A faint colour had come back to his cheeks, his eyes were fixed intently upon Hanaud's face.
"What do you think ?" he asked; and Hanaud replied brusquely: "It's not my business to hold opinions, monsieur; my business is to make sure." There was one point, and only one, of which he had made every one in that room sure.

He had started confident.

Here was a sordid crime, easily understood.

But in that room he had read something which had troubled him, which had raised the sordid crime on to some higher and perplexing level.
"Then M.Fleuriot after all might be right ?" asked the Commissaire timidly.
Hanaud stared at him for a second, then smiled.
"L'affaire Dreyfus ?" he cried.

"Oh la, la, la! No, but there is something else." What was that something?
Ricardo asked himself.