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Fauville returned, two hours later." There was a fresh silence, which evidently meant: "So, during the two hours when Sergeant Mazeroux was asleep, it was physically possible for you to open the door and kill the two Fauvilles." The examination was taking the course which Perenna had foreseen; and the circle was drawing closer and closer around him.
"But, dash it all, don't you understand that, after this job, there will be the most infernal stir, that you're compromised up to the neck as it is, and that everybody will turn against you?" "Well?" "Drop the business." "And the murderers of Cosmo Mornington and the Fauvilles?" "The police will see to that." "Alexandre, you're an ass."
On the fifteenth of May the wait was renewed, while the same crowd gathered outside, an anxious, breathless crowd, stirred by the least sound and keeping an impressive silence, with eyes gazing upon the Fauvilles' house. This time the light was put out, but the Prefect of Police kept his hand on the electric switch. Ten times, twenty times, he unexpectedly turned on the light.
"With good reasons to back it up!" said the Prefect, laughing. "There's no doubt about it; you can't stomach the trick of the iron curtain. Well, go ahead! It's Don Luis's own lookout; he's brought it on himself. Mazeroux, ring me up at the office as soon as the telephone is put right. And both of you meet me at the Fauvilles' house this evening. Don't forget it's the night for the fourth letter."
That he knew with the greatest certainty. Just as punctually as the mysterious letters had reached their destination in spite of all the obstacles in the way, so the explosion would occur at the hour named. The infernal artificer of the accursed work had wished it so. At three o'clock in the morning there would be nothing left of the Fauvilles' house. "Help! Help!"
Now the end of the Avenue Henri Martin was within five minutes' walk of the Fauvilles' house. The man was brought into Mme. Fauville's presence and recognized her at once. What had she done in that neighbourhood for over an hour? Marie Fauville was taken to the central lockup, was entered on the register, and slept, that night, at the Saint-Lazare prison.
And, in his distraught brain, while Marie lay dying, he heard the explosion at the Fauvilles' house and saw the Prefect of Police and Mazeroux lying hideously mutilated, dead. A numbness crept over him. He fell into a sort of swoon, in which he continued to stammer confused syllables: "Florence Marie Marie " The fourth mysterious letter!
He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said: "Yes, after all, there's truth in what you say.... Yes, it all fits in.... Why didn't I think of it?... My relations with Cosmo Mornington, my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles undoubtedly gives me the millions.... And then ... and then ... why, he's absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!... All the more so as.... Well, there, I'm a goner!"
Florence's share in this series of attempts was not to be denied. And, now, behold her relations with the Fauvilles' murderers duly established by the little note found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare's plays, while two more deaths were added to the melancholy list: the deaths of Chief Inspector Ancenis and of the chauffeur.
"Come, come, Chief!" "A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please I'm unattackable on that ground but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary legatee, and the rest of it. And it's too stupid! For, after all, who will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they go clapping me into jail?"