ed Rouletabille.

"Didn't you?" I asked.

"Not for a moment. After reading the article in the 'Matin,' I knew
that a cat had nothing to do with the matter. But I swear now that
a frightful tragedy has been enacted here. You say nothing about the
Basque cap, or the handkerchief, found here, Daddy Jacques?"

"Of course, the magistrate has taken them," the old man answered,
hesitatingly.

"I haven't seen either the handkerchief or the cap, yet I can tell you
how they are made," the reporter said to him gravely.

"Oh, you are very clever," said Daddy Jacques, coughing and embarrassed.

"The handkerchief is a large one, blue with red stripes and the cap is
an old Basque cap, like the one you are wearing now."

"You are a wizard!" said Daddy Jacques, trying to laugh and not quite
succeeding. "How do you know that the handkerchief is blue with red
stripes?"

"Because, if it had not been blue with red stripes, it would not have
been found at all."

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 Frederic
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 Frederic 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