lle did, or Florence Levasseur. There is no denying the
fact: Hippolyte Fauville was guided by revenge and by revenge alone.
If not, why should he have acted as he did, seeing that Cosmo
Mornington's millions reverted to him by the fullest of rights?
Besides, if he had wished to enjoy those millions, he would not have
begun by killing himself.

"One thing, therefore, is certain: the inheritance in no way affected
Hippolyte Fauville's resolves or actions. And, nevertheless, one after
the other, with inflexible regularity, as if they had been struck down in
the very order called for by the terms of the Mornington inheritance,
they all disappeared: Cosmo Mornington, then Hippolyte Fauville, then
Edmond Fauville, then Marie Fauville, then Gaston Sauverand. First, the
possessor of the fortune; next, all those whom he had appointed his
legatees; and, I repeat, in the very order in which the will enabled them
to lay claim to the fortune!"

"Is it not strange?" asked Perenna, "and are we not bound to suppose that
there was a controlling mind at the back of it all? Are we not bound to
admit that the formidable contest was influenced by that inheritance, and
that, above the hatred and jealousy of the loathsome Fauville, there
loomed a being endowed with even more tremendous energy, pursuing a
tangible aim and driving to their deaths, one by one, like so many
numbered victims, all the unconscious actors in the tragedy of which he
tied and of which he is now untying the threads?"

Don Luis leaned forward and continued earnestly:

"Monsieur le Prefet, the public instinct so thoroughly agrees with me, a
section of the police, with M. Weber, the deputy chief detective at its
head, argues in a manner so exactly identical with my own, that the
existence of that being is at once confirmed in every mind. There had to
be some one to act as the controlling brain, to provide the will and the
energy. That some one was myself. After all, why not? Did not I possess
the condition which was indispensable to make any one interested in the
murders? Was I not Cosmo Mornington's heir?

"I will not defend myself. It may be that outside interference, it may be
that circumstances, will oblige you, Monsieur le Prefet, to take
unjustifiable measures against me; but I will not insult you by believing
for one second that you can imagine the man whose acts you have been able
to judge for the last two months capable of such crimes. And yet the
public ins