The words were uttered so despairingly that the little force of reasoning I possessed vanished completely. I threw out my hands before me, a gesture which Rouletabille did not see, for he saw nothing.
“No—no! It isn’t necessary to see any of them!” he repeated. “Neither you, nor M. Stangerson, nor M. Darzac, nor Arthur Rance, nor Old Bob, nor Prince Galitch. But we must know some good reason why each of these cannot be Larsan. Only when that is accomplished shall I be able to breathe freely behind these stone walls!”
There was no freedom in my breathing. We could hear, under the arch of the postern, the regular steps of Mattoni as he kept guard.
“Well, how about the servants?” I asked, with an effort. “Mattoni and the others?”
“I am absolutely certain that none of them was absent from the Fort of Hercules when Larsan appeared to Mme. Darzac and to M. Darzac at the railway station at Bourg.”
“Own up, Rouletabille!” I cried. “That you don’t trouble yourself about them because none of their eyes were behind the black spectacles.”
Rouletabille tapped the ground impatiently with his foot and said:
“Be quiet, please, Sainclair. You make me more nervous than my mother.”
This phrase, uttered in vexation, struck me strangely. I would have questioned Rouletabille in regard to the state of mind of the Lady in Black, but he resumed, meditatively:
“First, Sainclair is not Larsan, because Sainclair was at Trepot with me while Larsan was at Bourg.