"Valgrand came back, but he had gone mad. He managed to get to his dressing-room after taking the wrong door. 'I don't know a single word of my part,' he confessed to me. I comforted him as best I could, but he flung himself down on his couch and shook his head helplessly at me. 'I have been very ill, Bonardin,' then suddenly he demanded: 'Where is Charlot?'
"Charlot was his dresser. I remembered now that Charlot had not returned to the theatre since his master's disappearance. His body was found later in the Rue Messier. He had been murdered. I did not want to mention this to him for fear it might upset him still more, so I advised my old friend to wait for me till the end of the play and let me keep him company. I intended to take him home and fetch a doctor. Valgrand assented readily. I was then obliged to leave him hurriedly: they were calling me—it was my cue. When I returned Valgrand had vanished: he had left the theatre. We were not to see him again!"
"A sad affair," commented Fandor.
Bonardin continued his narrative:
"Shortly afterwards in a deserted house in the Rue Messier, near Boulevard Arago, the police found the body of a murdered man. The corpse was easily identified; it was that of Charlot, Valgrand's dresser."
"How did he come there? The house had no porter: the owner, an old peasant, knew nothing."
"Well, what do you conclude from this?" asked Fandor.
"My theory is that Valgrand murdered his dresser, for some reason unknown to us. Then, overcome by his crime, he went mad and committed suicide. Of that there is no doubt."
"Oh!" muttered Fandor, a little taken aback by this unexpected assertion.
The journalist, though he had closely followed the actor's account, was far from drawing the same conclusions. For in fact, Gurn, Lord Beltham's murderer, whom Fandor believed to be Fantômas, had certainly got Valgrand executed in his stead. The Valgrand who came back to the theatre, three days after the execution, was not the real one, but the man who had taken his place—Gurn, the criminal, Gurn—Fantômas. Ah! that was a stroke of the true Fantômas sort! It was certain that if Valgrand's disappearance had been simultaneous with Gurn's execution, there might have been suspicions. Gurn—Fantômas then found it necessary to show Valgrand living to witnesses, so that these could swear that the real Valgrand had not died instead of Gurn.