"You know then?"
"That Jacques Dollon has hanged himself? Yes. That he was innocent? Again, yes!" confessed Fandor, smiling in his turn: "You know that at La Capitale we get all the information going, and are the first to get it!"
"Evidently," conceded the magistrate. "But if you know all about it, why put my professional discretion to the torture by asking absurd questions?"
"Now, what the deuce are they about on Clock Quay? Don't they supervise the accused in their cells?"
"Certainly they do! When this Dollon arrived at the Dépôt he was immediately conducted to Monsieur Bertillon: there he was measured and tested, finger marks taken, and so on."
"Just so," said Fandor. "I saw Bertillon before coming on to you. He told me Dollon seemed crushed: he submitted to all the tests without making the slightest objection; but he never spoke of suicide, never said anything which could lead one to imagine such a fatal termination."
"Well, he would not cry it aloud on the housetops!... When he left Monsieur Bertillon, what then?"
"After!... Oh, the police took him to a cell, and left him there. At midnight the chief warder made his rounds and saw nothing abnormal. It was in the morning they found this unfortunate Dollon had hanged himself."
"What did he hang himself with?"
"With strips of his shirt twisted into a rope.... Oh, my dear fellow, I see what you are thinking! You fancy that there has been a want of common prudence—that the warders were lax—that they had let him retain his braces, his cravat or his shoe laces!... Well, it was not so—precautions were taken."