This conversation between magistrates, accused, victim, witnesses and journalist, was coming to a close when quite a theatrical sensation—an incident of a kind displeasing to Monsieur de Marquet—was produced. The officer of the gendarmes came to announce that Frédéric Larsan requested to be admitted,—a request that was at once complied with. He held in his hand a heavy pair of muddy boots, which he threw on the pavement of the laboratory. “Here,” he said, “are the boots worn by the murderer. Do you recognise them, Daddy Jacques?” Daddy Jacques bent over them and, stupefied, recognised a pair of old boots which he had, some time back, thrown into a corner of his attic. He was so taken aback that he could not hide his agitation. Then pointing to the handkerchief in the old man’s hand, Frédéric Larsan said:— “That’s a handkerchief astonishingly like the one found in The Yellow Room.” “I know,” said Daddy Jacques, trembling, “they are almost alike.” “And then,” continued Frédéric Larsan, “the old Basque cap also found in The Yellow Room might at one time have been worn by Daddy Jacques himself. All this, gentlemen, proves, I think, that the murderer wished to disguise his real personality. He did it in a very clumsy way—or, at least, so it appears to us. Don’t be alarmed, Daddy Jacques; we are quite sure that you were not the murderer; you never left the side of Monsieur Stangerson. But if Monsieur Stangerson had not been working that night and had gone back to the château after parting with his daughter, and Daddy Jacques had gone to sleep in his attic, no one would have doubted that he was the murderer. He owes his safety, therefore, to the tragedy having been enacted too soon,—the murderer, no doubt, from the silence in the laboratory, imagined that it was empty, and that the moment for action had come. The man who had been able to introduce himself here so mysteriously and to leave so many evidences against Daddy Jacques, was, there can be no doubt, familiar with the house. At what hour exactly he entered, whether in the afternoon or in the evening, I cannot say. One familiar with the proceedings and persons of this pavilion could choose his own time for entering The Yellow Room.” “He could not have entered it if anybody had been in the laboratory,” said Monsieur de Marquet. “How do we know that?” replied Larsan. “There was the dinner in the laboratory, the coming and going of the servants in attendance. There was a chemical experiment being carried on between ten and eleven o’clock, with Monsieur Stangerson, his daughter, and Daddy Jacques engaged at the furnace in a corner of the high chimney. Who can say that the murderer—an intimate!—a friend!—did not take advantage of that moment to slip into The Yellow Room, after having taken off his boots in the lavatory?” “It is very improbable,” said Monsieur Stangerson.