from the explanation
which he gives me, it is clear to me that--in spite of all our
senses--he is persuaded the man disappeared by some secret passage in
the chateau known to him alone.

"'He knows the chateau,' he said to me; 'he knows it well.'

"'He is a rather tall man--well-built,' I suggested.

"'He is as tall as he wants to be,' murmured Fred.

"'I understand,' I said; 'but how do you account for his red hair and
beard?'

"'Too much beard--too much hair--false,' says Fred.

"'That's easily said. You are always thinking of Robert Darzac. You
can't get rid of that idea? I am certain that he is innocent.'

"'So much the better. I hope so; but everything condemns him. Did you
notice the marks on the carpet?--Come and look at them.'

"'I have seen them; they are the marks of the neat boots, the same as
those we saw on the border of the lake.'

"'Can you deny that they belong to Robert Darzac?'

"'Of course, one may be mistaken.'

"'Have you noticed that those footprints only go in one direction?--that
there are no return marks? When the man came from the chamber, pursued
by all of us, his footsteps left no traces behind them.'

"'He had, perhaps, been in the chamber for hours. The mud from his boots
had dried, and he moved with such rapidity on the points of his toes--We
saw him running, but we did not hear his steps.'

"I suddenly put an end to this idle chatter--void of any logic, and made
a sign to Larsan to listen.

"'There--below; some one is shutting a door.'

"I rise; Larsan follows me; we descend to the ground-floor of the
chateau. I lead him to the little semi-circular room under the terrace
beneath the window of the 'off-turning' gallery. I point to the door,
now closed, open a short time before, under which a shaft of light is
visible.

"'The forest-keeper!' says Fred.

"'Come on!' I whisper.

"Prepared--I know not why--to believe that the keeper is the guilty
man--I go to the door and rap smartly on it. Some might think that we
were rather late in thinking of the keeper, since our first business,
after having found that the murderer had escaped us in the gallery,
ought to have been to search everywhere else,--around the chateau,--in
the park--

"Had this criticism been made at the time, we could only have answered
that the assassin had disappeared from the gallery in such a way that we
thought he was no longer anywhere! He had eluded us when we all had our
hands stretched out read