On the other hand, M. de Brevan wrote, “Deaf to my counsel and prayers even, Miss Ville-Handry has carried out the project of leaving her paternal home.  Suspected of having favored her escape, I have been called out by Sir Thorn, and had to fight a duel with him.  A paper which I enclose will give you the details of our meeting, and tell you that I was lucky enough to wound that gentleman of little honor, but of great skill with the pistol.

“Alas! my poor, excellent Daniel, why should I be compelled by the duties of friendship to confess to you that it was not for the purpose of remaining faithful to you, that Miss Henrietta was so anxious to be free?  Do not desire to return, my poor friend!  You would suffer too much in finding her whom you have loved so dearly unworthy of an honest man, unworthy of you.  Believe me, I did all I could to prevent her irregularities, which now have become public.  I only drew her hatred upon me, and I should not be surprised if she did all she could to make us all cut our throats.”

This impudence was bold enough to confound anybody’s mind, and to make one doubt one’s own good sense.  Still he found the newspaper, which had been sent to him with the letter, and in it the account of the duel between M. de Brevan and M. Thomas Elgin.  What did that signify?  He once more read over, more attentively than at first, the letters of Maxime and the Countess Sarah; and, by comparing them with each other, he thought he noticed in them some traces of a beginning disagreement.

“It may be that there is discord among my enemies,” he said to himself, “and that they do no longer agree, now that, in their view, the moment approaches when they are to divide the proceeds of their crimes.  Or did they never agree, and am I the victim of a double plot?  Or is the whole merely a comedy for the purpose of deceiving me, and keeping me here, until the murderer has done his work?”

He was not allowed to torture his mind long with efforts to seek the solution of this riddle.  The old doctor came back with the lawyer, and for more than half an hour he had to answer an avalanche of questions.  But the investigation had been carried on with such rare sagacity, that Daniel could furnish the prosecution only a single new fact,—­the surrender of his entire fortune into the hands of M. de Brevan.

And even this fact must needs, on account of its extreme improbability, remain untold in an investigation which was based upon logic alone.  Daniel very naturally, somewhat ashamed of his imprudence, tried to excuse himself; and, when he had concluded his explanations, the lawyer said,—­

“Now, one more question:  would you recognize the man who attempted to drown you in the Dong-Nai in a boat which he had offered to you, and which he upset evidently on purpose?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah! that is a pity.  That man was Crochard, I am sure; but he will deny it; and the prosecution will have nothing but probabilities to oppose to his denial, unless I can find the place where he changed his clothes.”