The wheels of justice move swiftly in Paris, and after one quiet day, during which Judge Hauteville was drawing together the threads of the mystery, Kittredge found himself, on Tuesday morning, facing an ordeal worse than the solitude of a prison cell. The seventh of July! What a date for the American! How little he realized what was before him as he bumped along in a prison van breathing the sweet air of a delicious summer morning! He had been summoned for the double test put upon suspected assassins in France, a visit to the scene of the crime and a viewing of the victim's body. In Lloyd's behalf there was present at this grim ceremony MaÎtre Pleindeaux, a clean-shaven, bald-headed little man, with a hard, metallic voice and a set of false teeth that clicked as he talked. "Bet a dollar it's ice water he's full of," said Kittredge to himself.

When brought to the Ansonia and shown the two rooms of the tragedy, Kittredge was perfectly calm and denied any knowledge of the affair; he had never seen these holes through the wall, he had never been in the alleyway, he was absolutely innocent. MaÎtre Pleindeaux nodded in approval. At the morgue, however, Lloyd showed a certain emotion when a door was opened suddenly and he was pushed into a room where he saw Martinez sitting on a chair and looking at him, Martinez with his shattered eye replaced by a glass one, and his dead face painted to a horrid semblance of life. This is one of the theatrical tricks of modern procedure, and the American was not prepared for it.

"My God!" he muttered, "he looks alive."

Nothing was accomplished, however, by the questioning here, nothing was extorted from the prisoner; he had known Martinez, he had never liked him particularly, but he had never wished to do him harm, and he had certainly not killed him. That was all Kittredge would say, however the questions were turned, and he declared repeatedly that he had had no quarrel with Martinez. All of which was carefully noted down.

"A door was opened suddenly and he was pushed into a room."

While his nerves were still tingling with the gruesomeness of all this, Lloyd was brought to Judge Hauteville's room in the Palais de Justice. He was told to sit down on a chair beside MaÎtre Pleindeaux. A patient secretary sat at his desk, a formidable guard stood before the door with a saber sword in his belt. Then the examination began.

So far Kittredge had heard the voice of justice only in mild and polite questioning, now he was to hear the ring of it in accusation, in rapid, massed accusation that was to make him feel the crushing power of the state and the hopelessness of any puny lying.

"Kittredge," began the judge, "you have denied all knowledge of this crime. Look at this pistol and tell me if you have ever seen it before." He offered the pistol to Lloyd's manacled hands. MaÎtre Pleindeaux took it with a frown of surprise.

"Excuse me, your honor," he bowed, "I would like to speak to my client before he answers that question."

But Kittredge waved him aside. "What's the use," he said. "That is my pistol; I know it; there's no doubt about it."

"Ah!" exclaimed Hauteville. "It is also the pistol that killed Martinez. It was thrown from private room Number Seven at the Ansonia. A woman saw it thrown, and it was picked up in a neighboring courtyard. One ball was missing, and that ball was found in the body."

"There's some mistake," objected Pleindeaux with professional asperity, at the same time flashing a wrathful look at Lloyd that said plainly: "You see what you have done!"

"Now," continued the judge, "you say you have never been in the alleyway that we showed you at the Ansonia. Look at these boots. Do you recognize them?"

Kittredge examined the boots carefully and then said frankly to the judge: "I thank they are mine."

"You wore them to the Ansonia on the night of the crime?"

"I think so."

"Aren't you sure?"

"Not absolutely sure, because I have three pairs exactly alike. I always keep three pairs going at the same time; they last longer that way."

"I will tell you, then, that this is the pair you had on when you were arrested."

"Then it's the pair I wore to the Ansonia."

"You didn't change your boots after leaving the Ansonia?"

"No."

"Kittredge," said the judge severely, "the man who shot Martinez escaped by the alleyway and left his footprints on the soft earth. We have made plaster casts of them. There they are; our experts have examined them and find that they correspond in every particular with the soles of these boots. What do you say to this?"

Lloyd listened in a daze. "I don't see how it's possible," he answered.

"You still deny having been in the alleyway?"

"Absolutely."

"I pass to another point," resumed Hauteville, who was now striding back and forth with quick turns and sudden stops, his favorite manner of attack. "You say you had no quarrel with Martinez?"

A shade of anxiety crossed Lloyd's face, and he looked appealingly at his counsel, who nodded with a consequential smack of the lips.

