“Why do you go on crying, Mademoiselle, now that this nightmare is at an end, and even Marescal himself bows before an innocence he clearly sees? Do not weep, Mademoiselle. Always I enter on the scene at the decisive moment. It’s a habit of mine, and I never miss my entry. You saw it yourself that horrible night: Marescal shut you up; I set you free. Two days later, at Nice, it was Jodot. I rescue you. At Monte Carlo, at Sainte-Marie, it is Marescal again. I rescue you. And was I not here just now? Then what are you afraid of? All is over, and we can go quietly away before the big policemen arrive and the Horse Marines surround the house. Isn’t that so, Rudolph? You don’t put any obstacle in the way, and Mademoiselle is free? Isn’t it a fact that you’re ravished by this dénouement which satisfies your sense of justice and your genial soul? You are coming, Mademoiselle?” She rose timidly, feeling strongly that the battle was not won. In fact, on the threshold of the door, Marescal, pitiless, barred their way. Bregeac ranged himself beside him. The two men made common cause against their triumphant rival. CHAPTER XI BLOOD Ralph stepped up to them, and without paying any attention to Bregeac said quietly to Marescal: “Life seems very complicated because we only see it in scraps, and those by unexpected lights. It is so with this express case. It’s as entangled as a newspaper serial. The facts spring up at random, stupidly, like fireworks which will not go off in the order in which you arrange them. But when a lucid mind sets those facts in their places, all things become reasonable, simple, in perfect accord with one another, as natural as a page of history. It is that page of history that I’ve just read to you, Marescal. You know now the whole business; you know that Aurelie d’Asteux is innocent. Let her go.” Marescal shrugged his shoulders and growled: “No.” “Don’t get obstinate, Marescal. You can see that I am not fooling or joking any longer. I simply ask you to recognize your mistake.” “My mistake?” “Certainly, since she did not commit murder, since she was not a confederate, but a victim.” Marescal said in sneering accents: “If she did not commit the murder, why did she fly? In the case of William, I can admit reasons for flight. But in her case, what did she gain by flying? And why hasn’t she said anything about it since—except a few words at the beginning of the affair when she kept wailing to the policeman: ‘I wish to speak to the magistrate, I wish to tell him the story.’ Apart from that, silence.”