“Q. Did you dine in the laboratory?
“A. For that reason.
“Q. Are you accustomed to dine in the laboratory?
“A. We rarely dine there.
“Q. Could the murderer have known that you would dine there that evening?
“M. Stangerson. Good Heavens!—I think not. It was only when we returned to the pavilion at six o’clock, that we decided, my daughter and I, to dine there. At that moment I was spoken to by my gamekeeper, who detained me a moment, to ask me to accompany him on an urgent tour of inspection in a part of the woods which I had decided to thin. I put this off until the next day, and begged him, as he was going by the chateau, to tell the steward that we should dine in the laboratory. He left me, to execute the errand and I rejoined my daughter, who was already at work.
“Q. At what hour, mademoiselle, did you go to your chamber while your father continued to work there?
“A. At midnight.
“Q. Did Daddy Jacques enter The Yellow Room in the course of the evening?
“A. To shut the blinds and light the night-light.
“Q. He saw nothing suspicious?
“A. He would have told us if he had seen. Daddy Jacques is an honest man and very attached to me.
“Q. You affirm, Monsieur Stangerson, that Daddy Jacques remained with you all the time you were in the laboratory?
“M. Stangerson. I am sure of it. I have no doubt of that.
“Q. When you entered your chamber, mademoiselle, you immediately shut the door and locked and bolted it? That was taking unusual precautions, knowing that your father and your servant were there? Were you in fear of something, then?
“A. My father would be returning to the chateau and Daddy Jacques would be going to his bed. And, in fact, I did fear something.
“Q. You were so much in fear of something that you borrowed Daddy Jacques’s revolver without telling him you had done so?
“A. That is true. I did not wish to alarm anybody,—the more, because my fears might have proved to have been foolish.
“Q. What was it you feared?
“A. I hardly know how to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o’clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt sure I saw shadows.
“Q. How many?
“A. Two. They moved round the lake,—then the moon became clouded and I lost sight of them. At this time of the season, every year, I have generally returned to my apartment in the chateau for the winter; but this year I said to myself that I would not quit the pavilion before my father had finished the resume of his works on the ‘Dissociation of Matter’ for the Academy. I did not wish that that important work, which was to have been finished in the course of a few days, should be delayed by a change in our daily habit. You can well understand that I did not wish to speak of my childish fears to my father, nor did I say anything to Daddy Jacques who, I knew, would not have been able to hold his tongue. Knowing that he had a revolver in his room, I took advantage of his absence and borrowed it, placing it in the drawer of my night-table.
“Q. You know of no enemies you have?
“A. None.
“Q. You understand, mademoiselle, that these precautions are calculated to cause surprise?
“M. Stangerson. Evidently, my child, such precautions are very surprising.
“A. No;—because I have told you that I had been uneasy for two nights.
“M. Stangerson. You ought to have told me of that! This misfortune would have been avoided.
“Q. The door of The Yellow Room locked, did you go to bed?
“A. Yes, and, being very tired, I at once went to sleep.
“Q. The night-light was still burning?
“A. Yes, but it gave a very feeble light.
“Q. Then, mademoiselle, tell us what happened.
“A. I do not know whether I had been long asleep, but suddenly I awoke—and uttered a loud cry.
“M. Stangerson. Yes—a horrible cry—‘Murder!’—It still rings in my ears.
“Q. You uttered a loud cry?
“A. A man was in my chamber. He sprang at me and tried to strangle me. I was nearly stifled when suddenly I was able to reach the drawer of my night-table and grasp the revolver which I had placed in it. At that moment the man had forced me to the foot of my bed and brandished in over my head a sort of mace. But I had fired. He immediately struck a terrible blow at my head. All that, monsieur, passed more rapidly than I can tell it, and I know nothing more.
“Q. Nothing?—Have you no idea as to how the assassin could escape from your chamber?
“A. None whatever—I know nothing more. One does not know what is passing around one, when one is unconscious.
“Q. Was the man you saw tall or short, little or big?
“A. I only saw a shadow which appeared to me formidable.
“Q. You cannot give us any indication?
“A. I know nothing more, monsieur, than that a man threw himself upon me and that I fired at him. I know nothing more.”
Here the interrogation of Mademoiselle Stangerson concluded.
Rouletabille waited patiently for Monsieur Robert Darzac, who soon appeared.
From a room near the chamber of Mademoiselle Stangerson, he had heard the interrogatory and now came to recount it to my friend with great exactitude, aided by an excellent memory. His docility still surprised me. Thanks to hasty pencil-notes, he was able to reproduce, almost textually, the questions and the answers given.
It looked as if Monsieur Darzac were being employed as the secretary of my young friend and acted as if he could refuse him nothing; nay, more, as if under a compulsion to do so.
The fact of the closed window struck the reporter as it had struck the magistrate. Rouletabille asked Darzac to repeat once more Mademoiselle Stangerson’s account of how she and her father had spent their time on the day of the tragedy, as she had stated it to the magistrate. The circumstance of the dinner in the laboratory seemed to interest him in the highest degree; and he had it repeated to him three times. He also wanted to be sure that the forest-keeper knew that the professor and his daughter were going to dine in the laboratory, and how he had come to know it.
When Monsieur Darzac had finished, I said: “The examination has not advanced the problem much.”
“It has put it back,” said Monsieur Darzac.
“It has thrown light upon it,” said Rouletabille, thoughtfully.
Chapter 9. Reporter and Detective
The three of us went back towards the pavilion. At some distance from the building the reporter made us stop and, pointing to a small clump of trees to the right of us, said:
“That’s where the murderer came from to get into the pavilion.”
As there were other patches of trees of the same sort between the great oaks, I asked why the murderer had chosen that one, rather than any of the others. Rouletabille answered me by pointing to the path which