"Allow me, sir; you are going, no doubt, to tell me that they might during your short absence have carried the body of the victim into the study in question, but I would point out to you, that on the loosened hair of the poor creature blood had caked, that some was on the carpet and had even gone through it to the flooring beneath. Now if they carried in the body just a little while before we discovered it, that would not have been the case."
Michel was delighted with his own argument. Juve smiled indulgently.
"My poor Michel," he cried, "you would be quite right if I put forward such an explanation. It is certain that the room in which we found the body was that in which the crime took place. It is therefore that in which we were not! As for the marks of mud near the window, they are ours, but transferred from the room in which we were into the room in which we were not! Which again proves that our presence was known to the culprits.
"Furthermore, the candle with which Doctor Chaleck melted the wax to seal his letters was scarcely used, it only burned in fact a few minutes. Now we found another candle in the same state. So you see that the precautions were well taken and everything possible done to lead us astray.
"We see the puppets moving—Loupart, Chaleck, Josephine, others maybe, but we do not see the strings."
"The strings which move them perhaps may be no other than—Fantômas," ventured Michel.
Juve frowned and suddenly fell silent. Then abruptly changing the conversation, he asked his lieutenant:
"You told me, did you not, that you could no longer appear in the character of the Sapper?"
"Quite true, Inspector, I was spotted just the day before the crime by Loupart, and so was my colleague, Nonet."
"Talking of that," answered Juve, "Nonet mentioned vaguely something about an affair at the docks, supposed to have been planned by the Beard and an individual known as the Cooper. Are you fully informed?"