Bending low, Juve and Fandor, speechless, motionless, shuddering, anxiously scrutinized the unrecognizable features. Who was the unknown, this victim of Fantômas’ villainy? After what grim drama had the corpse been laid in this secret grave, where once again his rest was to be disturbed, where Fantômas had not feared to deposit his treasure for safe keeping. “The dead man is unrecognizable,” pronounced Fandor, “it is impossible to know who and what he was. Bertillon perhaps, by his scientific methods, might discover ...” But Juve interrupted the journalist with a rapid gesture, his agitation waxing greater every moment. While the other was speaking, he had leant still closer over the grave and was examining the body with yet keener attention. “Bertillon, say you? Fandor, we have no need of him and his system. I can guess the dead man’s name! This is what I hoped—the dead man speaks, Fandor, the dead man denounces the impostor. The corpse we have before our eyes—why hesitate to say it, our conclusion will be confirmed by the Toulouche woman when we question her—is Tom Bob’s, the unfortunate American detective Fantômas had them murder directly he knew of his arrival in France—yes, Tom Bob’s, the real Tom Bob; for the Tom Bob everybody has known for months, the Tom Bob who was afraid to meet me, the Tom Bob who was seen at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s, the Tom Bob who only yesterday made pretence of struggling with the men who kidnapped me, you surely know _his_ true name by now?” Fandor, stunned by his friend’s assertions, durst hardly articulate the name of terror, “Fantômas!” Indeed the journalist had good right to be terrified—and overjoyed too! If Juve was correct, if he was not deceiving himself, the triumph they were winning over Fantômas was even more complete, more brilliant than they had ever hoped for. But the journalist was not convinced. Too many improbabilities seemed to him to forbid Tom Bob’s being Fantômas, too many impossibilities rose in his memory to suffer him, unprotesting, to listen to Juve’s assertions. “I tell you, Juve,” he brought out at last, “I cannot believe you; Tom Bob can_not_ be Fantômas, the thing is impossible!” But Juve remained unmoved by the other’s scepticism. “And why not, pray?” he asked. “Remember the messages despatched from the _Lorraine_....” “Yes, Fandor, the messages despatched by the real Tom Bob—the real Tom Bob whom nobody recognized in the train, because he had been replaced by the sham—the sham Tom Bob, who, being in fact Moche, knew the ‘Beauty Boy’ would be there, marked down his man and had the police arrest the apache—all the time a hundred miles away from recognizing his denouncer.” “But then, remember the attempted assassination at the Hôtel Terminus; Tom Bob, the man you accuse, might well, like me, have lost his life there ... so ...”