Without giving any further attention to Daddy Jacques, my friend took a piece of paper from his pocket, and taking out a pair of scissors, bent over the footprints. Placing the paper over one of them he began to cut. In a short time he had made a perfect pattern which he handed to me, begging me not to lose it. He then returned to the window and, pointing to the figure of Frédéric Larsan, who had not quitted the side of the lake, asked Daddy Jacques whether the detective had, like himself, been working in The Yellow Room? “No,” replied Robert Darzac, who, since Rouletabille had handed him the piece of scorched paper, had not uttered a word, “He pretends that he does not need to examine The Yellow Room. He says that the murderer made his escape from it in quite a natural way, and that he will, this evening, explain how he did it.” As he listened to what Monsieur Darzac had to say, Rouletabille turned pale. “Has Frédéric Larsan found out the truth, which I can only guess at?” he murmured. “He is very clever—very clever—and I admire him. But what we have to do to-day is something more than the work of a policeman,—something quite different from the teachings of experience. We have to take hold of our reason by the right end.” The reporter rushed into the open air, agitated by the thought that the great and famous Fred might anticipate him in the solution of the problem of The Yellow Room. I managed to reach him on the threshold of the pavilion. “Calm yourself, my dear fellow,” I said. “Aren’t you satisfied?” “Yes,” he confessed to me, with a deep sigh. “I am quite satisfied. I have discovered many things.” “Moral or material?” “Several moral,—one material. This, for example.” And rapidly he drew from his waistcoat pocket a piece of paper in which he had placed a _light coloured hair from a woman’s head_. 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 château, 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 château, 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 château.” And he drew me with him. But, at the château, 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.