"Is that true?" repeated the judge.

"Why—er—yes."

"You never threatened Martinez with violence? Careful!"

"No, sir," declared Kittredge stubbornly.

Hauteville turned to his desk, and opening a leather portfolio, drew forth a paper and held it before Kittredge's eyes.

"Do you recognize this writing?"

"It's—it's my writing," murmured Lloyd, and his heart sank. How had the judge got this letter? And had he the others?

"You remember this letter? You remember what you wrote about Martinez?"

"Yes."

"Then there was a quarrel and you did threaten him?"

"I advise my client not to answer that question," interposed the lawyer, and the American was silent.

"As you please," said Hauteville, and he went on grimly: "Kittredge, you have so far refused to speak of the lady to whom you wrote this letter. Now you must speak of her. It is evident she is the person who called for you in the cab. Do you deny that?"

"I prefer not to answer."

"She was your mistress? Do you deny that?"

"Yes, I deny that," cried the American, not waiting for Pleindeaux's prompting.

"Ah!" shrugged the judge, and turning to his secretary: "Ask the lady to come in."

Then, in a moment of sickening misery, Kittredge saw the door open and a black figure enter, a black figure with an ashen-white face and frightened eyes. It was Pussy Wilmott, treading the hard way of the transgressor with her hair done most becomingly, and breathing a delicate violet fragrance.

"Take him into the outer room," directed the judge, "until I ring."

The guard opened the door and motioned to MaÎtre Pleindeaux, who passed out first, followed by the prisoner and then by the guard himself. At the threshold Kittredge turned, and for a second his eyes met Pussy's eyes.

"Please sit down, madam," said the judge, and then for nearly half an hour he talked to her, questioned her, tortured her. He knew all that Coquenil knew about her life, and more; all about her two divorces and her various sentimental escapades. And he presented this knowledge with such startling effectiveness that before she had been five minutes in his presence poor Pussy felt that he could lay bare the innermost secrets of her being.

And, little by little, he dragged from her the story of her relations with Kittredge, going back to their first acquaintance. This was in New York about a year before, while she was there on business connected with some property deeded to her by her second husband, in regard to which there had been a lawsuit. Mr. Wilmott had not accompanied her on this trip, and, being much alone, as most of her friends were in the country, she had seen a good deal of M. Kittredge, who frequently spent the evenings with her at the Hotel Waldorf, where she was stopping. She had met him through mutual friends, for he was well connected socially in New York, and had soon grown fond of him. He had been perfectly delightful to her, and—well, things move rapidly in America, especially in hot weather, and before she realized it or could prevent it, he was seriously infatuated, and—the end of it was, when she returned to Paris he followed her on another steamer, an extremely foolish proceeding, as it involved his giving up a fine position and getting into trouble with his family.

"You say he had a fine position in New York?" questioned the judge. "In what?"

"In a large real-estate company."

"And he lived in a nice way? He had plenty of money?"

"For a young man, yes. He often took me to dinner and to the theater, and he was always sending me flowers."

"Did he ever give you presents?"

"Ye-es."

"What did he give you?"

"He gave me a gold bag that I happened to admire one day at Tiffany's."

"Was it solid gold?"

"Yes."

"And you accepted it?"

Pussy flushed under the judge's searching look. "I wouldn't have accepted it, but this happened just as I was sailing for France. He sent it to the steamer."

"Ah! Have you any idea how much M. Kittredge paid for that gold bag?"

"Yes, for I asked at Tiffany's here and they said the bag cost about four hundred dollars. When I saw M. Kittredge in Paris I told him he was a foolish boy to have spent all that money, but he was so sweet about it and said he was so glad to give me pleasure that I hadn't the heart to refuse it."

After a pause for dramatic effect the judge said impressively: "Madam, you may be surprised to hear that M. Kittredge returned to France on the same steamer that carried you."

"No, no," she declared, "I saw all the passengers, and he was not among them."

"He was not among the first-cabin passengers."

"You mean to say he went in the second cabin? I don't believe it."

"No," answered Hauteville with a grim smile, "he didn't go in the second cabin, he went in the steerage!"

"In the steerage!" she murmured aghast.

"And during the five or six months here in Paris, while he was dancing attendance on you, he was practically without resources."

"I know better," she insisted; "he took me out all the time and spent money freely."

The judge shook his head. "He spent on you what he got by pawning his jewelry, by gambling, and sometimes by not eating. We have the facts."

