Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformation was still going on, the man asked in a dry tone:
"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovère?"
Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is the actuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near there that it happened, the affair"——
"I know!" interrupted the other.
The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying, and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant—terrible in reality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wished to push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, the sound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially—the word Monsieur before Rovère's name. "Monsieur Rovère? Why did he speak to me of Monsieur Rovère?" Bernardet thought.
It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.
All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to this murder would have said: "Rovère!" "The Rovère affair!" "The Rovère murder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said:
"Monsieur Rovère!"
The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meant much.
The manager now announced that, having become a skeleton, the dear brother who had lent himself to this experiment would return to his natural state, "fresher and rosier than before." He added, pleasantly, "A thing which does not generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"