Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/187

 "Yes," said Mazeroux, "a thoroughgoing attempt, though she had to make it in a manner which she must have hated. She hanged herself in strips of linen torn from her sheets and underclothing and twisted together. She had to be restored by artificial respiration. She is out of danger now, I believe, but she is never left alone, for she swore she would do it again."

"She has made no confession?"

"No. She persists in proclaiming her innocence."

"And what do they think at the public prosecutor's? At the Prefect's?"

"Why should they change their opinion, Chief? The inquiries confirm every one of the charges brought against her; and, in particular, it has been proved beyond the possibility of dispute that she alone can have touched the apple and that she can have touched it only between eleven o'clock at night and seven o'clock in the morning. Now the apple bears the undeniable marks of her teeth. Would you admit that there are two sets of jaws in the world that leave the same identical imprint?"

"No, no," said Don Luis, who was thinking of Florence Levasseur. "No, the argument allows of no discussion. We have here a fact that is clear as daylight; and the imprint is almost tantamount to a discovery in the act. But then how, in the midst of all this, are we to explain the presence of"

"Whom, Chief?"

"Nobody. I had an idea worrying me. Besides, you see, in all this there are so many unnatural things, such queer coincidences and inconsistencies, that I dare not count on a certainty which the reality of to-morrow may destroy."