He examined her petticoat, her bodice, a sort of elegant blouse, trimmed with lace, and the velvet collar which had several spots of blood upon it. He then drew a small penknife from his pocket and, kneeling on the floor, proceeded to probe the seams. Suddenly he uttered a muffled exclamation: "Ah! What's this?" From the lining of the bodice he drew out a thin roll of paper, crumpled, stained with blood, torn unfortunately. "Goodness of God in whom I trust--I do not wish to die with this remorse--I do not wish to risk his killing me to destroy this secret--I write this confession, I will tell him it is deposited in a safe place--yes, I was the cause of the death of that hapless actor! Yes, Valgrand paid for the crime which Gurn committed.... Yes, I sent Valgrand to the scaffold by making him pass for Gurn--Gurn who killed Lord Beltham, Gurn, who I sometimes think must be Fantômas!" Juve read these lines in an agitated voice, and as he came to the signature he turned pale and was obliged to stop. "What is the matter?" "It is signed--'Lady Beltham.'" In order that Doctor Ardel, understanding nothing of Juve's agitation, might grasp that import of the paper just discovered he would have had to call to mind the appalling tragedy which three years before had stirred the whole world with its bloody vicissitude and mystery, one not solved to that hour. "Lady Beltham!" At that name Juve called up the whole blood-curdling past! He saw in fancy the English lady[A] whose husband was murdered by the Canadian Gurn, who perhaps was her lover. And Juve, following his train of thought, pondered that he had accused this same lady of having, to save her lover, the very day the guillotine was erected on the boulevard, found means to send in his stead the innocent actor, Valgrand. And here in connection with this affair of the Cité Frochot he found Lady Beltham involved in the puzzle of which he was so keenly seeking the key. Juve again read the momentous paper he had just unearthed. "By Jove, it was plain," ran his thought, "the lady, criminal though she might be, was first and foremost Fantômas' passionate inamorata. And this paper he held in his hands was the tail end of her confession--the remains of a document in which in a fit of moral distress she had avowed her remorse and made known the truth." And taking line by line the cryptic statement, Juve asked himself further: "What do these phrases signify? How extract the whole truth from these few words? 'I do not want him to kill me in order to destroy that secret'! When Lady Beltham wrote that she was angry with Gurn. Then again what did this other doubtful expression mean?--'Gurn who I sometimes fancy may be Fantômas.' She did not know then the precise identity of her lover! Oh, the wretch! To what depths had she sunk?"