The Mystery of the Yellow Room

CHAPTER VIII. The Examining Magistrate Questions Mademoiselle Stangerson

Two minutes later, as Rouletabille was bending over the footprints discovered in the park, under the window of the vestibule, a man, evidently a servant at the chateau, came towards us rapidly and called out to Monsieur Darzac then coming out of the pavilion:

“Monsieur Robert, the magistrate, you know, is questioning Mademoiselle.”

Monsieur Darzac uttered a muttered excuse to us and set off running towards the chateau, the man running after him.

“If the corpse can speak,” I said, “it would be interesting to be there.”

“We must know,” said my friend. “Let’s go to the chateau.” And he drew me with him. But, at the chateau, a gendarme placed in the vestibule denied us admission up the staircase of the first floor. We were obliged to wait down stairs.

This is what passed in the chamber of the victim while we were waiting below.

The family doctor, finding that Mademoiselle Stangerson was much better, but fearing a relapse which would no longer permit of her being questioned, had thought it his duty to inform the examining magistrate of this, who decided to proceed immediately with a brief examination. At this examination, the Registrar, Monsieur Stangerson, and the doctor were present. Later, I obtained the text of the report of the examination, and I give it here, in all its legal dryness:

“Question. Are you able, mademoiselle, without too much fatiguing yourself, to give some necessary details of the frightful attack of which you have been the victim?

“Answer. I feel much better, monsieur, and I will tell you all I know. When I entered my chamber I did not notice anything unusual there.

“Q. Excuse me, mademoiselle,—if you will allow me, I will ask you some questions and you will answer them. That will fatigue you less than making a long recital.

“A. Do so, monsieur.

“Q. What did you do on that day?—I want you to be as minute and precise as possible. I wish to know all you did that day, if it is not asking too much of you.

“A. I rose late, at ten o’clock, for my father and I had returned home late on the night previously, having been to dinner at the reception given by the President of the Republic, in honour of the Academy of Science of Philadelphia. When I left my chamber, at half-past ten, my father was already at work in the laboratory. We worked together till midday. We then took half-an-hour’s walk in the park, as we were accustomed to do, before breakfasting at the chateau. After breakfast, we took another walk for half an hour, and then returned to the laboratory. There we found my chambermaid, who had come to set my room in order. I went into The Yellow Room to give her some slight orders and she directly afterwards left the pavilion, and I resumed my work with my father. At five o’clock, we again went for a walk in the park and afterward had tea.

“Q. Before leaving the pavilion at five o’clock, did you go into your chamber?

“A. No, monsieur, my father went into it, at my request to bring me my hat.

“Q. And he found nothing suspicious there?

“A. Evidently no, monsieur.

“Q. It is, then, almost certain that the murderer was not yet concealed under the bed. When you went out, was the door of the room locked?

“A. No, there was no reason for locking it.

“Q. You were absent from the pavilion some length of time, Monsieur Stangerson and you?

“A. About an hour.

“Q. It was during that hour, no doubt, that the murderer got into the pavilion. But how? Nobody knows. Footmarks have been found in the park, leading away from the window of the vestibule, but none has been found going towards it. Did you notice whether the vestibule window was open when you went out?

“A. I don’t remember.

“Monsieur Stangerson. It was closed.

“Q. And when you returned?

“Mademoiselle Stangerson. I did not notice.

“M. Stangerson. It was still closed. I remember remarking aloud: ‘Daddy Jacques must surely have opened it while we were away.’

“Q. Strange!—Do you recollect, Monsieur Stangerson, if during your absence, and before going out, he had opened it? You returned to the laboratory at six o’clock and resumed work?

“Mademoiselle Stangerson. Yes, monsieur.

“Q. And you did not leave the laboratory from that hour up to the moment when you entered your chamber?

“M. Stangerson. Neither my daughter nor I, monsieur. We were engaged on work that was pressing, and we lost not a moment,—neglecting everything else on that account.

