“Monsieur Marcel,” resumed Baudoin, bravely, but with infinite sadness, “I have seen him there myself. Laforêt has been watching him for a whole week. He lived in the attic, and only went out at nights.”
“And I never suspected anything!” exclaimed the young man, in stupefied grief. “Then who is this woman who has been there the last six weeks? What is this atrocious farce she has been playing with me?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Uncle Graff. “A woman! Another woman? Incorrigible child!”
Marcel, seated by the table on a stool, his head in his hands, was endeavouring to collect his ideas. He was falling from a pure heaven of delight in which he had been living into the degradation of blood and crime.
“Come, it is impossible!” he continued, with trembling voice. “Why should she have deceived me so atrociously? Was there any need to make me so madly in love with her? No, I cannot believe her guilty; she never lied once to me. Her very looks were frank and true. No, no! You are mistaken; you are heaping calumny on her! Even though the man be a villain, she, at least, is no accomplice of his. She is his victim, as we all are. If they tried to harm me, she had not the strength or the authority to resist. And if she knows what has happened, she is lamenting it all, as we are, this very moment.”
His desperate protests were stifled by sobs, and, leaning his head on the blood-stained table, he wept bitterly. His uncle respected his grief, and, taking Baudoin to the window, he said to him, in subdued tones—
“In your opinion, who has been in the laboratory after you left it?”
“Laforêt, who was keeping watch over our man, must have followed him to this very spot. During the tumult caused by the fire Hans entered the yard of the works, and went right to the summer-house. Laforêt must have surprised him whilst he was examining the drawer. A terrible struggle must then have taken place between Hans, who is a giant in form, and Laforêt, who is very muscular. Hans doubtless made use of some arm or other to rid him of his adversary. Laforêt, killed outright, or stunned, fell on the table, thereupon Hans seized him and dragged him to the window. He became entangled with the curtain, which has been torn away; the weight must have been a heavy one, for the pole is broken.”
“And afterwards?” asked M. Graff, anxiously.
“Afterwards Hans flung the ill-fated Laforêt out of the window. The current has carried him off. Probably he will be picked up in the sluice of the mill of Sainte-Savine.”