“That is all, doctor”—Lemoyne sat down.
“One moment!”—the crown prosecutor, crisp, curt, incisive, was on his feet. “Loss of memory is not insanity, doctor?”
“No.”
“Is the prisoner in your professional judgment insane?”
“No,” declared Doctor Arnaud emphatically. “Most certainly not!”
With a nod, the crown prosecutor dismissed the witness.
A buzz, whisperings, ran around the room. Raymond's eyes were fixed sombrely on the floor. Relief had come with Lemoyne's climax, but now in Doctor Arnaud's reply to the crown prosecutor he sensed catastrophe. A sentence for life was the best that could be hoped for, but suppose—suppose Lemoyne should fail to secure even that! No, no—they would not hang the man! Even Doctor Arnaud had been forced to admit that he might have lost his memory. That would be strong enough for any jury, and—they were calling his name again, and he was rising, and walking a second time to the witness stand. Surely all these people knew. Was not his face set, and white, and drawn! See that ray of sunlight coming in through that far window, and how it did not deviate, but came straight toward him, and lay upon the crucifix on his breast, to draw all eyes upon it, upon that Figure on the Cross, the Man Betrayed. God, he had not meant this! He had thought the priest already dead that night. It was a dead man he had meant should answer for the killing of that ugly, scarred-faced, drunken blackguard, Théophile Blondin. That couldn't do a dead man any harm! It was a dead man, a dead man, a dead man—not this living, breathing one who——
“Monsieur le Curé,” said the crown prosecutor, “you were present in the prisoner's room with Monsieur Dupont and Doctor Arnaud, when Monsieur Dupont made a search of the accused's clothing?”
“Yes,” Raymond answered.
“Do you identify this revolver as the one taken from the prisoner's pocket?”