“You know the rest, Monsieur le President,” said Don Luis, concluding his statement.  “Florence, staggered by the sudden revelation of the part which she had unconsciously taken in the matter, and especially by the terrible part played by Jean Vernocq, ran away from the nursing-home where the Prefect had brought her at my request.  She had but one thought:  to see Jean Vernocq, demand an explanation of him, and hear what he had to say in his defence.  That same evening he carried her away by motor, on the pretence of giving her proofs of his innocence.  That is all, Monsieur le President.”

Valenglay had listened with growing interest to this gruesome story of the most malevolent genius conceivable to the mind of man.  And he heard it perhaps without too great disgust, because of the light which it threw by contrast upon the bright, easy, happy, and spontaneous genius of the man who had fought for the good cause.

“And you found them?” he asked.

“At three o’clock yesterday afternoon, Monsieur le President.  It was time.  I might even say that it was too late, for Jean Vernocq began by sending me to the bottom of a well, and by crushing Florence under a block of stone.”

“Oh, so you’re dead, are you?”

“Yes, Monsieur le President.”

“But why did that villain want to do away with Florence Levasseur?  Her death destroyed his indispensable scheme of matrimony.”

“It takes two to get married, Monsieur le President, and Florence refused.”

“Well—­”

“Some time ago Jean Vernocq wrote a letter leaving all that he possessed to Florence Levasseur.  Florence, moved by pity for him, and not realizing the importance of what she was doing, wrote a similar letter leaving her property to him.  This letter constitutes a genuine and indisputable will in favor of Jean Vernocq.

“As Florence was Cosmo Mornington’s legal and settled heiress by the mere fact of her presence at yesterday’s meeting with the documents proving her descent from the Roussel family, her death caused her rights to pass to her own legal and settled heir.

“Jean Vernocq would have come into the money without the possibility of any litigation.  And, as you would have been obliged to discharge him after his arrest, for lack of evidence against him, he would have led a quiet life, with fourteen murders on his conscience—­I have added them up—­but with a hundred million francs in his pocket.  To a monster of his stamp, the one made up for the other.”

“But do you possess all the proofs?” asked Valenglay eagerly.

“Here they are,” said Perenna, producing the pocket-book which he had taken out of the cripple’s jacket.  “Here are letters and documents which the villain preserved, owing to a mental aberration common to all great criminals.  Here, by good luck, is his correspondence with Hippolyte Fauville.  Here is the original of the prospectus from which I learned that the house on the Place du Palais-Bourbon was for sale.  Here is a memorandum of Jean Vernocq’s journeys to Alencon to intercept Fauville’s letters to old Langernault.