ocked at the door. Nobody answered. Naturally, this did
not surprise me.

"He is evidently not there, otherwise he would have come out," said the
reporter. "Let us carry him to the vestibule then."

Since reaching the dead shadow, a thick cloud had covered the moon and
darkened the night, so that we were unable to make out the features.
Daddy Jacques, who had now joined us, helped us to carry the body into
the vestibule, where we laid it down on the lower step of the stairs.
On the way, I had felt my hands wet from the warm blood flowing from the
wounds.

Daddy Jacques flew to the kitchen and returned with a lantern. He held
it close to the face of the dead shadow, and we recognised the keeper,
the man called by the landlord of the Donjon Inn the Green Man, whom, an
hour earlier, I had seen come out of Arthur Rance's chamber carrying a
parcel. But what I had seen I could only tell Rouletabille later, when
we were alone.

Rouletabille and Frederic Larsan experienced a cruel disappointment
at the result of the night's adventure. They could only look in
consternation and stupefaction at the body of the Green Man.

Daddy Jacques showed a stupidly sorrowful face and with silly
lamentations kept repeating that we were mistaken--the keeper could not
be the assailant. We were obliged to compel him to be quiet. He could
not have shown greater grief had the body been that of his own son.
I noticed, while all the rest of us were more or less undressed and
barefooted, that he was fully clothed.

Rouletabille had not left the body. Kneeling on the flagstones by the
light of Daddy Jacques's lantern he removed the clothes from the body
and laid bare its breast. Then snatching the lantern from Daddy Jacques,
he held it over the corpse and saw a gaping wound. Rising suddenly he
exclaimed in a voice filled with savage irony:

"The man you believe to have been shot was killed by the stab of a knife
in his heart!"

I thought Rouletabille had gone mad; but, bending over the body, I
quickly satisfied myself that Rouletabille was right. Not a sign of
a bullet anywhere--the wound, evidently made by a sharp blade, had
penetrated the heart.

CHAPTER XXIII. The Double Scent

I had hardly recovered from the surprise into which this new discovery
had plunged me, when Rouletabille touched me on the shoulder and asked
me to follow him into his room.

"What are we going to do there?"

"To think the matter over."

I confess I