"Monsieur kept no papers, on principle," Joseph continued. "I have heard him say many a time: 'When I am gone, there'll be no need to schedule anything. I destroy everything.'--But he had preserved one package of letters. This is how I know. The morning of the day he sent me to Grandchamp--that was Monday--he felt very sick. He insisted on my helping him to get up, in spite of the doctor's orders. He opened a strong-box that he kept in his room. He took out two bundles of papers with his own hands and put them in the fire. He wouldn't go back to bed till he saw that there was nothing left of them but ashes. And as the key of the strong-box never left him--" "But during the days just before that Monday, he was in bed. Where was the key then?" "Hanging on his watch-chain, in the drawer of his night-table." "Couldn't some one have come in, while he was asleep, for instance, and you were not there?" "One of the other servants, perhaps. I'll answer for them as for myself. I was the one who selected them." "But the doctor?" queried Landri. "Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin?" said the maître-d'hôtel. "Of course. But I can't believe it of him," he added, after a few seconds' reflection. "Now, if it was his father--" "His father?" Landri repeated. "Come, tell me your whole thought." "I haven't any thought," replied Joseph, "except that I know that monsieur was very suspicious of him." "And he didn't come here during his illness?" "Yes, I remember now--on Saturday. But he didn't see monsieur, for I was with him. He sent for me to get late news to carry to Monsieur le Marquis." Thus Chaffin's image was associated once more in Landri's mind with the mysterious scenes that must have been enacted about that bed of death. Chaffin had wandered around that death-chamber during the last hours. Chaffin had been in the apartment. Once, the servant said. What did he know about it? Notwithstanding that he had lavished the most assiduous attentions on the sick man, he must have been absent at times. It might be that Chaffin, advised of his absence, had seized the opportunity, had entered the sick-room with the doctor's connivance. If at that moment the invalid was asleep, morphine assisting, the theft of the letters was explained.