“As I cannot write, my wife sends you this letter.  And we are, with the most profound respect, &c.”

The doctor rubbed his hands violently.

“And you have seen this blacksmith?” he asked.

“Certainly!  He has been here, he and his wife.  Ah! if the man had been left to his own counsels, he would have kept it all secret, so terribly is he afraid of this Crochard; but, fortunately, his wife had more courage.”

“Decidedly,” growled the surgeon.  “The women are, after all, the better part of creation.”

The magistrate carefully replaced the letter in the box, and then went on in his usual calm voice,—­

“Thus the first attempt at murder is duly and fully proven.  As for the second,—­the one made on the river,—­we are not quite so far advanced.  Still I have hopes.  I have found out, for instance, that Crochard is a first-rate swimmer.  Only about three months ago he made a bet with one of the waiters at the hotel where he is engaged, that he would swim across the Dong-Nai twice, at a place where the current is strongest; and he did it.”

“But that is evidence; is it not?”

“No; it is only a probability in favor of the prosecution.  But I have another string to my bow.  The register on board ship proves that Crochard went on shore the very evening after the arrival of the vessel.  Where, and with whom, did he spend the evening?  Not one of my hundred and odd witnesses has seen him that night.  And that is not all.  No one has noticed, the next day, that his clothes were wet.  Therefore he must have changed his clothes; and, in order to do that, he must have bought some; for he had taken nothing with him out of the ship but what he had on.  Where did he buy these clothes?  I mean to find that out as soon as I shall no longer be forced to carry on the investigation secretly, as I have done so far.  For I never forget one thing, that the real criminals are in France, and that they will surely escape us, if they hear that their wretched accomplice here is in trouble.”

Once more the surgeon drew Henrietta’s letter from his pocket, and handed it to the lawyer, saying,—­

“I know who they are, the really guilty ones.  I know Daniel’s enemies,—­Sarah Brandon, Maxime de Brevan, and the others.”

But the magistrate waved back the letter, and replied,—­

“It is not enough for us to know them, doctor; we want evidence against them,—­clear, positive, irrefutable evidence.  This evidence we will get from Crochard.  Oh, I know the ways of these rascals!  As soon as they see they are overwhelmed by the evidence against them, and feel they are in real danger, they hasten to denounce their accomplices, and to aid justice, with all their perversity to discover them.  The accused will do the same.  When I shall have established the fact that he was hired to murder M. Champcey, he will tell me by whom he was hired; and he will have to confess that he was thus hired, when I show him how much of the money he received for the purpose is now left.”