"Still, in the letters which he wrote, M. Fauville accuses his wife."
"He does."
"We must therefore admit either that he was right in accusing her or that
the letters are forged?"
"They are not forged. All the experts have recognized M. Fauville's
handwriting."
"Then?"
"Then--"
Don Luis did not finish his sentence; and M. Desmalions felt the breath
of the truth fluttering still nearer round him.
The others, one and all as anxious as himself, were silent. He muttered:
"I do not understand--"
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, you do. You understand that, if the sending of
those letters forms an integrate part of the plot hatched against Mme.
Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, it is because their contents were prepared
in such a way as to be the undoing of the victims."
"What! What! What are you saying?"
"I am saying what I said before. Once they are innocent, everything that
tells against them is part of the plot."
Again there was a long silence. The Prefect of Police did not conceal
his agitation. Speaking very slowly, with his eyes fixed on Don Luis's
eyes, he said:
"Whoever the culprit may be, I know nothing more terrible than this work
of hatred."
"It is an even more improbable work than you can imagine, Monsieur le
Préfet," said Perenna, with growing animation, "and it is a hatred of
which you, who do not know Sauverand's confession, cannot yet estimate
the violence. I understood it completely as I listened to the man; and,
since then, all my thoughts have been overpowered by the dominant idea of
that hatred. Who could hate like that? To whose loathing had Marie
Fauville and Sauverand been sacrificed? Who was the inconceivable person
whose perverted genius had surrounded his two victims with chains so
powerfully forged?
"And another idea came to my mind, an earlier idea which had already
struck me several times and to which I have already referred in Sergeant
Mazeroux's presence: I mean the really mathematical character of the
appearance of the letters. I said to myself that such grave documents
could not be introduced into the case at fixed dates unless some primary
reason demanded that those dates should absolutely be fixed. What
reason? If a _human_ agency had been at work each time, there would
surely have been some irregularity dependent on this especially after
the police had become cognizant of the matter and were present at the
delivery of the letters.
"Well," Perenna continued, "in spite of every obstacle, the letters
continued to come, as though they could not help it. And thus the reason
of their coming gradually dawned upon me: they came mechanically, by some
invisible process set going once and for all and working with the blind
certainty of a physical law. This was a case not of a conscious
intelligence and will, but just of material necessity.... It was the
clash of these two ideas--the idea of the hatred pursuing the innocent
and the idea of that machinery serving the schemes of the 'hater'--it was
their clash that gave birth to the little spark of light. When brought
into contact, the two ideas combined in my mind and suggested the
recollection that Hippolyte Fauville was an engineer by profession!"
The others listened to him with a sort of uneasy oppression. What was
gradually being revealed of the tragedy, instead of relieving the
anxiety, increased it until it became absolutely painful.