The two weeks passed tossing on a hospital bed, have been lost to the police. Dimly Jules remembers the sudden assault. Crashing blows raining down upon him! Not a scrap of paper is left. The fatal letter to Leroyne & Co. is gone.
The police question the artful Jules.
He holds the secret of Leroyne & Co. to himself.
He may yet get a handsome bribe to tell even the meagre facts he knows. Marie B‚rard's case is one of the reigning sensations. Her lips are now sealed in death.
The baffled police only see in the visit to the "bal de minuit," a bourgeois intrigue of ordinary character.
Jules dares not tell all. He fears the stern French law. Tossing on his bed of pain, his only course is to secretly visit Leroyne & Co.
The bereaved lover feels that the parties who followed him, were directed by some malign agency which is fraught with future danger for him.
The poniard of darkness may reach his heart, if he betrays his designs.
Strongly suspecting Natalie de Santos, yet he knows her revenge struck through meaner hands than her own.
He has no proof. Not a clue. Villa Rocca is to him unknown. He fears to talk.