“Here is another memorandum showing that Inspector Verot overheard a conversation between Fauville and his accomplice, that he shadowed Vernocq and robbed him of Florence Levasseur’s photograph, and that Vernocq sent Fauville in pursuit of him.  Here is a third memorandum, which is just a copy of the two found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare and which proves that Jean Vernocq, to whom that set of Shakespeare belonged, knew all about Fauville’s machination.  Here are his correspondence with Caceres, the Peruvian attache, and the letters denouncing myself and Sergeant Mazeroux, which he intended to send to the press.  Here—­

“But need I say more, Monsieur le President?  You have the complete evidence in your hands.  The magistrates will find that all the accusations which I made yesterday, before the Prefect of Police, were strictly true.”

“And he?” cried Valenglay.  “The criminal?  Where is he?”

“Outside, in a motor car, in his motor car, rather.”

“Have you told my men?” asked M. Desmalions anxiously.

“Yes, Monsieur le Prefet.  Besides, the fellow is carefully tied up.  Don’t be alarmed.  He won’t escape.”

“Well, you’ve foreseen every contingency,” said Valenglay, “and the business seems to me to be finished.  But there’s one problem that remains unexplained, the one perhaps that interested the public most.  I mean the marks of the teeth in the apple, the teeth of the tiger, as they have been called, which were certainly Mme. Fauville’s teeth, innocent though she was.  Monsieur le Prefet declares that you have solved this problem.”

“Yes, Monsieur le President, and Jean Vernocq’s papers prove that I was right.  Besides, the problem is quite simple.  The apple was marked with Mme. Fauville’s teeth, but Mme. Fauville never bit the apple.”

“Come, come!”

“Monsieur le President, Hippolyte Fauville very nearly said as much when he mentioned this mystery in his posthumous confession.”

“Hippolyte Fauville was a madman.”

“Yes, but a lucid madman and capable of reasoning with the most appalling logic.  Some years ago, at Palermo, Mme. Fauville had a very bad fall, hitting her mouth against the marble top of a table, with the result that a number of her teeth, in both the upper and the lower jaw, were loosened.  To repair the damage and to make the gold plate intended to strengthen the teeth, a plate which Mme. Fauville wore for several months, the dentist, as usual, took an impression of her mouth.

“M.  Fauville happened to have kept the mould; and he used it to print the marks of his wife’s teeth in the cake of chocolate shortly before his death and in the apple on the night of his death.  When this was done, he put the mould with the other things which the explosion was meant to, and did, destroy.”

Don Luis’s explanation was followed by a silence.  The thing was so simple that the Prime Minister was quite astonished.  The whole tragedy, the whole charge, everything that had caused Marie’s despair and death and the death of Gaston Sauverand:  all this rested on an infinitely small detail which had occurred to none of the millions and millions of people who had interested themselves so enthusiastically in the mystery of the teeth of the tiger.