"The probable, almost certain, inference is that M. Etienne Rambert got into that slow train at the gare d'Orsay for the definite purpose of establishing an alibi, and then got out of it on the other side, and entered an express that was going in the same direction, and in front of the slow train.
"You may remember that it was shown that all trains stopped at the mouth of the Verrières tunnel, near Beaulieu, and that it was possible for a man to get out of the express, commit the crime and then return--I would remind you of the footprints found on the embankment--and get into the slow train which followed the express at an interval of three hours and a half, and get out of that train at Verrières station. The passenger who did that, was the criminal, and it was M. Etienne Rambert.
"As I have already proved that it was Gurn who murdered the Marquise de Langrune, it seems to follow necessarily that M. Etienne Rambert must be Gurn!"
Juve paused to make sure that the jury had followed his deductions and taken all his points. He proceeded, in the most tense hush.
"We have just identified Gurn with Rambert and proved that Rambert-Gurn is guilty of the Beltham and Langrune murders, and the robbery from Mme. Van den Rosen and Princess Sonia Danidoff. There remains the murder of the steward, Dollon.
"Gentlemen, when Gurn was arrested on the single charge of the murder of Lord Beltham, you will readily believe that his one fear was that all these other crimes, for which I have just shown him to be responsible, might be brought up against him. I was just then on the very point of finding out the truth, but I had not yet done so. A single link was missing in the chain which would connect Gurn with Rambert, and identify the murderer of Lord Beltham as the author of the other crimes. That link was some common clue, or, better still, some object belonging to the murderer of Lord Beltham, which had been forgotten and left on the scene of the Langrune murder.
"That object I found. It was a fragment of a map, picked up in a field near the château of Beaulieu, in the path which Etienne Rambert must have followed from the railway line; it was a fragment cut out of a large ordnance map, and the rest of the map I found in Gurn's rooms, thereby identifying Gurn with Rambert.