his antecedents would add probability to the suspicions against him, and would weigh with a terrible weight in the scales of justice.  Perhaps, too, he said to himself that Guespin would be sure to prove his innocence in the end, and he only wished to gain time to elude the first search.  It is impossible that we can be deceived.  We know that the countess died of the first blow, as if thunderstruck.  She did not struggle; therefore she could not have torn a piece of cloth off the assassin’s vest.  If you admit Guespin’s guilt, you admit that he was idiot enough to put a piece of his vest in his victim’s hand; you admit that he was such a fool as to go and throw this torn and bloody vest into the Seine, from a bridge, in a place where he might know search would be made—­and all this, without taking the common precaution of attaching it to a stone to carry it to the bottom.  That would be absurd.

“To me, then, this piece of cloth, this smeared vest, indicate at once Guespin’s innocence and the count’s guilt.”

“But,” objected Dr. Gendron, “if Guespin is innocent, why don’t he talk?  Why don’t he prove an alibi?  How was it he had his purse full of money?”

“Observe,” resumed the detective, “that I don’t say he is innocent; we are still among the probabilities.  Can’t you suppose that the count, perfidious enough to set a trap for his servant, was shrewd enough to deprive him of every means of proving an alibi?”

“But you yourself deny the count’s shrewdness.”

“I beg your pardon; please hear me.  The count’s plan was excellent, and shows a superior kind of perversity; the execution alone was defective.  This is because the plan was conceived and perfected in safety, while when the crime had been committed, the murderer, distressed, frightened at his danger, lost his coolness and only half executed his project.  But there are other suppositions.  It might be asked whether, while Madame de Tremorel was being murdered, Guespin might not have been committing some other crime elsewhere.”

This conjecture seemed so improbable to the doctor that he could not avoid objecting to it.  “Oh!” muttered he.

“Don’t forget,” replied Lecoq, “that the field of conjectures has no bounds.  Imagine whatever complication of events you may, I am ready to maintain that such a complication has occurred or will present itself.  Lieuben, a German lunatic, bet that he would succeed in turning up a pack of cards in the order stated in the written agreement.  He turned and turned ten hours per day for twenty years.  He had repeated the operation 4,246,028 times, when he succeeded.”

M. Lecoq was about to proceed with another illustration, when M. Plantat interrupted him by a gesture.

“I admit your hypotheses; I think they are more than probable—­ they are true.”

M. Lecoq, as he spoke, paced up and down between the window and the book-shelves, stopping at emphatic words, like a general who dictates to his aides the plan of the morrow’s battle.  To his auditors, he seemed a new man, with serious features, an eye bright with intelligence, his sentences clear and concise—­the Lecoq, in short, which the magistrates who have employed his talents, would recognize.