"Granting that the letters arrived on the dates named, you will
nevertheless have noted that the hour varied on each occasion.
"That is to say, it varied according as we watched in the dark or not,
and that is just the detail which supplied me with the key to the
riddle. If the letters--and this was an indispensable precaution, which
we are now able to understand--were delivered only under cover of the
darkness, it must be because a contrivance of some kind prevented them
from appearing when the electric light was on, and because that
contrivance was controlled by a switch inside the room. There is no
other explanation possible.
"We have to do with an automatic distributor that delivers the
incriminating letters which it contains by clockwork, releasing them only
between this hour and that on such and such a night fixed in advance and
only at times when the electric light is off. You have the apparatus
before you. No doubt the experts will admire its ingenuity and confirm my
assertions. But, given the fact that it was found in the ceiling of this
room, given the fact that it contained letters written by M. Fauville, am
I not entitled to say that it was constructed by M. Fauville, the
electrical engineer?"
Once more the name of M. Fauville returned, like an obsession; and each
time the name stood more clearly defined. It was first M. Fauville; then
M. Fauville, the engineer; then M. Fauville, the electrical engineer. And
thus the picture of the "hater," as Don Luis said, appeared in its
accurate outlines, giving those men, used though they were to the
strangest criminal monstrosities, a thrill of terror. The truth was now
no longer prowling around them. They were already fighting with it, as
you fight with an adversary whom you do not see but who clutches you by
the throat and brings you to the ground.
And the Prefect of Police, summing up all his impressions, said, in a
strained voice:
"So M. Fauville wrote those letters in order to ruin his wife and the man
who was in love with her?"
"Yes."
"In that case--"
"What?"
"Knowing, at the same time, that he was threatened with death, he wished,
if ever the threat was realized, that his death should be laid to the
charge of his wife and her friend?"
"Yes."
"And, in order to avenge himself on their love for each other and to
gratify his hatred of them both, he wanted the whole set of facts to
point to them as guilty of the murder of which he would be the victim?"
"Yes."
"So that--so that M. Fauville, in one part of his accursed work,
was--what shall I say?--the accomplice of his own murder. He dreaded
death. He struggled against it. But he arranged that his hatred should
gain by it. That's it, isn't it? That's how it is?"
"Almost, Monsieur le Préfet. You are following the same stages by which I
travelled and, like myself, you are hesitating before the last truth,
before the truth which gives the tragedy its sinister character and
deprives it of all human proportions."
The Prefect struck the table with his two fists and, in a sudden fit of
revolt, cried:
"It's ridiculous! It's a perfectly preposterous theory! M. Fauville
threatened with death and contriving his wife's ruin with that
Machiavellian perseverance? Absurd! The man who came to my office, the
man whom you saw, was thinking of only one thing: how to escape dying! He
was obsessed by one dread alone, the dread of death.
"It is not at such moments," the Prefect emphasized, "that a man fits up
clockwork and lays traps, especially when those traps cannot take effect
unless he dies by foul play. Can you see M. Fauville working at his
automatic machine, putting in with his own hands letters which he has
taken the pains to write to a friend three months before and intercept,
arranging events so that his wife shall appear guilty and saying,
'There! If I die murdered, I'm easy in my mind: the person to be
arrested will be Marie!'
"No, you must confess, men don't take these gruesome precautions. Or, if
they do--if they do, it means that they're sure of being murdered. It
means that they agree to be murdered. It means that they are at one with
the murderer, so to speak, and meet him halfway. In short, it means--"
He interrupted himself, as if the sentences which he had spoken had
surprised him. And the others seemed equally disconcerted. And all of
them unconsciously drew from those sentences the conclusions which they
implied, and which they themselves did not yet fully perceive.
Don Luis did not remove his eyes from the Prefect, and awaited the
inevitable words.