"Allow me to state, monsieur, that I cannot arrange for such an investigation until to-morrow morning!"
Then, addressing the astounded Madame Bourrat, the two bankers, and the manservant, Jules.
"Madame, messieurs, will you be kind enough to withdraw? Madame, I advise you, under pain of the most serious consequences, not to allow anyone whatever to enter your premises, nor go into Mademoiselle Dollon's room, before this matter has been fully sifted by the legal authorities. Be good enough to wait in the passage—all of you!"
Having witnessed their exit, the magistrate walked up to Fandor, and looking him straight in the eyes said:
"Well!... Out with it!"
"Well," replied the journalist, "if you institute a search in the place I have indicated, you will find, in the chest of drawers, under a pile of Mademoiselle Dollon's personal linen a piece of soap wrapped up in a cambric handkerchief. Take this soap to Monsieur Bertillon's department, and after the scientific tests have been applied to it, you will be able to say that it bears distinct impressions of Dollon's hand!"
"Dollon's?"
The magistrate gasped.
Elizabeth Dollon had fallen back into the arm-chair, from which she had risen all trembling. Her tears had ceased. She stared at the two men with wide open, terrified eyes. All the time, the clerk in spectacles wrote steadily on at his table, noting down the details of the scenes he was witnessing.
There was a palpitating silence.