"You are right in putting the problem that way, but to my mind it is easy to solve. The call was not given by the murdered woman for, remember, when we raised the body at half-past six it was already cold. Now the call was not given till six, when the woman had been dead some little time. That I am sure of, and you will see the report of the medical expert will uphold me." "Then it was a third person who gave it?" "Yes, and one who sought to have the crime discovered as soon as possible, and who reckoned on the officers coming from the Central Station, but did not expect Fandor or me to come back." "Then according to you, sir, the murderer knew of your presence behind the curtain in the study while the crime was being committed." "I can't tell about the murderer, but Doctor Chaleck certainly knew we were there. That man must have watched us all night, known the exact instant we left the house, and immediately afterwards got some one to telephone or must have done so himself." Michel, becoming more and more convinced by Juve's reasoning, went on: "At any rate, the existence of two studies, in all respects similar, goes to show a carefully premeditated plan, but there is something I can't account for. When you came back to the study where we found the dead woman, you found traces of mud by the window brought in by your shoes. You must therefore have been watching through the night the room where the crime was committed." Juve was about to put in a word, but Michel, launched on his train of argument, continued: "Allow me, sir; you are going, no doubt, to tell me that they might during your short absence have carried the body of the victim into the study in question, but I would point out to you, that on the loosened hair of the poor creature blood had caked, that some was on the carpet and had even gone through it to the flooring beneath. Now if they carried in the body just a little while before we discovered it, that would not have been the case." Michel was delighted with his own argument. Juve smiled indulgently. "My poor Michel," he cried, "you would be quite right if I put forward such an explanation. It is certain that the room in which we found the body was that in which the crime took place. It is therefore that in which we were not! As for the marks of mud near the window, they are ours, but transferred from the room in which we were into the room in which we were not! Which again proves that our presence was known to the culprits. "Furthermore, the candle with which Doctor Chaleck melted the wax to seal his letters was scarcely used, it only burned in fact a few minutes. Now we found another candle in the same state. So you see that the precautions were well taken and everything possible done to lead us astray. "We see the puppets moving--Loupart, Chaleck, Josephine, others maybe, but we do not see the strings." "The strings which move them perhaps may be no other than--Fantômas," ventured Michel.