"You may——" began the President and stopped with a start. The prisoner was slowly rising. Her body was tense, and she leaned forward out of the dock with one rigid arm pointing at Perissard. With the black garb, livid face, and burning eyes and the clawlike hand pointing at the witness—whose fat pink cheeks had suddenly paled—she was like some uncanny sibyl about to launch a curse.
"But I know you!" she cried in a hoarse voice that carried to the farthest corner. "You are the real cause of the murder!"
In a moment the audience was on its feet.
"I! I!" cried the blackmailer, stepping back with well-feigned astonishment while the usher hammered at his desk and shouted for order. But even the President was too much absorbed in the sudden dramatic development to heed the excitement in the court.
"Yes, you!" she repeated, stabbing at him with her stiff forefinger. "You found out that I was married and that I had left my husband, and you advised Laroque to find him and ask him for the money that I brought him on my marriage!"
M. Perissard had been in many a tight place—in many a situation where self-possession and nerve had saved him—and he quickly recovered from the shock of the denunciation. Ignoring the excitement that had upset the decorum of the court he turned to the President and said suavely:
"M. the President, Laroque told me during our conversation that his wife had had typhoid fever Hast year and that her brain had suffered."
But the woman was not to be silenced by such a trick.
"I nearly died last year, and my head was shaved," she said, slowly, turning and looking straight at Floriot, who was watching her with grief-stricken eyes. "That is why those who used to know me cannot recognize me now!"
Floriot hid his face in his hands and shuddered. Noel, white-faced, was gripping the railing in front of him with both hands.