During the preliminary examination of the Caillaux case, which finished just before this volume went to press, several unanticipated points arose. The reader, who has studied with any care the employment, given in the first chapter of this book, of Madame Caillaux’s time on March 16, 1914, will have noticed that some hours of the afternoon were unaccounted for. A very bitter discussion on the employment of those hours, a discussion in which Monsieur Caillaux, Madame Caillaux, Monsieur Caillaux’s friends, the _Figaro_, the public bank clerks, the keeper of the registry office where Madame Caillaux engaged a cook, the cook herself, Madame Caillaux’s servants, her English governess Miss Baxter—in which all kinds of people were allowed to take a hand, raged for several days. It came about in the simplest manner. Madame Caillaux said that she went to the registry office and engaged a cook early in the afternoon. The keeper of the registry office said that Madame Caillaux had engaged a cook late in the afternoon. The cook herself didn’t remember exactly at what time she was engaged. Madame Caillaux’s chauffeur remembered when he drove her to the registry office, but his evidence is not considered incontrovertible because he is in Madame Caillaux’s employ. Matters were complicated by the fact that Madame Caillaux had been to the Crédit Lyonnais and to her safe there. The strong room of the Crédit Lyonnais is officered by certain clerks who hand each person who goes down to the strong boxes a ticket, duly numbered, which is stamped with a mechanical dating stamp marking the hour and minutes at which it is issued. Madame Caillaux’s ticket was marked five o’clock. She maintained that she had been to the Crédit Lyonnais an hour earlier, between four and five minutes past, and that she had been home before she went there. For several days, argument went on in the papers, in which all sorts of people took part, to show that Madame Caillaux had told the truth or had lied about the employment of her afternoon before the murder. This argument was mainly for the purpose of proving or of disproving premeditation or its absence. After several days’ newspaper discussion, an examination of the mechanical stamp at the Crédit Lyonnais proved that it was very unreliable and its use has now been discontinued by the bank.