I am going to remind you of where you went and what
you did. On Tuesday evening at eight o'clock, after having obtained from
the wine you drank, the dreadful energy you needed, you left your home.
At thirty-five minutes past eight, you took the train at the St. Lazare
station. At nine o'clock, you alighted at the station at Rueil."
And, not disdaining to employ Tabaret's ideas, the investigating
magistrate repeated nearly word for word the tirade improvised the night
before by the amateur detective.
He had every reason, while speaking, to admire the old fellow's
penetration. In all his life, his eloquence had never produced so
striking an effect. Every sentence, every word, told. The prisoner's
assurance, already shaken, fell little by little, just like the outer
coating of a wall when riddled with bullets.
Albert was, as the magistrate perceived, like a man, who, rolling to
the bottom of a precipice, sees every branch and every projecture which
might retard his fall fail him, and who feels a new and more painful
bruise each time his body comes in contact with them.
"And now," concluded the investigating magistrate, "listen to good
advice: do not persist in a system of denying, impossible to sustain.
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