M. Darzac went straight to the Square Tower, where, of course, he found Bernier, who opened the door for him. As Bernier had been keeping constant guard before the door of the room, as he had kept the key in his pocket and as we had proven by our investigation that the place was empty when we had left it, we had established the fact that _when M. Darzac entered his room, there could be no one else there_. And this is the truth. Everything that I have said could have been sworn to “after” by each one of us. If I tell it to you “before,” it is that I am haunted by the mystery which lurks in the shadow and makes ready to reveal itself. At the moment that we saw M. Darzac go to his room, we heard a clock strike five. (4) _What Happened from Five O’clock that Night Until the Moment When the Attack on the Square Tower Began._ Rouletabille and I remained chatting, or, rather, trying to reason things out, upon the platform of the Tower B for another hour. Suddenly, my friend struck me a little tap on the shoulder and exclaimed, “For my part, I think--” and then, without completing the sentence, he started for the Square Tower. I followed him. I was a thousand miles from guessing what he thought. He thought of Mere Bernier’s bag of potatoes which he emptied out on the white floor of the room to the great amazement of the good woman; then, satisfied with this act which evidently corresponded to the state of his mind, he returned with me to the Court of the Bold, while, behind us, we could hear Pere Bernier laughing as he picked up the potatoes. As we reached the court we saw the face of Mme. Darzac appearing for a moment at the window of the room occupied by her father on the first story of “la Louve.” The heat had become insupportable. We were threatened with a violent storm and we believed that it would begin to lighten immediately. Ah, how much the storm would relieve us, we thought. The sea had a thick and heavy quietude as though it had been saturated with oil. The sea was heavy and the air was heavy and our hearts were heavy. No one or nothing on the earth or in the heavens was lighter than Old Bob, whose form had appeared again at the edge of the Barma Grande and who was still moving around agitatedly. One would have said that he was dancing. No, he was making a speech! To whom? We leaned over the railing to see. There was apparently some one upon the strand to whom Old Bob was addressing some long-winded scientific discourse. But the palm leaves hid his auditor from us. Finally, the listener moved and advanced, and approached the “black professor,” as Rouletabille called him. And we saw that Old Bob’s congregation was composed of two persons. One was Mme. Edith--we could easily recognize her with her languishing graces, clinging like a vine to her husband’s arm. To her husband’s arm! But this was not her husband? Who, then, was the young man upon whom Mme. Edith was playing off so many pretty airs?