Juve's reply was an indirect one.
"The more I think about it, the more I am tempted to believe that Wilhelmine de Naarboveck was Brocq's mistress—oh, in the right way, in all honour!—and that in the background, surreptitiously, a third person pushed herself into their confidence was the recipient of their secret, and on this account she could take a good many liberties with them. Berthe, or Bobinette, was this third person, of course!... She is known to have visited Brocq repeatedly.... Now, what was she doing there—what was her object? Well, we have to get a clear idea of what happened and draw our conclusions. Remember, Brocq left his flat in great haste on the afternoon of his assassination; he took a taxi at the des Saints-Pères, and drove off in pursuit of someone.... Why, we do not know, yet; but this someone was a woman, and I am convinced the woman was Bobinette."
"What is Bobinette's social position?"
"Gentlemen, I wish I could define it in a single word, but it is here that I enter the region of enigmas. Here is mystery on mystery. Without breaking the seal of professional secrecy, I may tell you that this woman should be known to me; I say 'should' because I still lack precise information about her; I await this information with impatience—I fear it also, for, gentlemen."...
Juve stopped short, got up, and began pacing the immense room. Drawing up before the Under-Secretary and Colonel Hofferman, he gazed at them. His manner was impressive.
"Gentlemen," said he, in a quiet penetrating voice, and with an air of intense conviction: "Gentlemen, if my conjectures are correct, Bobinette is naught but a girl of low birth—of the lowest—a creature who will stick at nothing, who has been mixed up with a band of criminals, the most cunning, the most artful, the most unscrupulous, the most dangerous band of criminals in all this round world—a band I have, time and again, pursued, decimated, broken up, dispersed ... only to see them spring to an associated evil life again, a ceaseless rebirth of maleficent forces, forming and reforming, a malevolent, hydra-headed monster, a band, gentlemen, of incarnated evil—the band of Fantômas!"
Juve became silent. He wiped his forehead.
The harsh voice of Colonel Hofferman broke the silence:
"Hypotheses! True to this extent, Monsieur Juve, that Brocq may very well have had a mistress—we are all agreed about that—but, in reality, it is simply romance!"
There was a discreet knock at the door.