“Doubtless,” replied Rouletabille, who had taken the hand of the Lady in Black in both his own as though he wished to give her courage, “he must have believed that it was yourself.” “That then explains the fact that when I reached my door I had only to push it open. Pere Bernier believed that I was within.” “Exactly: that is good reasoning!” declared Rouletabille. “And Pere Bernier, who had opened to Darzac No. 1, had not troubled himself about No. 2, since he did not see him any more than yourself. You certainly reached the Square Tower at the moment that Sainclair and myself called Bernier to the parapet to see whether he could help us in understanding the strange gesticulations of Old Bob, talking at the threshold of the Barma Grande to Mrs. Rance and Prince Galitch.” “But Mere Bernier!” cried M. Darzac. “She had gone into her lodge. Was she not astonished to see M. Darzac come in a second time when she had not seen him go out?” “Let us suppose,” replied the young reporter with a sad smile; “let us suppose, M. Darzac, that Mere Bernier at that moment--the moment when you passed into your apartments--that is to say, when the second apparition of Darzac passed in--was occupied in picking up the potatoes and putting them back into the sack which I had emptied upon her floor--and we shall suppose the truth.” “Well, then, I can congratulate myself on the fact that I am still upon earth!” “Congratulate yourself, M. Darzac? congratulate yourself!” “When I remember that as soon as I entered my room, I drew the bolts as I have told you that I did, that I began to work and that this wretch was hidden behind my back. Why, he might have killed me without hindrance!” Rouletabille stepped close to M. Darzac and fixed his eyes upon him with a look that seemed to read his soul. “Why did he not kill you then?” he asked. “You know very well that he was waiting for someone else,” replied M. Darzac, turning his face sorrowfully toward the Lady in Black. Rouletabille was now so close to M. Darzac that their shadows on the floor looked like that of one strangely formed being. The lad put his two hands on the older man’s shoulders. “M. Darzac,” he said, his voice again clear and strong, “I have a confession to make to you. When I began to understand how the ‘body too many’ had effected an entrance and when I had discovered that you did nothing to undeceive us in regard to the hour of five o’clock at which we had believed--at which everyone, rather, except myself, believed--that you had entered the Square Tower, I felt that I had the right to suspect that the murderer was not the man who at five o’clock entered the Square Tower under the form of Darzac. I thought, on the contrary, that that Darzac might be the true Darzac and you might be the false one. Ah, my dear M. Darzac, how I have suspected you!”