"Mon Dieu!" she shuddered. "And I never knew it! I never suspected it!"

"This is to make it quite clear that he loved you as very few women have been loved. Now I want to know why you quarreled with him six months ago?"

"I didn't quarrel with him," she answered faintly.

"You know what I mean. What caused the trouble between you?"

"I—I don't know."

"Madam, I am trying to be patient, I wish to spare your feelings in every possible way, but I must have the truth. Was the trouble caused by this other woman?"

"No, it came before he met her."

"Ah! Which one of you was responsible for it?"

"I don't know; really, I don't know," she insisted with a weary gesture.

"Then I must do what I can to make you know," he replied impatiently, and reaching forward, he pressed the electric bell.

"Bring back the prisoner," he ordered, as the guard appeared, and a moment later Kittredge was again in his place beside MaÎtre Pleindeaux, with the woman a few feet distant.

"Now," began Hauteville, addressing both Lloyd and Mrs. Wilmott, "I come to an important point. I have here a packet of letters written by you, Kittredge, to this lady. You have already identified the handwriting as your own; and you, madam, will not deny that these letters were addressed to you. You admit that, do you not?"

"Yes," answered Pussy weakly.

The judge turned over the letters and selected one from which he read a passage full of passion. "Would any man write words like that to a woman unless he were her lover? Do you think he would?" He turned to Mrs. Wilmott, who sat silent, her eyes on the floor. "What do you say, Kittredge?"

Lloyd met the judge's eyes unflinchingly, but he did not answer.

Again Hauteville turned over the letters and selected another one.

"Listen to this, both of you." And he read a long passage from a letter overwhelmingly compromising. There were references to the woman's physical charm, to the beauty of her body, to the deliciousness of her caresses—it was a letter that could only have been written by a man in a transport of passion. Kittredge grew white as he listened, and Mrs. Wilmott burned with shame.

"Is there any doubt about it?" pursued the judge pitilessly. "And I have only read two bits from two letters. There are many others. Now I want the truth about this business. Come, the quickest way will be the easiest."

He took out his watch and laid it on the desk before him. "Madam, I will give you five minutes. Unless you admit within that time what is perfectly evident, namely, that you were this man's mistress, I shall continue the reading of these letters before your husband."

"You're taking a cowardly advantage of a woman!" she burst out.

"No," answered Hauteville sternly. "I am investigating a cowardly murder." He glanced at his watch. "Four minutes!"

Then to Kittredge: "And unless you admit this thing, I shall summon the girl from Notre-Dame and let her say what she thinks of this correspondence."

Lloyd staggered under the blow. He was fortified against everything but this; he would endure prison, pain, humiliation, but he could not bear the thought that this fine girl, his Alice, who had taught him what love really was, this fond creature who trusted him, should be forced to hear that shameful reading.

"You wouldn't do that?" he pleaded. "I don't ask you to spare me—I've been no saint, God knows, and I'll take my medicine, but you can't drag an innocent girl into this thing just because you have the power."

"Were you this woman's lover?" repeated the judge, and again he looked at his watch. "Three minutes!"

Kittredge was in torture. Once his eyes turned to Mrs. Wilmott in a message of unspeakable bitterness. "You're a judge," he said in a strained, tense voice, "and I'm a prisoner; you have all the power and I have none, but there's something back of that, something we both have, I mean a common manhood, and you know, if you have any sense of honor, that no man has a right to ask another man that question."

"The point is well taken," approved MaÎtre Pleindeaux.

"Two minutes!" said Hauteville coldly. Then he turned to Mrs. Wilmott. "Your husband is now at his club, one of our men is there also, awaiting my orders. He will get them by telephone, and will bring your husband here in a swift automobile. You have one minute left!"

Then there was silence in that dingy chamber, heavy, agonizing silence. Fifteen seconds! Thirty seconds! The judge's eye was on his watch. Now his arm reached toward the electric bell, and Pussy Wilmott's heart almost stopped beating. Now his firm red finger advanced toward the white button.

Then she yielded. "Stop!" came her low cry. "He—he was my lover."

"That is better!" said the judge, and the scratching of the greffier's pen recorded unalterably Mrs. Wilmott's avowal.

