"Give me the photograph, Monsieur Marmot," said a pale little man in blue spectacles, who had come in unobserved from a door behind us, while Müller was speaking.
The bald-headed Chef jumped up with great alacrity, bowed like a second Sir Pertinax, and handed over the photograph.
"The peculiar difficulty of this case, Monsieur le Préfet" ... he began.
The Préfet waved his hand.
"Thanks, Monsieur Marmot," he said, "I know all the particulars of this case. You need not trouble to explain them. So this is the photograph forwarded from Toulon. Well--well! Sergeant, strip the prisoner's shoulders."
A sudden quiver shot over Lenoir's face at this order, and his cheek blenched under the tan; but he neither spoke nor resisted. The next moment his coat and waistcoat were lying on the ground; his shirt, torn in the rough handling, was hanging round his loins, and he stood before us naked to the waist, lean, brown, muscular--a torso of an athlete done in bronze.
We pressed round eagerly. Monsieur le Chef put up his double eye-glass; Monsier le Préfet took off his blue spectacles.
"So--so," he said, pointing with the end of his glasses towards a whitish, indefinite kind of scar on Lenoir's left shoulder, "here is a mark like a burn. Is this the brand?"
The sergeant nodded.
"V'là, M'sieur le Préfet!" he said, and struck the spot smartly with his open palm. Instantly the smitten place turned livid, while from the midst of it, like the handwriting on the wall, the fatal letters T. F. sprang out in characters of fire.