"Ah, mon cher docteur," said Roux, "I am sorry to see you looking so depressed."
"Thank you, I confess I don't feel myself at all. I am so worried over this affair. The more I think of it, the more terrible it becomes, until it swells up into a Frankenstein. To have a fire in one's house is bad enough, but to have a murdered friend lying in one's drawing-room day after day is too awful to contemplate. The cook spends all her time gossiping with the butcher and the baker, and every person who comes to the back door. I found the butler lying dead drunk in the pantry for the first time since he has been in my service. Céleste and Renée are worn out with watching the professor, and now I am worried to death with official visits from the Maire and the police. My house is watched by detectives, and all the neighbours hang about outside the garden peering in at the windows, and pointing at me with their fingers, and whispering to each other. I shall go mad if this affair goes on much longer. We must find some way out of it."
"That's the very reason we have come, mon ami," said Roux; "but first let me ask you what the Commissaire de Police has done?"
"Nothing as far as I know. He has telephoned up three times to know the reason why you have not sent in your report, and has placed two detectives here to watch the grounds."
"Has he ordered any arrest to be made?"
"How could he, when we could not inform him who the culprit was? We could not charge Pierre with the crime."
"Why not?" asked Roux.
"Why not? My dear doctor, seeing that both he and his father have been guests at our house what could we do? We were unable to prove that Pierre was concerned in it, and supposing he turned out to be innocent? What would the Duvals think of us? The father would probably challenge me to fight him, and in any case we should have made them our enemies for life. Put yourself for a moment in Pierre's position. Suppose someone accused you of first setting fire to his house when you were his guest at the time, and then of poisoning a fellow guest who had never done you any harm, by means of some fearful drug, and it turned out afterwards that you were quite innocent, what would you think of him? That is absolutely the case with Pierre."
"Not so fast, doctor," said Paul, "I can prove that he is the person who did it. For God's sake do not pose as a miserable sentimentalist."