"Your modesty is delightful, Juve," said M. Fuselier with an approving nod. "You present things as if they were all matters of course, whereas really you are proving your extraordinary instinct. If you had arrived only twenty-four hours later the corpse would have been packed off to the Transvaal, and only the Lord knows if after that the extraordinary mystery ever would have been cleared up." "Luck," Juve protested: "pure luck!" "And were your other remarkable discoveries luck too?" enquired M. Fuselier with a smile. "There was your discovery that sulphate of zinc had been injected into the body to prevent it from smelling offensively." "That was only a matter of using my eyes," Juve protested. "All right," said the magistrate, "we will admit that you did not display any remarkable acumen in the Beltham case, if you would rather have it so. That does not alter the fact that you have solved the Langrune case." "Solved it!" M. Fuselier flicked the ash off his cigarette, and leant forward towards the detective. "Of course you know that I know you were at the Cahors Assizes, Juve? What was your impression of the whole affair--of the verdict, and of Etienne Rambert's guilt or innocence?" Juve got up and began to walk up and down the room, followed by the magistrate's eyes. He seemed to be hesitating as to whether he would answer at all, but finally he stopped abruptly and faced his friend. "If I were talking to anybody but you, M. Fuselier, I would either not answer at all, or I would give an answer that was no answer! But as it is----, well, in my opinion, the Langrune case is only just beginning, and nothing certain is known at all." "According to that, Charles Rambert is innocent?" "I don't say that." "What then? I suppose you don't think the father was the murderer?" "The hypothesis is not absurd! But there! What is the real truth of the whole affair? That is what I am wondering all the time. That murder is never out of my head; it interests me more and more every day. Oh, yes, I've got lots of ideas, but they are all utterly vague and improbable: sometimes my imagination seems to be running away with me." He stopped, and M. Fuselier wagged a mocking finger at him. "Juve," he said, "I charge you formally with attempting to implicate Fantômas in the murder of the Marquise de Langrune!" The detective replied in the same tone of raillery. "Guilty, my lord!" "Good lord, man!" the magistrate exclaimed, "Fantômas is a perfect obsession with you," and as Juve acquiesced with a laugh the magistrate dropped his bantering tone. "Shall I tell you something, Juve? I too am beginning to have an obsession for that fantastic miscreant! And what I want to know is why you have not come to me before to ask me about that sensational robbery at the Royal Palace Hotel?" "The robbery from Princess Sonia Danidoff?" "Yes: the Fantômas robbery!" "Fantômas, eh?" Juve protested. "That remains to be seen."