“After making so good a start, you ought not to stop so soon,” he exclaimed. “Come, make another effort.” “I’ll try. Since he disappeared from the gallery without passing through any door or window, he must have escaped by some other opening.” Rouletabille looked at me pityingly, smiled carelessly, and remarked that I was reasoning like a postman, or—like Frédéric Larsan. Rouletabille had alternate fits of admiration and disdain for the great Fred. It all depended as to whether Larsan’s discoveries tallied with Rouletabille’s reasoning or not. When they did he would exclaim: “He is really great!” When they did not he would grunt and mutter, “What an ass!” It was a petty side of the noble character of this strange youth. We had risen, and he led me into the park. When we reached the court and were making towards the gate, the sound of blinds thrown back against the wall made us turn our heads, and we saw, at a window on the first floor of the château, the ruddy and clean shaven face of a person I did not recognise. “Hullo!” muttered Rouletabille. “Arthur Rance!”—He lowered his head, quickened his pace, and I heard him ask himself between his teeth: “Was he in the château that night? What is he doing here?” We had gone some distance from the château when I asked him who this Arthur Rance was, and how he had come to know him. He referred to his story of that morning and I remembered that Mr. Arthur W. Rance was the American from Philadelphia with whom he had had so many drinks at the Élysée reception. “But was he not to have left France almost immediately?” I asked. “No doubt; that’s why I am surprised to find him here still, and not only in France, but above all, at the Glandier. He did not arrive this morning; and he did not get here last night. He must have got here before dinner, then. Why didn’t the concierges tell me?” I reminded my friend, apropos of the concierges, that he had not yet told me what had led him to get them set at liberty. We were close to their lodge. Monsieur and Madame Bernier saw us coming. A frank smile lit up their happy faces. They seemed to harbour no ill-feeling because of their detention. My young friend asked them at what hour Mr. Arthur Rance had arrived. They answered that they did not know he was at the château. He must have come during the evening of the previous night, but they had not had to open the gate for him, because, being a great walker, and not wishing that a carriage should be sent to meet him, he was accustomed to get off at the little hamlet of Saint-Michel, from which he came to the château by way of the forest. He reached the park by the grotto of Sainte-Geneviève, over the little gate of which, giving on to the park, he climbed.