"I will give you a bit of good news; that is, that you are innocent of the Langrune affair when you were Charles Rambert, and innocent also of the Danidoff affair, when you were Mademoiselle Jeanne. I need not say anything about the scrap last night, in which you played a still more distinguished part."
"Why tell me that?" asked Charles Rambert nervously. "Of course I know I did not rob Princess Sonia Danidoff; but how did you recognise me last night, and how did you find out that I was Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
Juve smiled, and shook back a lock of hair that was falling over his eyes.
"Listen, my boy: do you suppose that thundering blow you dealt the excellent Henri Verbier when he was making love to Mademoiselle Jeanne, could fail to make me determined to find out who that young lady was who had the strength of a man?"
The allusion made Charles Rambert most uneasy.
"But that does not explain how you recognised me in Paul to-night. I recognised you in Henri Verbier at the hotel, but I had no idea that it was you last night."
"That's nothing," said Juve with a shake of the head. "And you may understand once for all that when I have once looked anybody square in the face, he needs to be an uncommonly clever fellow to escape me afterwards by means of any disguise. You don't know how to make up, but I do; and that's why I took you in and you did not take me in."
"What makes you believe I did not rob Princess Sonia Danidoff?" Charles Rambert asked after a pause. "I am quite aware that everything points to my having been the thief."
"Not quite everything," Juve answered gently. "There are one or two things you don't know, and I'll tell you one of them. The Princess was robbed by the same man who robbed Mme. Van den Rosen, wasn't she? Well, Mme. Van den Rosen was the victim of a burglary: some of the furniture in her room was broken into, and the tests I made this morning with the dynamometer proved to me that you are not strong enough to have caused those fractures."
"Not strong enough?" Charles Rambert ejaculated.