“Yes,” said Mazeroux, “a thoroughgoing attempt, though she had to make it in a manner which she must have hated.  She hanged herself in strips of linen torn from her sheets and underclothing and twisted together.  She had to be restored by artificial respiration.  She is out of danger now, I believe, but she is never left alone, for she swore she would do it again.”

“She has made no confession?”

“No.  She persists in proclaiming her innocence.”

“And what do they think at the public prosecutor’s?  At the Prefect’s?”

“Why should they change their opinion, Chief?  The inquiries confirm every one of the charges brought against her; and, in particular, it has been proved beyond the possibility of dispute that she alone can have touched the apple and that she can have touched it only between eleven o’clock at night and seven o’clock in the morning.  Now the apple bears the undeniable marks of her teeth.  Would you admit that there are two sets of jaws in the world that leave the same identical imprint?”

“No, no,” said Don Luis, who was thinking of Florence Levasseur.  “No, the argument allows of no discussion.  We have here a fact that is clear as daylight; and the imprint is almost tantamount to a discovery in the act.  But then how, in the midst of all this, are we to explain the presence of -----”

“Whom, Chief?”

“Nobody.  I had an idea worrying me.  Besides, you see, in all this there are so many unnatural things, such queer coincidences and inconsistencies, that I dare not count on a certainty which the reality of to-morrow may destroy.”

They went on talking for some time, in a low voice, studying the question in all its bearings.

At midnight they switched off the electric light in the chandelier and arranged that each should go to sleep in turn.

And the hours went by as they had done when the two sat up before, with the same sounds of belated carriages and motor cars; the same railway whistles; the same silence.

The night passed without alarm or incident of any kind.  At daybreak the life out of doors was resumed; and Don Luis, during his waking hours, had not heard a sound in the room except the monotonous snoring of his companion.

“Can I have been mistaken?” he wondered.  “Did the clue in that volume of Shakespeare mean something else?  Or did it refer to events of last year, events that took place on the dates set down?”

In spite of everything, he felt overcome by a strange uneasiness as the dawn began to glimmer through the half-closed shutters.  A fortnight before, nothing had happened either to warn him; and yet there were two victims lying near him when he woke.

At seven o’clock he called out: 

“Alexandre!”

“Eh?  What is it, Chief?”

“You’re not dead?”

“What’s that?  Dead?  No, Chief; why should I be?”

“Quite sure?”