"Steinweg, have you the chloroform?"
"Are you quite sure that they have fainted?" asks the old man, trembling with fear.
"What do you think! But it will only last for three or four minutes. . . . And that is not long enough."
The German produced from his pocket a bottle and two pads of cotton-wool, ready prepared.
Lupin uncorked the bottle, poured a few drops of the chloroform on the two pads and held them to the noses of the magistrate and his clerk.
"Capital! We have ten minutes of peace and quiet before us. That will do, but let's make haste, all the same; and not a word too much, old man, do you hear?" He took him by the arm. "You see what I am able to do. Here we are, alone in the very heart of the Palais de Justice, because I wished it."
"Yes," said the old man.
"So you are going to tell me your secret?"
"Yes, I told it to Kesselbach, because he was rich and could turn it to better account than anybody I knew; but, prisoner and absolutely powerless though you are, I consider you a hundred times as strong as Kesselbach with his hundred millions."
"In that case, speak; and let us take things in their proper order. The name of the murderer?"