THE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH ROULETABILLE: The Mystery of the Yellow Room & The Secret of the Night. Гастон Леру

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      “I believe you,” said Rouletabille gravely; “but you have not answered my question.”

      We were passing by the thicket, of which the young reporter had spoken to us a minute before. I entered it and pointed out evident traces of a man who had been hidden there. Rouletabille, once more, was right.

      “Yes, yes!” he said. “We have to do with a thing of flesh and blood, who uses the same means that we do. It’ll all come out on those lines.”

      Having said this, he asked me for the paper pattern of the footprint which he had given me to take care of, and applied it to a very clear footmark behind the thicket. “Aha!” he said, rising.

      I thought he was now going to trace back the track of the murderer’s footmarks to the vestibule window; but he led us instead, far to the left, saying that it was useless ferreting in the mud, and that he was sure, now, of the road taken by the murderer.

      “He went along the wall to the hedge and dry ditch, over which he jumped. See, just in front of the little path leading to the lake, that was his nearest way to get out.”

      “How do you know he went to the lake?”—

      “Because Frederic Larsan has not quitted the borders of it since this morning. There must be some important marks there.”

      A few minutes later we reached the lake.

      It was a little sheet of marshy water, surrounded by reeds, on which floated some dead water-lily leaves. The great Fred may have seen us approaching, but we probably interested him very little, for he took hardly any notice of us and continued to be stirring with his cane something which we could not see.

      “Look!” said Rouletabille, “here again are the footmarks of the escaping man; they skirt the lake here and finally disappear just before this path, which leads to the high road to Epinay. The man continued his flight to Paris.”

      “What makes you think that?” I asked, “since these footmarks are not continued on the path?”

      “What makes me think that?—Why these footprints, which I expected to find!” he cried, pointing to the sharply outlined imprint of a neat boot. “See!”—and he called to Frederic Larsan.

      “Monsieur Fred, these neat footprints seem to have been made since the discovery of the crime.”

      “Yes, young man, yes, they have been carefully made,” replied Fred without raising his head. “You see, there are steps that come, and steps that go back.”

      “And the man had a bicycle!” cried the reporter.

      Here, after looking at the marks of the bicycle, which followed, going and coming, the neat footprints, I thought I might intervene.

      “The bicycle explains the disappearance of the murderer’s big foot-prints,” I said. “The murderer, with his rough boots, mounted a bicycle. His accomplice, the wearer of the neat boots, had come to wait for him on the edge of the lake with the bicycle. It might be supposed that the murderer was working for the other.”

      “No, no!” replied Rouletabille with a strange smile. “I have expected to find these footmarks from the very beginning. These are not the footmarks of the murderer!”

      “Then there were two?”

      “No—there was but one, and he had no accomplice.”

      “Very good!—Very good!” cried Frederic Larsan.

      “Look!” continued the young reporter, showing us the ground where it had been disturbed by big and heavy heels; “the man seated himself there, and took off his hobnailed boots, which he had worn only for the purpose of misleading detection, and then no doubt, taking them away with him, he stood up in his own boots, and quietly and slowly regained the high road, holding his bicycle in his hand, for he could not venture to ride it on this rough path. That accounts for the lightness of the impression made by the wheels along it, in spite of the softness of the ground. If there had been a man on the bicycle, the wheels would have sunk deeply into the soil. No, no; there was but one man there, the murderer on foot.”

      “Bravo!—bravo!” cried Fred again, and coming suddenly towards us and, planting himself in front of Monsieur Robert Darzac, he said to him:

      “If we had a bicycle here, we might demonstrate the correctness of the young man’s reasoning, Monsieur Robert Darzac. Do you know whether there is one at the chateau?”

      “No!” replied Monsieur Darzac. “There is not. I took mine, four days ago, to Paris, the last time I came to the chateau before the crime.”

      “That’s a pity!” replied Fred, very coldly. Then, turning to Rouletabille, he said: “If we go on at this rate, we’ll both come to the same conclusion. Have you any idea, as to how the murderer got away from The Yellow Room?”

      “Yes,” said my young friend; “I have an idea.”

      “So have I,” said Fred, “and it must be the same as yours. There are no two ways of reasoning in this affair. I am waiting for the arrival of my chief before offering any explanation to the examining magistrate.”

      “Ah! Is the Chief of the Surete coming?”

      “Yes, this afternoon. He is going to summon, before the magistrate, in the laboratory, all those who have played any part in this tragedy. It will be very interesting. It is a pity you won’t be able to be present.”

      “I shall be present,” said Rouletabille confidently.

      “Really—you are an extraordinary fellow—for your age!” replied the detective in a tone not wholly free from irony. “You’d make a wonderful detective—if you had a little more method—if you didn’t follow your instincts and that bump on your forehead. As I have already several times observed, Monsieur Rouletabille, you reason too much; you do not allow yourself to be guided by what you have seen. What do you say to the handkerchief full of blood, and the red mark of the hand on the wall? You have seen the stain on the wall, but I have only seen the handkerchief.”

      “Bah!” cried Rouletabille, “the murderer was wounded in the hand by Mademoiselle Stangerson’s revolver!”

      “Ah!—a simply instinctive observation! Take care!—You are becoming too strictly logical, Monsieur Rouletabille; logic will upset you if you use it indiscriminately. You are right, when you say that Mademoiselle Stangerson fired her revolver, but you are wrong when you say that she wounded the murderer in the hand.”

      “I am sure of it,” cried Rouletabille.

      Fred, imperturbable, interrupted him:

      “Defective observation—defective observation!—the examination of the handkerchief, the numberless little round scarlet stains, the impression of drops which I found in the tracks of the footprints, at the moment when they were made on the floor, prove to me that the murderer was not wounded at all. Monsieur Rouletabille, the murderer bled at the nose!”

      The great Fred spoke quite seriously. However, I could not refrain from uttering an exclamation.

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