o a leather cap?" said the examining magistrate.

"Yes," said the Comte de Gesvres, "the knife was picked up here. It
comes from the same trophy in the drawing room from which my niece,
Mlle. de Saint-Veran, snatched the gun. As for the chauffeur's cap,
that evidently belongs to the murderer."

M. Filleul examined certain further details in the room, put a few
questions to the doctor and then asked M. de Gesvres to tell him what
he had seen and heard. The count worded his story as follows:

"Jean Daval woke me up. I had been sleeping badly, for that matter,
with gleams of consciousness in which I seemed to hear noises, when,
suddenly opening my eyes, I saw Daval standing at the foot of my bed,
with his candle in his hand and fully dressed--as he is now, for he
often worked late into the night. He seemed greatly excited and said,
in a low voice: 'There's some one in the drawing room.' I heard a noise
myself. I got up and softly pushed the door leading to this boudoir. At
the same moment, the door over there, which opens into the big drawing
room, was thrown back and a man appeared who leaped at me and stunned
me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any
details, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, for the simple reason that I
remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon
one another with extraordinary swiftness."

"And after that?--"

"After that, I don't know--I fainted. When I came to, Daval lay
stretched by my side, mortally wounded."

"At first sight, do you suspect no one?"

"No one."

"You have no enemy?"

"I know of none."

"Nor M. Daval either?"

"Daval! An enemy? He was the best creature that ever lived. M. Daval
was my secretary for twenty years and, I may say, my confidant; and I
have never seen him surrounded with anything but love and friendship."

"Still, there has been a burglary and there has been a murder: there
must be a motive for all that."

"The motive? Why, it was robbery pure and simple."

"Robbery? Have you been robbed of something, then?"

"No, nothing."

"In that case--?"

"In that case, if they have stolen nothing and if nothing is missing,
they at least took something away."

"What?"

"I don't know. But my daughter and my niece will tell you, with
absolute certainty, that they saw two men in succession cross the park
and that those two men were carrying fairly heavy loads."

"The young ladies--"

"The young ladies may have bee