* * * * *

Three months later, Monsieur de Vargnes met Monsieur X——­ at an evening party and at first sight, and without the slightest hesitation, he recognized in him those very pale, very cold, and very clear blue eyes, eyes which it was impossible to forget.

The man himself remained perfect impassive, so that Monsieur de Vargnes was forced to say to himself: 

“Probably I am the sport of a hallucination at this moment, or else there are two pairs of eyes that are perfectly similar, in the world.  And what eyes!  Can it be possible?”

The magistrate instituted inquiries into his life, and he discovered this, which removed all his doubts.

Five years previously, Monsieur X——­ had been a very poor, but very brilliant medical student, who, although he never took his doctor’s degree, had already made himself remarkable by his microbiological researches.

A young and very rich widow had fallen in love with him and married him.  She had one child by her first marriage, and in the space of six months, first the child and then the mother died of typhoid fever, and thus Monsieur X——­ had inherited a large fortune, in due form, and without any possible dispute.  Everybody said that he had attended to the two patients with the utmost devotion.  Now, were these two deaths the two crimes mentioned in his letter?

But then, Monsieur X——­ must have poisoned his two victims with the microbes of typhoid fever, which he had skillfully cultivated in them, so as to make the disease incurable, even by the most devoted care and attention.  Why not?

“Do you believe it?” I asked Monsieur de Vargnes.  “Absolutely,” he replied.  “And the most terrible thing about it is, that the villain is right when he defies me to force him to confess his crime publicly for I see no means of obtaining a confession, none whatever.  For a moment, I thought of magnetism, but who could magnetize that man with those pale, cold, bright eyes?  With such eyes, he would force the magnetizer to denounce himself as the culprit.”

And then he said, with a deep sigh: 

“Ah!  Formerly there was something good about justice!”

And when he saw my inquiring looks, he added in a firm and perfectly convinced voice: 

“Formerly, justice had torture at its command.”

“Upon my word,” I replied, with all an author’s unconscious and simple egotism, “it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange tale would have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as regards the story I intended to make of it.”

ALLOUMA

I

One of my friends had said to me:—­

“If you happen to be near Bordj-Ebbaba while you are in Algeria, be sure and go to see my old friend Auballe, who has settled there.”