he felt certain that the extraordinary story which he had just finished telling met with the absolute approval of his hearers.  They did not discuss, they believed.  And yet it was the most incredible truth that he was asking them to believe.

M. Desmalions asked one last question.

“You were in that passage with Sergeant Mazeroux.  There were detectives outside the house.  Admitting that M. Fauville knew that he was to be killed that night and at that very hour of the night, who can have killed him and who can have killed his son?  There was no one within these four walls.”

“There was M. Fauville.”

A sudden clamour of protests arose.  The veil was promptly torn; and the spectacle revealed by Don Luis provoked, in addition to horror, an unforeseen outburst of incredulity and a sort of revolt against the too kindly attention which had been accorded to those explanations.  The Prefect of Police expressed the general feeling by exclaiming: 

“Enough of words!  Enough of theories!  However logical they may seem, they lead to absurd conclusions.”

“Absurd in appearance, Monsieur le Prefet; but how do we know that M. Fauville’s unheard-of conduct is not explained by very natural reasons?  Of course, no one dies with a light heart for the mere pleasure of revenge.  But how do we know that M. Fauville, whose extreme emaciation and pallor you must have noted as I did, was not stricken by some mortal illness and that, knowing himself doomed—­”

“I repeat, enough of words!” cried the Prefect.  “You go only by suppositions.  What I want is proofs, a proof, only one.  And we are still waiting for it.”

“Here it is, Monsieur le Prefet.”

“Eh?  What’s that you say?”

“Monsieur le Prefet, when I removed the chandelier from the plaster that supported it, I found, outside the upper surface of the metal box, a sealed envelope.  As the chandelier was placed under the attic occupied by M. Fauville’s son, it is evident that M. Fauville was able, by lifting the boards of the floor in his son’s room, to reach the top of the machine which he had contrived.  This was how, during that last night, he placed this sealed envelope in position, after writing on it the date of the murder, ‘31 March, 11 P.M.,’ and his signature, ’Hippolyte Fauville.’”

M. Desmalions opened the envelope with an eager hand.  His first glance at the pages of writing which it contained made him give a start.

“Oh, the villain, the villain!” he said.  “How was it possible for such a monster to exist?  What a loathsome brute!”

In a jerky voice, which became almost inaudible at times owing to his amazement, he read: