When they were gone M. Denizet breathed for a moment. He remained on his feet, thinking. To his mind the matter was becoming clear. Grandmorin, whose reputation was well known, had certainly acted improperly. This made the inquiry a delicate matter. He determined to be more prudent than ever, until the communication he was expecting from the Ministry reached him. But none the less, he triumphed; anyhow he held the culprit.
When he had resumed his seat at the writing-table, he rang up the usher.
"Bring me the driver Jacques Lantier," said he.
The Roubauds were still waiting on the bench in the corridor, with fixed countenances, as if their protracted patience had set them dozing; but their faces were occasionally disturbed by a nervous twitch, and the voice of the usher, calling Jacques, seemed to make them slightly shudder, as they roused themselves. They followed the driver with expanded eyes, watching him disappear in the room of the magistrate. Then they fell into their former attitude—paler, and silent.
For the last three weeks, Jacques had been pursued by the uncomfortable feeling that all this business might end by turning against him. This was unreasonable, for there was naught he could reproach himself with, not even with keeping silent. And yet he entered the room of the examining-magistrate with that little creeping sensation of a guilty person, who fears his crime may be discovered, and he defended himself against the questions that were put to him; he was cautious in his answers, lest he might say too much. He, also, might have killed; was this not visible in his eyes? Nothing was so repugnant to him as these summonses to the justice-room. He experienced a sort of anger at receiving them, saying he was anxious to be no longer tormented by matters that did not concern him.
But, on this occasion, M. Denizet only dwelt upon the subject of the description of the murderer. Jacques, being the single witness who had caught sight of him, could alone supply precise information. But he did not depart from what he had said at his first examination. He repeated that the scene of the murder had been a vision which had barely lasted a second, a picture that came and went so rapidly that it had remained as if without form, in the abstract, in his recollection. It was merely one man slaughtering another, and nothing more. For half an hour, the judge pestered him with patient persistence, questioning him in every imaginable sense. Was he a big or a small man? Had he a beard? Did he wear his hair long or short? What were his clothes like? To what class of people did he appear to belong? And Jacques, who was uneasy, only gave vague replies.
"Look here," abruptly inquired M. Denizet, staring him full in the eyes, "if he were shown to you, would you recognise him?"
He blinked slightly, seized with anguish under the influence of that piercing gaze, searching in his very brain. His conscience spoke aloud:
"Know him? Yes, perhaps."
But, immediately, his strange fear of unconscious complicity plunged him into his evasive system again, and he continued: