Moniche went to the mantelpiece and took a match from the box. It was M. Rovère himself who furnished the light by which a picture of his own body was taken.
"We could obtain no picture in this room without the magnesium wire," said the agent, as calm while taking a photograph of the murdered man, as he had been a short time ago in his garden. "The light is insufficient. When I say: 'Go!' Moniche you must light the wire, and I will take three or four negatives. Do you understand? Stand there to my left. Now! Attention!"
Bernardet took his position and the porter stood ready, match and wire in hand, like a gunner who awaits the order to fire.
"Go!" said the agent.
A rapid, clear flame shot up; and suddenly lighted the room. The pale face seemed livid, the various objects in the room took on a fantastic appearance, in this sort of tempestuous apotheosis, and Paul Rodier hastily inscribed on his writing pad: "Picturesque—bizarre—marvelous—devilish—suggestive."
"Let us try it again," said M. Bernardet.
For the third time in this weird light the visage of the dead man appeared, whiter, more sinister, frightful; the wound deeper, the gash redder; and the eyes, those wide-open, fixed, tragic, menacing, speaking eyes—eyes filled with scorn, with hate, with terror, with the ferocious resistance of a last struggle for life; immovable, eloquent—seemed under the fantastic light to glitter, to be alive, to menace some one.
"That is all," said Bernardet, very softly. "If with these three negatives"——
He stopped to look around toward the door, which was closed. Someone was raining ringing blows on the door, loud and imperative.
"It is the Commissary; open the door, Moniche."