Her voice had a soft and musical tone which Perenna loved to hear; and, himself a little perplexed by Mlle. Levasseur’s attitude of reserve, he wondered what she could think of him, of his mode of life, and of all that the newspapers had to tell of his mysterious past.

“Nothing new?” he asked, as he glanced at the headings of the articles.

She read the reports relating to Mme. Fauville; and Don Luis could see that the police investigations were making no headway.  Marie Fauville still kept to her first method, that of weeping, making a show of indignation, and assuming entire ignorance of the facts upon which she was being examined.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said, aloud.  “I have never seen any one defend herself so clumsily.”

“Still, if she’s innocent?”

It was the first time that Mlle. Levasseur had uttered an opinion or rather a remark upon the case.  Don Luis looked at her in great surprise.

“So you think her innocent, Mademoiselle?”

She seemed ready to reply and to explain the meaning of her interruption.  It was as though she were removing her impassive mask and about to allow her face to adopt a more animated expression under the impulse of her inner feelings.  But she restrained herself with a visible effort, and murmured: 

“I don’t know.  I have no views.”

“Possibly,” he said, watching her with curiosity, “but you have a doubt:  a doubt which would be permissible if it were not for the marks left by Mme. Fauville’s own teeth.  Those marks, you see, are something more than a signature, more than a confession of guilt.  And, as long as she is unable to give a satisfactory explanation of this point—­”

But Marie Fauville vouchsafed not the slightest explanation of this or of anything else.  She remained impenetrable.  On the other hand, the police failed to discover her accomplice or accomplices, or the man with the ebony walking-stick and the tortoise-shell glasses whom the waiter at the Cafe du Pont-Neuf had described to Mazeroux and who seemed to have played a singularly suspicious part.  In short, there was not a ray of light thrown upon the subject.

Equally vain was all search for the traces of Victor, the Roussel sister’s first cousin, who would have inherited the Mornington bequest in the absence of any direct heirs.

“Is that all?” asked Perenna.

“No,” said Mlle. Levasseur, “there is an article in the Echo de France—­”

“Relating to me?”

“I presume so, Monsieur.  It is called, ‘Why Don’t They Arrest Him?’”

“That concerns me,” he said, with a laugh.

He took the newspaper and read: 

“Why do they not arrest him?  Why go against logic and prolong an unnatural situation which no decent man can understand?  This is the question which everybody is asking and to which our investigations enable us to furnish a precise reply.