“What is that?” inquired Mme. Edith, with a mocking little smile. “In such a case, I fail to see how you find any mystery at all.” And she added with a flippant imitation of the reporter’s words and manner: “A body too many on the one side; an unexplained absence on the other! Everything is for the best.” “Perhaps,” rejoined Rouletabille. “But the most frightful thing of all is that the unexplained disappearance comes just at the right time to make known to us, apparently, the identity of the ‘body too many.’ Madame, I deeply regret to tell you that the person for whose whereabouts we are unable to account, is none other than your uncle, Monsieur Bob.” “Old Bob!” screamed the young woman. “Old Bob has disappeared!” And we all cried out with her: “Old Bob has disappeared?” “Unfortunately, it is true!” said Rouletabille. And he let the cane drop to the ground. But the news of the sudden disappearance of Old Bob had so seized the Rances and the Darzacs that no one paid any attention to the cane as it fell. “My dear Sainclair, will you be kind enough to pick up that cane?” asked Rouletabille. I did as I was ordered and quickly, too, but Rouletabille did not even deign to thank me. Mme. Edith turned like a lioness upon Robert Darzac, who recoiled from her almost in fear as she shrieked: “You have killed my uncle!” Her husband and myself, with difficulty, prevented her from flying at him. We entreated her to be calm and to remember that because her uncle had absented himself from the peninsula did not necessarily mean that he had disappeared in the potato sack and we reproached Rouletabille with his brutality in blurting out an idea which could only be, at the present time, at all events, an hypothesis of his uneasy mind. And we added, imploring Mme. Edith to listen to us, that this hypothesis could under no circumstances be looked upon by her either as an injury or an insult, even admitting that it might be the true one, as it would only show the superhuman cunning of Larsan, who must, in that case, have taken the place of her respected uncle. But the young woman ordered her husband to be quiet, and said, turning scornfully to me: “M. Sainclair, I sincerely hope that my uncle’s absence from here will only be of short duration; for if it should turn out otherwise, I should accuse you of being an accomplice in the most cowardly of murders. As to you, monsieur,” and she turned to Rouletabille, “the mere idea that you have ever dared to compare a man like Larsan with my uncle, the gentlest, kindliest soul and the greatest scholar of his time, forbids me to ever again consider you in the light of a friend, and I hope that you will have the courtesy to relieve me of your presence as soon as possible.”