"Who can have brought them together?" he repeated. "Do you know? And where does the album come from?" M. Masseron supplied the answer: "It was the surgeon who found it. M. Essarès wore a vest under his shirt; and the album was in an inner pocket, a pocket sewn inside the vest. The surgeon felt the boards through it when he was undressing M. Essarès' body." This time, Patrice's and Coralie's eyes met. The thought that M. Essarès had been collecting both their photographs during the past twenty years and that he wore them next to his breast and that he had lived and died with them upon him, this thought amazed them so much that they did not even try to fathom its strange significance. "Are you sure of what you are saying, sir?" asked Patrice. "I was there," said M. Masseron. "I was present at the discovery. Besides, I myself made another which confirms this one and completes it in a really surprising fashion. I found a pendant, cut out of a solid block of amethyst and held in a setting of filigree-work." "What's that?" cried Captain Belval. "What's that? A pendant? An amethyst pendant?" "Look for yourself, sir," suggested the magistrate, after once more consulting Mme. Essarès with a glance. And he handed Captain Belval an amethyst pendant, larger than the ball formed by joining the two halves which Coralie and Patrice possessed, she on her rosary and he on his bunch of seals; and this new ball was encircled with a specimen of gold filigree-work exactly like that on the rosary and on the seal. The setting served as a clasp. "Am I to open it?" he asked. Coralie nodded. He opened the pendant. The inside was divided by a movable glass disk, which separated two miniature photographs, one of Coralie as a nurse, the other of himself, wounded, in an officer's uniform. Patrice reflected, with pale cheeks. Presently he asked: "And where does this pendant come from? Did you find it, sir?" "Yes, Captain Belval." "Where?" The magistrate seemed to hesitate. Coralie's attitude gave Patrice the impression that she was unaware of this detail. M. Masseron at last said: "I found it in the dead man's hand." "In the dead man's hand? In M. Essarès' hand?" Patrice had given a start, as though under an unexpected blow, and was now leaning over the magistrate, greedily awaiting a reply which he wanted to hear for the second time before accepting it as certain. "Yes, in his hand. I had to force back the clasped fingers in order to release it." Belval stood up and, striking the table with his fist, exclaimed: