Juve smiled at M. de Presles' sudden irritability, but quickly became grave again.
"I am anxious not to be led away by any preconceived opinion. I put the hypothesis that so and so is guilty, and examine all the arguments in support of that theory; then I submit that the crime was committed by somebody else, and proceed in the same way. My method certainly has the objection that it confronts every argument with a diametrically opposite one, but we are not concerned with establishing any one case in preference to another—it is the truth, and nothing else, that we have to discover."
"And that is tantamount to saying that in spite of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, and in spite of the fact that he has run away, Charles Rambert is innocent?"
"Charles Rambert is the culprit, sir," Juve replied brightly. "If he were not, whom else could we possibly suspect?"
The detective's placidity and his perpetual self-contradictions exasperated M. de Presles. He held his tongue, and was silently revolving the case in his mind when Juve made yet one more suggestion.
"There is one final hypothesis which I feel obliged to put before you. Do you realise, sir, that this is a typical Fantômas crime?"
M. de Presles shrugged his shoulders as the detective pronounced this half-mythical name.
"Upon my word, M. Juve, I should never have expected you to invoke Fantômas! Why, Fantômas is the too obvious subterfuge, the cheapest device for investing a case with mock honours. Between you and me, you know perfectly well that Fantômas is merely a legal fiction—a lawyers' joke. Fantômas has no existence in fact!"
Juve stopped in his stride. He paused a moment before replying; then spoke in a restrained voice, but with an emphasis on his words that always marked him when he spoke in all seriousness.
"You are wrong to laugh, sir; very wrong. You are a magistrate and I am only a humble detective inspector, but you have three or four years' experience, perhaps less, while I have fifteen years' work behind me. I know that Fantômas does exist, and I do anything but laugh when I suspect his intervention in a case."