"M. Rochdale?" I asked.
He started to his feet, pushed away the chair, and rushed to the other side of the table, staring at me with a terrified countenance; his light blue eyes were unnaturally distended, his face was livid, his mouth was half open, his logs bent under him. His tall, robust frame had sustained one of those shocks of excessive terror which almost paralyse the forces of life. He uttered but one word—Cornélis!
At last I held in my victorious hand the proof that I had been seeking for months, and in that moment I was master of all the resources of my being. Yes, I was as calm, as clear of purpose as my adversary was the reverse. He was not accustomed to live, like his accomplice, in the daily habit of studied dissimulation. The name, "Rochdale," the terrifying likeness, the unlooked—for arrival! I had not been mistaken in my calculation. With the amazing rapidity of thought that accompanies action I perceived the necessity of following up this first shock of moral terror by a shock of physical terror. Otherwise, the man would hurl himself upon me, in the moment of reaction, thrust me aside and rush away like a madman, at the risk of being stopped on the stairs by the servants, and then? But I had already taken out my revolver, and I now covered the wretch with it, calling him by his real name, to prove that I knew all about him.
"M. Edmond Termonde," I said, "if you make one step towards me, I will kill you, like an assassin as you are, as you killed my father."
Pointing to a chair at the corner of the half-open window, I added:
"Sit down!"
He obeyed mechanically. At that instant I exercised absolute control over him; but I felt sure this would cease so soon as he recovered his presence of mind. But even though the rest of the interview were now to go against me, that could not alter the certainty which I had acquired. I had wanted to know whether Edmond Termonde was the man who had called himself Rochdale, and I had secured undeniable proof of the fact. Nevertheless, it was due to myself that I should extract from my enemy the proof of the truth of all my conjectures, that proof which would place my stepfather at my mercy. This was a fresh phase of the struggle.
I glanced round the room in which I was shut up with the assassin. On the bed, placed on my left, lay a loaded cane, a hat and an overcoat, on a small table were a steel knuckle-duster and a revolver. Among the articles laid out on a chest of drawers on my right a bowie-knife was conspicuous, a valise was placed against an unused door, a wardrobe with a looking-glass stood before another unused door, then came the toilet-stand, and the man, crouching under the aim of my revolver, between the table and the window. He could neither escape, nor reach to any means of defence without a personal struggle with me; but he would have to stand my fire first, and besides, if he was tall and robust, I was neither short nor feeble. I was twenty-five, he was fifty. All the moral forces were for me, I must win.
"Now," said I, as I took a seat, but without releasing him from the covering barrel of my pistol, "let us talk."
"What do you want of me?" he asked roughly. His voice was both hoarse and muffled; the blood had gone back into his cheeks, his eyes, those eyes so exactly like his brother's, sparkled. The brute-nature was reviving in him after having sustained a fearful shock, as though astonished that it still lived.