all the space behind me, I had my desk moved here by Daddy Jacques, who spent the evening in cleaning some of my apparatus. My daughter had been working at the same desk with me. When it was her time to leave she rose, kissed me, and bade Daddy Jacques goodnight. She had to pass behind my desk and the door to enter her chamber, and she could do this only with some difficulty. That is to say, I was very near the place where the crime occurred later.”
“And the desk?” I asked, obeying, in thus mixing myself in the conversation, the express orders of my chief, “as soon as you heard the cry of ‘murder’ followed by the revolver shots, what became of the desk?”
Daddy Jacques answered.
“We pushed it back against the wall, here—close to where it is at the present moment-so as to be able to get at the door at once.”
I followed up my reasoning, to which, however, I attached but little importance, regarding it as only a weak hypothesis, with another question.
“Might not a man in the room, the desk being so near to the door, by stooping and slipping under the desk, have left it unobserved?”
“You are forgetting,” interrupted Monsieur Stangerson wearily, “that my daughter had locked and bolted her door, that the door had remained fastened, that we vainly tried to force it open when we heard the noise, and that we were at the door while the struggle between the murderer and my poor child was going on—immediately after we heard her stifled cries as she was being held by the fingers that have left their red mark upon her throat. Rapid as the attack was, we were no less rapid in our endeavors to get into the room where the tragedy was taking place.”
I rose from my seat and once more examined the door with the greatest care. Then I returned to my place with a despairing gesture.
“If the lower panel of the door,” I said, “could be removed without the whole door being necessarily opened, the problem would be solved. But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an examination of the door—it’s of oak, solid and massive. You can see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the attempt to burst it open.”
“Ah!” cried Daddy Jacques, “it is an old and solid door that was brought from the chateau—they don’t make such doors now. We had to use this bar of iron to get it open, all four of us—for the concierge, brave woman she is, helped us. It pains me to find them both in prison now.”
Daddy Jacques had no sooner uttered these words of pity and protestation than tears and lamentations broke out from the concierges. I never saw two accused people crying more bitterly. I was extremely disgusted. Even if they were innocent, I could not understand how they could behave like that in the face of misfortune. A dignified bearing at such times is better than tears and groans, which, most often, are feigned.
“Now then, enough of that sniveling,” cried Monsieur de Marquet; “and, in your interest, tell us what you were doing under the windows of the pavilion at the time your mistress was being attacked; for you were close to the pavilion when Daddy Jacques met you.”
“We were coming to help!” they whined.
“If we could only lay hands on the murderer, he’d never taste bread again!” the woman gurgled between her sobs.
As before we were unable to get two connecting thoughts out of them. They persisted in their denials and swore, by heaven and all the saints, that they were in bed when they heard the sound of the revolver shot.
“It was not one, but two shots that were fired!—You see, you are lying. If you had heard one, you would have heard the other.”
“Mon Dieu! Monsieur—it was the second shot we heard. We were asleep when the first shot was fired.”
“Two shots were fired,” said Daddy Jacques. “I am certain that all the cartridges were in my revolver. We found afterward that two had been exploded, and we heard two shots behind the door. Was not that so, Monsieur Stangerson?”
“Yes,” replied the Professor, “there were two shots, one dull, and the other sharp and ringing.”
“Why do you persist in lying?” cried Monsieur de Marquet, turning to the concierges. “Do you think the police are the fools you are? Everything points to the fact that you were out of doors and near the pavilion at the time of the tragedy. What were you doing there? So far as I am concerned,” he said, turning to Monsieur Stangerson, “I can only explain the escape of the murderer on the assumption of help from these two accomplices. As soon as the door was forced open, and while you, Monsieur Stangerson, were occupied with your unfortunate child, the concierge and his wife facilitated the flight of the murderer, who, screening himself behind them, reached the window in the vestibule, and sprang out of it into the park. The concierge closed the window after him and fastened the blinds, which certainly could not have closed and fastened of themselves. That is the conclusion I have arrived at. If anyone here has any other idea, let him state it.”
Monsieur Stangerson intervened:
“What you say was impossible. I do not believe either in the guilt or in the connivance of my concierges, though I cannot understand what they were doing in the park at that late hour of the night. I say it was impossible, because Madame Bernier held the lamp and did not move from the threshold of the room; because I, as soon as the door was forced open, threw myself on my knees beside my daughter, and no one could have left or entered the room by the door, without passing over her body and forcing his way by me! Daddy Jacques and the concierge had but to cast a glance round the chamber and under the bed, as I had done on entering, to see that there was nobody in it but my daughter lying on the floor.”
“What do you think, Monsieur Darzac?” asked the magistrate.
Monsieur Darzac replied that he had no opinion to express. Monsieur Dax, the Chief of the Surete who, so far, had been listening and examining the room, at length deigned to open his lips:
“While search is being made for the criminal, we had better try to find out the motive for the crime; that will advance us a little,” he said. Turning towards Monsieur Stangerson, he continued, in the even, intelligent tone indicative of a strong character, “I understand that Mademoiselle was shortly to have been married?”
The professor looked sadly at Monsieur Robert Darzac.
“To my friend here, whom I should have been happy to call my son—to Monsieur Robert Darzac.”
“Mademoiselle Stangerson is much better and is rapidly recovering from her wounds. The marriage is simply delayed, is it not, Monsieur?” insisted the Chief of the Surete.
“I hope so.
“What! Is there any doubt about that?”
Monsieur Stangerson did not answer. Monsieur Robert Darzac seemed agitated. I saw that his hand trembled as it fingered his watchchain. Monsieur Dax coughed, as did Monsieur de Marquet. Both were evidently embarrassed.
“You understand, Monsieur Stangerson,” he said, “that in an affair so perplexing as this, we cannot neglect anything; we must know all, even the smallest and seemingly most futile thing concerning the victim—information apparently the most insignificant. Why do you doubt that this marriage will take place? You expressed a hope; but the hope implies a doubt. Why do you doubt?”
Monsieur Stangerson made a visible effort to recover himself.
