He was beaming at the thought that the chief was clear of the matter and that he had no more crows to pluck with his, Mazeroux’s, superiors, whom he revered almost as much as he did the chief.  Everybody was now agreed; they were “friends all round”; and Mazeroux was choking with delight.

“They’ll lock her up, eh?”

“No,” said Perenna.  “There’s not enough ‘hold’ on her for them to issue a warrant.”

“What!” growled Mazeroux indignantly.  “Not enough hold?  I hope, in any case, that you won’t let her go.  She made no bones, you know, about attacking you!  Come, Chief, polish her off, a she-devil like that!”

Don Luis remained pensive.  He was thinking of the unheard-of coincidences, the accumulation of facts that bore down on Mme. Fauville from every side.  And the decisive proof which would join all these different facts together and give to the accusation the grounds which it still lacked was one which Perenna was able to supply.  This was the marks of the teeth in the apple hidden among the shrubs in the garden.  To the police these would be as good as any fingerprint, all the more as they could compare the marks with those on the cake of chocolate.

Nevertheless, he hesitated; and, concentrating his anxious attention, he watched, with mingled feelings of pity and repulsion, that woman who, to all seeming, had killed her husband and her husband’s son.  Was he to give her the finishing stroke?  Had he the right to play the part of judge?  And supposing he were wrong?

* * * * *

Meantime, M. Desmalions had walked up to him and, while pretending to speak to Mazeroux, was really asking Perenna: 

“What do you think of it?”

Mazeroux shook his head.  Perenna replied: 

“I think, Monsieur le Prefet, that, if this woman is guilty, she is defending herself, for all her cleverness, with inconceivable lack of skill.”

“Meaning—?”

“Meaning that she was doubtless only a tool in the hands of an accomplice.”

“An accomplice?”

“Remember, Monsieur le Prefet, her husband’s exclamation in your office yesterday:  ‘Oh, the scoundrels! the scoundrels!’ There is, therefore, at least one accomplice, who perhaps is the same as the man who was present, as Sergeant Mazeroux must have told you, in the Cafe du Pont-Neuf when Inspector Verot was last there:  a man with a reddish-brown beard, carrying an ebony walking-stick with a silver handle.  So that—­”

“So that,” said M. Desmalions, completing the sentence, “by arresting Mme. Fauville to-day, merely on suspicion, we have a chance of laying our hands on the accomplice.”

Perenna did not reply.  The Prefect continued, thoughtfully: 

“Arrest her ... arrest her....  We should need a proof for that....  Did you receive no clue?”

“None at all, Monsieur le Prefet.  True, my search was only summary.”