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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Why, haven't you heard, Monsieur le Préfet?" stammered the governor. "I telephoned to the office, you know " "Speak! What is it?" "Mme. Fauville died this morning. She managed somehow to take poison." M. Desmalions seized the governor by the arm and ran to the infirmary, followed by Perenna and Mazeroux. He saw Marie Fauville lying on a bed in one of the rooms.
You can speak before him; he is the soul of discretion. Besides, he knows all about the business." The attaché was silent. Perenna made him sit down in front of him. "Speak without beating about the bush, dear Señor Caceres. It's a subject that calls for plain dealing; and I don't mind a blunt word or two. It saves such a lot of time! Come on. You want money, I suppose? Or, rather, more money.
"I came as soon as the papers were handed to me." "Why were they not handed to you an hour or two earlier?" "I was not there. I had to leave the house where I am staying, in a hurry." Perenna did not doubt that it was his intervention that upset the enemy's plans by causing Florence to take to flight. The Prefect continued: "So you are ignorant of the reasons why you received the papers?"
Oh, what a state!" At twelve o'clock Silvestre brought him some food on a tray. And the long and painful wait began anew. In the study and in the house, the inquiry, which had been adjourned for lunch, was resumed. Perenna heard footsteps and the sound of voices on every side. At last, feeling tired and bored, he leaned back in his chair and fell asleep.
It was four o'clock when Sergeant Mazeroux came and woke him. As he led him to the study, Mazeroux whispered: "Well, have you discovered him?" "Whom?" "The murderer." "Of course!" said Perenna. "It's as easy as shelling peas!" "That's a good thing!" said Mazeroux, greatly relieved and failing to see the joke. "But for that, as you saw for yourself, you would have been done for." Don Luis entered.
At one moment she took her tear-soaked handkerchief, bit it with her teeth and tore it, after the manner of certain actresses. Perenna saw those beautiful white teeth, a little wide, moist and gleaming, rending the dainty cambric. And he thought of the marks of teeth on the apple. And he was seized with an extreme longing to know the truth.
The American Secretary of Embassy and the Peruvian attaché, considering their continued presence unnecessary, went away, after warmly complimenting Don Luis Perenna on his powers of penetration. Next came the turn of Major d'Astrignac, who shook his former subordinate by the hand with obvious affection.
He sprang to his feet and led Perenna to a glass-fronted case, which he rolled back on its brass castors, revealing a small safe built into the wall. "You will find my whole story here, written up day by day for the past three years. If anything should happen to me, revenge will be easy."
But each of his seventy-five bullets had gone home. What struck the imagination of the public most, however, was Major Comte d'Astrignac's story of the battle of Dar-Dbibarh. The major confessed that this battle, which relieved Fez at the moment when we thought that all was lost and which created such a sensation in France, was won before it was fought and that it was won by Perenna, alone!
"Yes, but that third of an inch isn't there," murmured Perenna. Still followed by the detectives' motor cab, Don Luis returned to the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and it was then that an incident occurred which was to puzzle him greatly and throw a most extraordinary light on the article in the Echo de France.
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