This exclamation decided Gevrol. "Open, in the name of the law!" he
cried a third time.

And no one responding, with a blow of the shoulder that was as violent
as a blow from a battering-ram, he dashed open the door. Then the
horror-stricken accent of the man who had been peering through the
shutters was explained. The room presented such a spectacle that all
the agents, and even Gevrol himself, remained for a moment rooted to the
threshold, shuddering with unspeakable horror.

Everything denoted that the house had been the scene of a terrible
struggle, of one of those savage conflicts which only too often stain
the barriere drinking dens with blood. The lights had been extinguished
at the beginning of the strife, but a blazing fire of pine logs
illuminated even the furthest corners of the room. Tables, glasses,
decanters, household utensils, and stools had been overturned, thrown
in every direction, trodden upon, shivered into fragments. Near
the fireplace two men lay stretched upon the floor. They were lying
motionless upon their backs, with their arms crossed. A third was
extended in the middle of the room. A woman crouched upon the lower
steps of a staircase leading to the floor above. She had thrown her
apron over her head, and was uttering inarticulate moans. Finally,
facing the police, and with his back turned to an open door leading into
an adjoining room, stood a young man, in front of whom a heavy oaken
table formed, as it were, a rampart.

He was of medium stature, and wore a full beard. His clothes, not unlike
those of a railway porter, were torn to fragments, and soiled with dust
and wine and blood. This certainly was the murderer. The expression on
his face was terrible. A mad fury blazed in his eyes, and a convulsive