Guerry, the secretary, was devoted to his employer. When Weiss became worse he reported the fact to Madame Guerry, and that lady sniffed meaningly and finally blurted out the gossip she had heard from the postmistress.
Instantly the secretary's suspicions were aroused. He felt certain that Jeanne was poisoning her husband, and when on October 9 his wife hinted that Madame Weiss had posted an important letter addressed to Felix Roques at Madrid, and that the letter was still lying in Mademoiselle Castaing's post office, he promptly went down to see the lady whose curiosity was the direct means of saving a wronged man's life.
It was, of course, against the regulations for the postmistress to discuss her duties with outsiders, and Guerry, unwilling to put her in an embarrassing position, cut the Gordian knot by stealing Madame Weiss's letter. When he got home he read it, and a more remarkable document was never penned.
"You may as well know what a fearful time I am going through at this moment—in what a nightmare I live," Jeanne wrote. "Monsieur has been in bed four days, and the best half of my stock is used up. He fights it—fights it by his sheer vitality and instinct of self-preservation, so that he seems to absorb emetics and never drains a cup or a glass to its dregs. The doctor, who came yesterday, could find no disease. 'He's a madman, a hypochondriac,' he said. 'Since he seems to want to be sick, give him some ipecacuanha, and don't worry. There's nothing seriously the matter with him.'
"The constant sickness obliges me to administer the remedy in very small doses. I can't go beyond twenty drops without bringing on vomiting. Yesterday from five in the morning until four in the afternoon I have done nothing but empty basins, clean sheets, wash his face, and hold him down in the bed during his paroxysms of sickness. At night when I have got away for a moment I have put my head on Mademoiselle Castaing's shoulder and sobbed like a child. I am afraid, afraid that I haven't got enough of the remedy left, and that I shan't be able to bring it off. Couldn't you send me some by parcel post to the railway station of Ain-Fezza? Can't you send four or five pairs of children's socks with the bottle? I'll take care to get rid of the wrapper. Hide the bottle carefully.
"I'm getting thinner every day. I don't look well, and I am afraid when I see you I shan't please you. Did you get the photograph?
"Forgive my handwriting, but I am horribly nervous. I adore you."
The secretary handed the letter to the Public Prosecutor at Oran, and immediately Jeanne Weiss was arrested. The police were only just in time. Another day's delay and Weiss must have died, for the doctors had to work desperately before they could report that he was mending. When she was put in prison Jeanne tried to commit suicide, but a strong emetic preserved her life. Then followed a genuine illness, and for six months she was in the prison infirmary.
She had been allowed to take her infant with her, but it sickened in goal and died, greatly to her distress, for although Jeanne could plot to receive arsenic with which to poison her husband, and could ask her lover to hide the bottle in children's socks, she was devoted to her babies. A curious contradiction, yet it was because of this that, instead of deserting Weiss, she chose rather to poison him.
A perusal of Madame Weiss's papers left no doubt in the minds of the authorities that Felix Roques was her guilty accomplice, and the services of the Spanish police were utilized to effect his arrest in Madrid. Roques, however, had no intention of facing the music, and he contrived to smuggle a revolver into the Spanish goal, and with it he blew out his brains. The young Russian woman was left, therefore, to answer alone the serious charge of having attempted to murder her husband.