One after the other the warders came running. All confirmed what their chief had said: the dead body of Jacques Dollon had been left there, lying on the bed: not a soul had entered the cell: not a soul had touched the corpse!... Yet it was no longer there! Jerome Fandor, well in the background, followed the scene with an ironical smile. The frantic warders, the growing stupefaction of Monsieur Fuselier, amused him prodigiously. The magistrate was trying to understand the how, why, and wherefore of this incredible disappearance: "As this man is not here, he cannot have been dead ... he has escaped ... but if he wanted to escape he must have been guilty!... Oh, I cannot make head or tail of it!" Seizing the head warder by the shoulders, almost roughly, Monsieur Fuselier asked: "Look here, chief, was this man dead, or was he not?" Elizabeth Dollon was repeating: "He lives! He lives!" and laughing wildly. The warder raised his hand as though taking a solemn oath: "As to being dead, he was dead right enough!... The doctor will tell you so, too: also my colleague, Favril, who helped me to lay out the body on the bed." "But how can a dead body get away from here? If he _was_ dead, he could not have escaped!" said the magistrate. "It is witchcraft!" declared the warder, with a shrug. Fuselier flew into a rage: "Had you not better confess that you and your colleagues did not keep proper watch and ward!... The investigation will show on whose shoulders the responsibility rests." "But, sakes alive, monsieur!" expostulated the warder: "There aren't only two of us who have seen him dead!... There are all the hospital attendants of the Depot as well!... There is the doctor, and there are my colleagues to be counted in: the truth is, monsieur, some fifty persons have seen him dead!" "So you say!" cried the impatient magistrate: "I am going to inform the Public Prosecutor of what has happened, and at once!" As he was hurrying away, he spied Jerome Fandor, who had not missed a single detail of the scene. "You again!" exclaimed the irate magistrate: "How did you get in here?" "By permit," replied our journalist. "Well, you have learned what there is to know, haven't you? Be off, then! You are one too many here!... Frankly, there is no need for you to augment the scandal!... Will you, therefore, be kind enough to take yourself off?" And Fuselier, almost beside himself with rage, raced off to the Public Prosecutor's office. After the magistrate's furious attack, Fandor could not possibly linger in the corridors of the Depot. The warders, too, were pressing their attentions on him and on Elizabeth Dollon: "This way, monsieur!... Madame, this way!... Ah, it's a wretched business!... Here, this way! This way!... Be off, as fast as you can!" Presently Fandor was descending the grand staircase of the Palais, steadying the uncertain steps of poor Elizabeth Dollon.