"I don't suppose you will contradict the lady," said Hauteville, turning to Kittredge. "I take your silence as consent, and, after all, the lady's confession is sufficient. You were her lover. And the evidence shows that you committed a crime based on passionate jealousy and hatred of a rival. You knew that Martinez was to dine with your mistress in a private room; you arranged to be at the same restaurant, at the same hour, and by a cunning and intricate plan, you succeeded in killing the man you hated. We have found the weapon of this murder, and it belongs to you; we have found a letter written by you full of violent threats against the murdered man; we have found footprints made by the assassin, and they absolutely fit your boots; in short, we have the fact of the murder, the motive for the murder, and the evidence that you committed the murder. What have you to say for yourself?"

Kittredge thought a moment, and then said quietly: "The fact of the murder you have, of course; the evidence against me you seem to have, although it is false evidence; but——"

"How do you mean false evidence? Do you deny threatening Martinez with violence?"

"I threatened to punch his head; that is very different from killing him."

"And the pistol? And the footprints?"

"I don't know, I can't explain it, but—I know I am innocent. You say I had a motive for this crime. You're mistaken, I had no motive."

"Passion and jealousy have stood as motives for murder from the beginning of time."

"There was no passion and no jealousy," answered Lloyd steadily.

"Are you mocking me?" cried the judge. "What is there in these letters," he touched the packet before him, "but passion and jealousy? Didn't you give up your position in America for this woman?"

"Yes, but——"

"Didn't you follow her to Europe in the steerage because of your infatuation? Didn't you bear sufferings and privations to be near her? Shall I go over the details of what you did, as I have them here, in order to refresh your memory?"

"No," said Kittredge hoarsely, and his eye was beginning to flame, "my memory needs no refreshing; I know what I did, I know what I endured. There was passion enough and jealousy enough, but that was a year ago. If I had found her then dining with a man in a private room, I don't know what I might have done. Perhaps I should have killed both of them and myself, too, for I was mad then; but my madness left me. You seem to know a great deal about passion, sir; did you ever hear that it can change into loathing?"

"You mean—" began the judge with a puzzled look, while Mrs. Wilmott recoiled in dismay.

"I mean that I am fighting for my life, and now that she has admitted this thing," he eyed the woman scornfully, "I am free to tell the truth, all of it."

"That is what we want," said Hauteville.

"I thought I loved her with a fine, true love, but she showed me it was only a base imitation. I offered her my youth, my strength, my future, and she would have taken them and—broken them and scattered them in my face and—and laughed at me. When I found it out, I—well, never mind, but you can bet all your pretty French philosophy I didn't go about Paris looking for billiard players to kill on her account."

It was not a gallant speech, but it rang true, a desperate cry from the soul depths of this unhappy man, and Pussy Wilmott shrank away as she listened.

"Then why did you quarrel with Martinez?" demanded the judge.

"Because he was interfering with a woman whom I did love and would fight for——"

"For God's sake, stop," whispered the lawyer.

"I mean I would fight for her if necessary," added the American, "but I'd fight fair, I wouldn't shoot through any hole in a wall."

"Then you consider your love for this other woman—I presume you mean the girl at Notre-Dame?"

"Yes."

"You consider your love for her a fine, pure love in contrast to the other love?"

"The other wasn't love at all, it was passion."

"Yet you did more for this lady through passion," he pointed to Mrs. Wilmott, "than you have ever done for the girl through your pure love."

"That's not true," cried Lloyd. "I was a fool through passion, I've been something like a man through love. I was selfish and reckless through passion, I've been a little unselfish and halfway decent through love. I was a gambler and a pleasure seeker through passion, I've gone to work at a mean little job and stuck to it and lived on what I've earned—through love. Do you think it's easy to give up gambling? Try it! Do you think it's easy to live in a measly little room up six flights of black, smelly stairs, with no fire in winter? Anyhow, it wasn't easy for me, but I did it—through love, yes, sir, pure love."

As Hauteville listened, his frown deepened, his eyes grew harder. "That's all very fine," he objected, "but if you hated this woman, why did you risk prison and—worse, to get her things? You knew what you were risking, I suppose?"

"Yes, I knew."

"Why did you do it?"

Kittredge hesitated. "I did it for—for what she had been to me. It meant ruin and disgrace for her and—well, if she could ask such a thing, I could grant it. It was like paying a debt, and—I paid mine."

The judge turned to Mrs. Wilmott: "Did you know that he had ceased to love you?"

Pussy Wilmott, with her fine eyes to the floor, answered almost in a whisper: "Yes, I knew it."

