Juve smiled, and shook back a lock of hair that was falling over his
eyes.

"Listen, my boy: do you suppose that thundering blow you dealt the
excellent Henri Verbier when he was making love to Mademoiselle Jeanne,
could fail to make me determined to find out who that young lady was who
had the strength of a man?"

The allusion made Charles Rambert most uneasy.

"But that does not explain how you recognised me in Paul to-night. I
recognised you in Henri Verbier at the hotel, but I had no idea that it
was you last night."

"That's nothing," said Juve with a shake of the head. "And you may
understand once for all that when I have once looked anybody square in
the face, he needs to be an uncommonly clever fellow to escape me
afterwards by means of any disguise. You don't know how to make up, but
I do; and that's why I took you in and you did not take me in."

"What makes you believe I did not rob Princess Sonia Danidoff?" Charles
Rambert asked after a pause. "I am quite aware that everything points to
my having been the thief."

"Not quite everything," Juve answered gently. "There are one or two
things you don't know, and I'll tell you one of them. The Princess was
robbed by the same man who robbed Mme. Van den Rosen, wasn't she? Well,
Mme. Van den Rosen was the victim of a burglary: some of the furniture
in her room was broken into, and the tests I made this morning with the
dynamometer proved to me that you are not strong enough to have caused
those fractures."

"Not strong enough?" Charles Rambert ejaculated.

"No. I told you at the time that your innocence would be proved if you
were strong enough, but I said that to prevent you from playing tricks
and not putting out all your strength. As a matter of fact it was your
comparative weakness that saved you. The dynamometer tests and the
figures I obtained just now prove absolutely that you are innocent of
the Van den Rosen robbery and, consequently, of the robbery from Sonia
Danidoff."

Again the lad reflected for a minute or two.

"But you didn't know who I was when you came to the hotel, did you? And
therefore had no suspicion that I was Charles Rambert? That's true,
isn't it? How did you find out? I was supposed to be dead."

"That was a child's job," Juve replied. "I got the anthropometric
records of the body that had been buried as yours, and I planned to get
symmetrical photographs of you in your character of Mademoiselle Jeanne,
as I did of you to-d