“Monsieur le Prefet,” he asked, “will you allow me to set forth the facts of the matter as it now stands?  They will form a natural sequel and conclusion of the interview which we had after the explosion on the Boulevard Suchet.”

M. Desmalions’s silence gave Don Luis leave to speak.  He at once continued: 

“It will not take long, Monsieur le Prefet.  It will not take long for two reasons:  first, because M. Fauville’s confessions remain at our disposal and we know definitely the monstrous part which he played; and, secondly, because, after all, the truth, however complicated it may seem, is really very simple.

“It all lies in the objection which you, Monsieur le Prefet, made to me on leaving the wrecked house on the Boulevard Suchet:  ‘How is it,’ you asked, ’that the Mornington inheritance is not once mentioned in Hippolyte Fauville’s confession?’ It all lies in that, Monsieur le Prefet.  Hippolyte Fauville did not say a word about the inheritance; and the reason evidently is that he did not know of it.

“And the reason why Gaston Sauverand was able to tell me his whole sensational story without making the least allusion to the inheritance was that the inheritance played no sort of part in Gaston Sauverand’s story.  He, too, knew nothing of it before those events, any more than Marie Fauville did, or Florence Levasseur.  There is no denying the fact:  Hippolyte Fauville was guided by revenge and by revenge alone.  If not, why should he have acted as he did, seeing that Cosmo Mornington’s millions reverted to him by the fullest of rights?  Besides, if he had wished to enjoy those millions, he would not have begun by killing himself.

“One thing, therefore, is certain:  the inheritance in no way affected Hippolyte Fauville’s resolves or actions.  And, nevertheless, one after the other, with inflexible regularity, as if they had been struck down in the very order called for by the terms of the Mornington inheritance, they all disappeared:  Cosmo Mornington, then Hippolyte Fauville, then Edmond Fauville, then Marie Fauville, then Gaston Sauverand.  First, the possessor of the fortune; next, all those whom he had appointed his legatees; and, I repeat, in the very order in which the will enabled them to lay claim to the fortune!”

“Is it not strange?” asked Perenna, “and are we not bound to suppose that there was a controlling mind at the back of it all?  Are we not bound to admit that the formidable contest was influenced by that inheritance, and that, above the hatred and jealousy of the loathsome Fauville, there loomed a being endowed with even more tremendous energy, pursuing a tangible aim and driving to their deaths, one by one, like so many numbered victims, all the unconscious actors in the tragedy of which he tied and of which he is now untying the threads?”

Don Luis leaned forward and continued earnestly: