Segmuller hesitated. "You may retire, my
good woman," said he kindly, after a moment's pause, "but remember that
your strange silence injures your husband far more than anything you
could say."
She left the room--or rather she rushed wildly from it as though only
too eager to escape--and the magistrate and the detective exchanged
glances of dismay and consternation.
"I said so before," thought Goguet, "the prisoner knows what he's about.
I would be willing to bet a hundred to one in his favor."
A French investigating magistrate is possessed of almost unlimited
powers. No one can hamper him, no one can give him orders. The entire
police force is at his disposal. One word from him and twenty agents, or
a hundred if need be, search Paris, ransack France, or explore Europe.
If there be any one whom he believes able to throw light upon an obscure
point, he simply sends an order to that person to appear before him, and
the man must come even if he lives a hundred leagues away.
Such is the magistrate, such are his powers. On the other hand, the
prisoner charged with a crime, but as yet un-convicted, is confined,
unless his offense be of a trivial description, in what is called a
"secret cell." He is, so to say, cut off from the number of the living.
He knows nothing of what may be going on in the world outside. He can
not tell what witnesses may have been called, or what they may have
said, and in his uncertainty he asks himself again and again how far the
prosecution has been able to establish the charges against him.
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