"Had Rovère any enemies?"
"I do not know of any."
The Magistrate swung around by a detour habitual with him to Jacques Dantin's last visit to the murdered man, and begged him to be precise, and asked him if anything had especially struck him during that last interview with his friend.
"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death. Rovère was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything? Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he—sometimes one has presentiments—any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was running any danger?"
"No," Dantin replied. "Rovère made no allusion to me of any peril which he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death. One might have done the deed for plunder."
"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been touched. Theft was not the motive."
"Then?" asked Dantin.
The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression.
"Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he detected a menace.
"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"