“A chance correspondence has revealed to me the existence of an unknown heir of the Roussel family.  It was only to-day that I was able to procure the documents necessary for identifying this heir; and, owing to unforeseen obstacles, it is only at the last moment that I am able to send them to you by the person whom they concern.  Respecting a secret which is not mine and wishing, as a woman, to remain outside a business in which I have been only accidentally involved, I beg you, Monsieur le Prefet, to excuse me if I do not feel called upon to sign my name to this letter.”

So Perenna had seen rightly and events were justifying his forecast.  Some one was putting in an appearance within the period indicated.  The claim was made in good time.  And the very way in which things were happening at the exact moment was curiously suggestive of the mechanical exactness that had governed the whole business.

The last question still remained:  who was this unknown person, the possible heir, and therefore the five or six fold murderer?  He was waiting in the next room.  There was nothing but a wall between him and the others.  He was coming in.  They would see him.  They would know who he was.

The Prefect suddenly rang the bell.

A few tense seconds elapsed.  Oddly enough, M. Desmalions did not remove his eyes from Perenna.  Don Luis remained quite master of himself, but restless and uneasy at heart.

The door opened.  The messenger showed some one in.

It was Florence Levasseur.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WEBER TAKES HIS REVENGE

Don Luis was for one moment amazed.  Florence Levasseur here!  Florence, whom he had left in the train under Mazeroux’s supervision and for whom it was physically impossible to be back in Paris before eight o’clock in the evening!

Then, despite his bewilderment, he at once understood.  Florence, knowing that she was being followed, had drawn them after her to the Gare Saint-Lazare and simply walked through the railway carriage, getting out on the other platform, while the worthy Mazeroux went on in the train to keep his eye on the traveller who was not there.

But suddenly the full horror of the situation struck him.  Florence was here to claim the inheritance; and her claim, as he himself had said, was a proof of the most terrible guilt.

Acting on an irresistible impulse, Don Luis leaped to the girl’s side, seized her by the arm and said, with almost malevolent force: 

“What are you doing here?  What have you come for?  Why did you not let me know?”

M. Desmalions stepped between them.  But Don Luis, without letting go of the girl’s arm, exclaimed: 

“Oh, Monsieur le Prefet, don’t you see that this is all a mistake?  The person whom we are expecting, about whom I told you, is not this one.  The other is keeping in the background, as usual.  Why it’s impossible that Florence Levasseur—­”