ed, by
the help alone of his masterful mind, we were able to realise that the
murderer had got away neither by a door, a window, nor the stairs--a
fact which the judges would not admit.

CHAPTER XVII. The Inexplicable Gallery

"Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared at the door of her ante-room,"
continues Rouletabille's note-book. "We were near her door in the
gallery where this incredible phenomenon had taken place. There are
moments when one feels as if one's brain were about to burst. A bullet
in the head, a fracture of the skull, the seat of reason shattered--with
only these can I compare the sensation which exhausted and left me void
of sense.

"Happily, Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared on the threshold of her
ante-room. I saw her, and that helped to relieve my chaotic state of
mind. I breathed her--I inhaled the perfume of the lady in black, whom I
should never see again. I would have given ten years of my life--half my
life--to see once more the lady in black! Alas! I no more meet her
but from time to time,--and yet!--and yet! how the memory of that
perfume--felt by me alone--carries me back to the days of my childhood.*
It was this sharp reminder from my beloved perfume, of the lady in
black, which made me go to her--dressed wholly in white and so pale--so
pale and so beautiful!--on the threshold of the inexplicable gallery.
Her beautiful golden hair, gathered into a knot on the back of her neck,
left visible the red star on her temple which had so nearly been the
cause of her death. When I first got on the right track of the mystery
of this case I had imagined that, on the night of the tragedy in The
Yellow Room, Mademoiselle Stangerson had worn her hair in bands. But
then, how could I have imagined otherwise when I had not been in
The Yellow Room!

* When I wrote these lines, Joseph Rouletabille was eighteen
years of age,--and he spoke of his "youth." I have kept the
text of my friend, but I inform the reader here that the
episode of the mystery of The Yellow Room has no connection
with that of the perfume of the lady in black. It is not my
fault if, in the document which I have cited, Rouletabille
thought fit to refer to his childhood.

"But now, since the occurrence of the inexplicable gallery, I did not
reason at all. I stood there, stupid, before the apparition--so pale
and so beautiful--of Mademoiselle Stangerson. She was clad in a
dressing-gown of dreamy white