d, who
uses the same means that we do. It'll all come out on those lines."

Having said this, he asked me for the paper pattern of the footprint
which he had given me to take care of, and applied it to a very clear
footmark behind the thicket. "Aha!" he said, rising.

I thought he was now going to trace back the track of the murderer's
footmarks to the vestibule window; but he led us instead, far to the
left, saying that it was useless ferreting in the mud, and that he was
sure, now, of the road taken by the murderer.

"He went along the wall to the hedge and dry ditch, over which he
jumped. See, just in front of the little path leading to the lake, that
was his nearest way to get out."

"How do you know he went to the lake?"--

"Because Frederic Larsan has not quitted the borders of it since this
morning. There must be some important marks there."

A few minutes later we reached the lake.

It was a little sheet of marshy water, surrounded by reeds, on which
floated some dead water-lily leaves. The great Fred may have seen us
approaching, but we probably interested him very little, for he took
hardly any notice of us and continued to be stirring with his cane
something which we could not see.

"Look!" said Rouletabille, "here again are the footmarks of the escaping
man; they skirt the lake here and finally disappear just before this
path, which leads to the high road to Epinay. The man continued his
flight to Paris."

"What makes you think that?" I asked, "since these footmarks are not
continued on the path?"

"What makes me think that?--Why these footprints, which I expected to
find!" he cried, pointing to the sharply outlined imprint of a neat
boot. "See!"--and he called to Frederic Larsan.

"Monsieur Fred, these neat footprints seem to have been made since the
discovery of the crime."

"Yes, young man, yes, they have been carefully made," replied Fred
without raising his head. "You see, there are steps that come, and steps
that go back."

"And the man had a bicycle!" cried the reporter.

Here, after looking at the marks of the bicycle, which followed, going
and coming, the neat footprints, I thought I might intervene.

"The bicycle explains the disappearance of the murderer's big
foot-prints," I said. "The murderer, with his rough boots, mounted a
bicycle. His accomplice, the wearer of the neat boots, had come to wait
for him on the edge of the lake with the bicycle. It might be supposed
that the