“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 employeed 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 IX. 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 ran quite close to the thicket to the door of the pavilion.

“That path is as you see, topped with gravel,” he said; “the man must have passed along it going to the pavilion, since no traces of his steps have been found on the soft ground. The man didn’t have wings; he walked; but he walked on the gravel which left no impression of his tread. The gravel has, in fact, been trodden by many other feet, since the path is the most direct way between the pavilion and the chateau. As to the thicket, made of the sort of shrubs that don’t flourish in the rough season—laurels and fuchsias—it offered the murderer a sufficient hiding-place until it was time for him to make his way to the pavilion. It was while hiding in that clump of trees that he saw Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson, and then Daddy Jacques, leave the pavilion. Gravel has been spread nearly, very nearly, up to the windows of the pavilion. The footprints of a man, parallel with the wall—marks which we will examine presently, and which I have already seen—prove that he only needed to make one stride to find himself in front of the vestibule window, left open by Daddy Jacques. The man drew himself up by his hands and entered the vestibule.”

“After all it is very possible,” I said.

“After all what? After all what?” cried Rouletabille.

I begged of him not to be angry; but he was too much irritated to listen to me and declared, ironically, that he admired the prudent doubt with which certain people approached the most simple problems, risking nothing by saying “that is so, or ‘that is not so.” Their intelligence would have produced about the same result if nature had forgotten to furnish their brain-pan with a little grey matter. As I appeared vexed, my young friend took me by the arm and admitted that he had not meant that for me; he thought more of me than that.

“If I did not reason as I do in regard to this gravel,” he went on, “I should have to assume a balloon!—My dear fellow, the science of the aerostation of dirigible balloons is not yet developed enough for me to consider it and suppose that a murderer would drop from the clouds! So don’t say a thing is possible, when it could not be otherwise. We know now how the man entered by the window, and we also know the moment at which he entered,—during the five o’clock walk of the professor and his daughter. The fact of the presence of the chambermaid—who had come to clean up “The Yellow Room”—in the laboratory, when Monsieur Stangerson and his daughter returned from their walk, at half-past one, permits us to affirm that at half-past one the murderer was not in the chamber under the bed, unless he was in collusion with the chambermaid. What do you say, Monsieur Darzac?”

Monsieur Darzac shook his head and said he was sure of the chambermaid’s fidelity, and that she was a thoroughly honest and devoted servant.

“Besides,” he added, “at five o’clock Monsieur Stangerson went into the room to fetch his daughter’s hat.”

“There is that also,” said Rouletabille.

“That the man entered by the window at the time you say, I admit,” I said; “but why did he shut the window? It was an act which would necessarily draw the attention of those who had left it open.”

“It may be the window was not shut at once,” replied the young reporter. “But if he did shut the window, it was because of the bend in the gravel path, a dozen yards from the pavilion, and on account of the three oaks that are growing at that spot.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Monsieur Darzac, who had followed us and listened with almost breathless attention to all that Rouletabille had said.

“I’ll explain all to you later on, Monsieur, when I think the moment to be ripe for doing so; but I don’t think I have anything of more importance to say on this affair, if my hypothesis is justified.”

“And what is your hypothesis?”

“You will never know if it does not turn out to be the truth. It is of much too grave a nature to speak of it, so long as it continues to be only a hypothesis.”

“Have you, at least, some idea as to who the murderer is?”

“No, monsieur, I don’t know who the murderer is; but don’t be afraid, Monsieur Robert Darzac—I shall know.”

I could not but observe that Monsieur Darzac was deeply moved; and I suspected that Rouletabille’s confident assertion was not pleasing to him. Why, I asked myself, if he was really afraid that the murderer should be discovered, was he helping the reporter to find him? My young friend seemed to have received the same impression, for he said, bluntly:

“Monsieur Darzac, don’t you want me to find out who the murderer was?”

“Oh!—I should like to kill him with my own hand!” cried Mademoiselle Stangerson’s fiance, with a vehemence that amazed me.

“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.”