“That is good, Bernier. I wanted to see if you remembered that.” “But I was not away from my post more than an instant or two, and M. Darzac was in his room then. He did not leave it while I was gone. Ah! what a mystery!” “How do you know that M. Darzac didn’t go out during those moments?” “Why, because if he had done so, my wife, who was in the lodge, must have seen him! And then all would be explained and we would not be so puzzled, nor Madame either. Ah! must I say it to you over again? No one has entered that room except M. Darzac at five o’clock and you two at six, and no person got in between the time that M. Darzac went out and the time when he came in at night with Mme. Darzac. He was like you--he didn’t want to believe me. I swore it to him upon the corpse that lay before us!” “Where was the corpse?” “In M. Darzac’s bedroom.” “It was really a dead body?” “Oh, he was breathing still--I heard him.” “Then it was not a corpse, Pere Bernier.” “Oh, M. Rouletabille, where was the difference? He had a bullet in his heart.” At last, Pere Bernier was going to tell us of the body. Had he seen it? Who was it? One would have said that this seemed of secondary importance in the eyes of Rouletabille. The reporter seemed engrossed only with the problem of finding how the body had come to be there. How had that man happened to be killed? But, indeed, Pere Bernier knew only very little. The whole thing had been as sudden as a rifle shot--so it seemed to him--and he was behind the door. He told us that he was going to his lodge and felt so drowsy that he had intended to throw himself down on the bed for a few moments, when he and Mere Bernier heard such a commotion issue from the apartment of M. Darzac that they were seized with terror. It was as if the furniture were being thrown about and blows were rained upon the walls.