CHAPTER VI.
The attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate. Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the established rules.
"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."
"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force—a strong blow—can produce exactly what science can."
More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation between the Agent of Sureté and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him, but at those eyes,—those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger, menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance, gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.
It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision: the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one—who? If the picture of some one was graven there, was it not the last image reflected on the little mirror of the retina? What if a face was reflected there! What if it was still retained in the depths of those wide-open eyes! That strange creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused with new ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical brains, troubled him—Ginory, a man of statistics and of facts.
But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to speak, to designate some one. What more eloquent, what more terrible witness could there be than the dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to speak; if that organ of life should contain, shut up within it, preserved, the secret of death? Bernardet, whose eyes never left the magistrate's face, ought to have been content, for it plainly expressed doubt, a hesitation, and the police officer heard him cursing under his breath.
"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"
Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the Examining Magistrate, was, moreover, convinced that, for the present, and the sooner the better, the corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only, could a thorough and scientific examination be made. The reporter listened intently to the conversation, and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands, more and more agonized by that word Morgue, which, among the people, produces the same terror that that other word, which means, however, careful attendance, scientific treatment and safety,—hospital, does.