"Do you know what he means by saying that you would have spoiled his life and—and all that?"

"N-not exactly."

"You do know!" cried the American. "You know I had given you my life in sacred pledge, and you made a plaything of it. You told me you were unhappy, married to a man you loathed, a dull brute; but when I offered you freedom and my love, you drew back. When I begged you to leave him and become my wife, with the law's sanction, you said no, because I was poor and he was rich. You wanted a lover, but you wanted your luxury, too; and I saw that what I had thought the call of your soul was only the call of your body. Your beauty had blinded me, your eyes, your mouth, your voice, the smell of you, the taste of you, the devilish siren power of you, all these had blinded me. I saw that your talk about love was a lie. Love! What did you know about love? You wanted me, along with your ease and your pleasures, as a coarse creator of sensations, and you couldn't have me on those terms. In my madness I would have done anything for you, borne anything; I would have starved for you, toiled for you, yes, gladly; but you didn't want that kind of sacrifice. You couldn't see why I worried about money. There was plenty for us both where yours came from. God! Where yours came from! Why couldn't I leave well enough alone and enjoy an easy life in Paris, with a nicely furnished rez de chaussÉe off the Champs ElysÉes, where madam could drive up in her carriage after luncheon and break the Seventh Commandment comfortably three of four afternoons a week, and be home in time to dress for dinner! That was what you wanted," he paused and searched deep into her eyes as she cowered before him, "but that was what you couldn't have!"

"On the whole, I think he's guilty," concluded the judge an hour later, speaking to Coquenil, who had been looking over the secretary's record of the examination.

"Queer!" muttered the detective. "He says he had three pairs of boots."

"He talks too much," continued Hauteville; "his whole plea was ranting. It's a crime passionel, if ever there was one, and—I shall commit him for trial."

Coquenil was not listening; he had drawn two squares of shiny paper from his pocket, and was studying them with a magnifying glass. The judge looked at him in surprise.

"Do you hear what I say?" he repeated. "I shall commit him for trial."

M. Paul glanced up with an absent expression. "It's circumstantial evidence," was all he said, and he went back to his glass.

"Yes, but a strong chain of it."

"A strong chain," mused the other, then suddenly his face lighted and he sprang to his feet. "Great God of Heaven!" he cried in excitement, and hurrying to the window he stood there in the full light, his eye glued to the magnifying glass, his whole soul concentrated on those two pieces of paper, evidently photographs.

"What is it? What have you found?" asked the judge.

"I have found a weak link that breaks your whole chain," triumphed M. Paul. "The alleyway footprints are not identical with the soles of Kittredge's boots."

"But you said they were, the experts said they were."

"We were mistaken; they are almost identical, but not quite; in shape and size they are identical, in the number and placing of the nails in the heel they are identical, in the worn places they are identical, but when you compare them under the magnifying glass, this photograph of the footprints with this one of the boot soles, you see unmistakable differences in the scratches on separate nails in the heel, unmistakable differences."

Hauteville shrugged his shoulders. "That's cutting it pretty fine to compare microscopic scratches on the heads of small nails."

"Not at all. Don't we compare microscopic lines on criminals' thumbs? Besides, it's perfectly plain," insisted Coquenil, absorbed in his comparison. "I can count forty or fifty nail heads in the heel, and none of them correspond under the glass; those that should be alike are not alike. There are slight differences in size, in position, in wear; they are not the same set of nails; it's impossible. Look for yourself. Compare any two and you'll see that they were never in the same pair of boots!"

With an incredulous movement Hauteville took the glass, and in his turn studied the photographs. As he looked, his frown deepened.

"It seems true, it certainly seems true," he grumbled, "but—how do you account for it?"

Coquenil smiled in satisfied conviction. "Kittredge told you he had three pairs of boots; they were machine made and the same size; he says he kept them all going, so they were all worn approximately alike. We have the pair that he wore that night, and another pair found in his room, but the third pair is missing. It's the third pair of boots that made those alleyway footprints!"

"Then you think—" began the judge.

"I think we shall have found Martinez's murderer when we find the man who stole that third pair of boots."

"Stole them?"

Coquenil nodded.

"But that is all conjecture."

"It won't be conjecture to-morrow morning—it will be absolute proof, unless——"

"Unless what?"

"Unless Kittredge lied when he told that girl he had never suffered with gout or rheumatism."