MOUZON. I did. I was wrong to show him how improbable that new story of his was. It is so grotesque that it would have betrayed him--while, if he goes on asserting that he never left the house, if the servant insists he didn't, and if the wife says the same thing, that's something that may create a doubt in the mind of the jury. He saw that perfectly, the rascal! He felt that of the two methods the first was the better. That's one against me, my good Benoit. [_To himself_] That must be set right. Let me think. Etchepare is the murderer, there's no doubt about that. I am as certain of that as if I'd been present. So he wasn't at home on the night of the crime and his wife knows it. After the way he hesitated just now--if I can get the wife to confess that he was absent from home till the morning, we get back to the ridiculous story of the lost horse, and I catch him twice in a flagrant lie, and I've got him. Come, we must give the good woman a bit of a roasting and get the truth out of her. It'll be devilish queer if I don't succeed. [_To the recorder_] What did I do with the police record of the woman Etchepare that was sent from Paris? RECORDER. It's in the brief. MOUZON. Yes--here it is--the extract from her judicial record. Report number two, a month of imprisonment, for receiving--couldn't be better. Send her in. _The recorder goes to the door and calls._ RECORDER. Yanetta Etchepare! _Enter Yanetta._ SCENE IX:--_Mouzon, recorder, Yanetta._ MOUZON. Step forward. Now, Madame, I shall not administer the oath to you, since you are the wife of the accused. But none the less I beg you most urgently to tell the truth. I warn you that an untruth on your part might compel me to accuse you of complicity with your husband in the crime of which he is accused and force me to have you arrested at once. YANETTA. I'm not afraid. I can't be my husband's accomplice because my husband isn't guilty. MOUZON. That is not my opinion. I will say further: you know a great deal more about this matter than you care to tell. YANETTA. I? That's infamous. MOUZON. Come, come, no shouting! I don't say you took a direct part in the murder, I say it is highly probable that you knew of the murder, perhaps advised it, and that you have profited by it. That would be enough to place you in the dock beside your husband at the assizes. My treatment of you will depend on the sincerity of your answers to my questions. As you do or do not tell me the truth I shall either set you at liberty or have you arrested. Now you can't say that I haven't warned you! And now, if you please, inform me whether you persist in your first statement, in which you affirm that Etchepare stopped at home on the night of Ascension Day. YANETTA. I do. MOUZON. Well, it is untrue. YANETTA [_excited_] The night on which Daddy Goyetche was murdered my husband never left the house. MOUZON. I tell you that is not the truth.