meet and even to court the inquiry I had instituted; he did more,--he
demanded on what ground, besides my own word, it rested that this packet
had ever been in my possession; and, to my surprise and perplexity, it
was utterly impossible to produce the smallest trace of Mr. Marie
Oswald. His half-brother, the attorney, had died, it is true, just
before the event of that night; and it was also true that he had seen
Marie on his death-bed; but no other corroboration of my story could be
substantiated, and no other information of the man obtained; and the
partisans of Gerald were not slow in hinting at the great interest I had
in forging a tale respecting a will, about the authenticity of which I
was at law.

The robbers had entered the house by a back-door, which was found open.
No one had perceived their entrance or exit, except Desmarais, who
stated that he heard a cry; that he, having spent the greater part of
the night abroad, had not been in bed above an hour before he heard it;
that he rose and hurried towards my room, whence the cry came; that he
met two men masked on the stairs; that he seized one, who struck him in
the breast with a poniard, dashed him to the ground, and escaped; that
he then immediately alarmed the house, and, the servants accompanying
him, he proceeded, despite his wound, to my apartment, where he found
Isora and myself bleeding and lifeless, with the escritoire broken open.

The only contradiction to this tale was, that the officers of justice
found the escritoire not broken open, but unlocked; and yet the key
which belonged to it was found in a pocketbook in my clothes, where
Desmarais said, rightly, I always kept it. How, then, had the
escritoire been unlocked? it was supposed by the master-keys peculiar to
experienced burglars; this diverted suspicion into a new channel, and it
was suggested that the robbery and the murder had really been committed