"Oh!"
"Am I asking too much, Monsieur le Préfet?"
"One can always ask, but the request should be reasonable. And the
innocence of those people does not depend on me."
"No; but it depends on you, Monsieur le Préfet, to let them know if I
prove their innocence to you."
"Yes, I agree, if you prove it beyond dispute."
"Just so."
Don Luis's calm assurance impressed M. Desmalions in spite of everything
and even more than on the former occasions; and he suggested:
"The results of the hasty inspection which we have made will perhaps help
you. For instance, we are certain that the bomb was placed by the
entrance to the passage and probably under the boards of the floor."
"Please do not trouble, Monsieur le Préfet. These are only secondary
details. The great thing now is that you should know the whole truth, and
that not only through words."
The Prefect had come closer. The magistrate and detectives were standing
round Don Luis, watching his lips and movements with feverish impatience.
Was it possible that that truth, as yet so remote and vague, in spite of
all the importance which they attached to the arrests already effected,
was known at last?
It was a solemn moment. Every one was on tenterhooks. The manner in which
Don Luis had foretold the explosion lent the value of an accomplished
fact to his predictions; and the men whom he had saved from the terrible
catastrophe were almost ready to accept as certainties the most
improbable statements which a man of his stamp might make.
"Monsieur le Préfet," he said, "you waited in vain last night for the
fourth letter to make its appearance. We shall now be able, by an
unexpected miracle of chance, to be present at the delivery of the
letter. You will then know that it was the same hand that committed all
the crimes--and you will know whose hand that was."
And, turning to Mazeroux:
"Sergeant, will you please make the room as dark as you can? The
shutters are gone; but you might draw the curtains across the windows
and close the doors. Monsieur le Préfet, is it by accident that the
electric light is on?"
"Yes, by accident. We will have it turned out."
"One moment. Have any of you gentlemen a pocket lantern about you? Or,
no, it doesn't matter. This will do."
There was a candle in a sconce. He took it and lit it.
Then he switched off the electric light.
There was a half darkness, amid which the flame of the candle flickered
in the draught from the windows. Don Luis protected the flame with his
hand and moved to the table.
"I do not think that we shall be kept waiting long," he said. "As I
foresee it, there will be only a few seconds before the facts speak for
themselves and better than I could do."
Those few seconds, during which no one broke the silence, were
unforgettable. M. Desmalions has since declared, in an interview in which
he ridicules himself very cleverly, that his brain, over-stimulated by
the fatigues of the night and by the whole scene before him, imagined the
most unlikely events, such as an invasion of the house by armed
assailants, or the apparition of ghosts and spirits.
He had the curiosity, however, he said, to watch Don Luis. Sitting on
the edge of the table, with his head thrown a little back and his
eyes roaming over the ceiling, Don Luis was eating a piece of bread
and nibbling at a cake of chocolate. He seemed very hungry, but quite
at his ease.
The others maintained that tense attitude which we put on at moments of
great physical effort. Their faces were distorted with a sort of
grimace. They were haunted by the memory of the explosion as well as
obsessed by what was going to happen. The flame of the candle cast
shadows on the wall.
More seconds elapsed than Don Luis Perenna had said, thirty or forty
seconds, perhaps, that seemed endless. Then Perenna lifted the candle a
little and said:
"There you are."
They had all seen what they now saw almost as soon as he spoke. A letter
was descending from the ceiling. It spun round slowly, like a leaf
falling from a tree without being driven by the wind. It just touched Don
Luis and alighted on the floor between two legs of the table.
Picking up the paper and handing it to M. Desmalions, Don Luis said:
"There you are, Monsieur le Préfet. This is the fourth letter, due
last night."