"And you found them?" he asked.
"At three o'clock yesterday afternoon, Monsieur le Président. It was time. I might even say that it was too late, for Jean Vernocq began by sending me to the bottom of a well, and by crushing Florence under a block of stone."
"Oh, so you're dead, are you?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Président."
"But why did that villain want to do away with Florence Levasseur? Her death destroyed his indispensable scheme of matrimony."
"It takes two to get married, Monsieur le Président, and Florence refused."
"Well—"
"Some time ago Jean Vernocq wrote a letter leaving all that he possessed to Florence Levasseur. Florence, moved by pity for him, and not realizing the importance of what she was doing, wrote a similar letter leaving her property to him. This letter constitutes a genuine and indisputable will in favor of Jean Vernocq.
"As Florence was Cosmo Mornington's legal and settled heiress by the mere fact of her presence at yesterday's meeting with the documents proving her descent from the Roussel family, her death caused her rights to pass to her own legal and settled heir.
"Jean Vernocq would have come into the money without the possibility of any litigation. And, as you would have been obliged to discharge him after his arrest, for lack of evidence against him, he would have led a quiet life, with fourteen murders on his conscience—I have added them up—but with a hundred million francs in his pocket. To a monster of his stamp, the one made up for the other."