ered
he found Mademoiselle Stangerson lying partly thrown over the desk.
Her dressing-gown was dyed with the blood flowing from her bosom. Still
under the influence of the drug, he felt he was walking in a horrible
nightmare.

He went back to the gallery automatically, opened a window, shouted his
order to fire, and then returned to the room. He crossed the deserted
boudoir, entered the drawing-room, and tried to rouse Monsieur
Stangerson who was lying on a sofa. Monsieur Stangerson rose stupidly
and let himself be drawn by Rouletabille into the room where, on seeing
his daughter's body, he uttered a heart-rending cry. Both united their
feeble strength and carried her to her bed.

On his way to join us Rouletabille passed by the desk. On the floor,
near it, he saw a large packet. He knelt down and, finding the wrapper
loose, he examined it, and made out an enormous quantity of papers
and photographs. On one of the papers he read: "New differential
electroscopic condenser. Fundamental properties of substance
intermediary between ponderable matter and imponderable ether." Strange
irony of fate that the professor's precious papers should be restored
to him at the very time when an attempt was being made to deprive him of
his daughter's life! What are papers worth to him now?

The morning following that awful night saw Monsieur de Marquet once more
at the chateau, with his Registrar and gendarmes. Of course we were all
questioned. Rouletabille and I had already agreed on what to say. I kept
back any information as to my being in the dark closet and said
nothing about the drugging. We did not wish to suggest in any way that
Mademoiselle Stangerson had been expecting her nocturnal visitor.
The poor woman might, perhaps, never recover, and it was none of our
business to lift the veil of a secret the preservation of which she had
paid for so dearly.

Arthur Rance told everybody, in a manner so natural that it astonished
me, that he had last seen the keeper towards eleven o'clock of that
fatal night. He had come for his valise, he said, which he was to take
for him early next morning to the Saint-Michel station, and had been
kept out late running after poachers. Arthur Rance had, indeed, intended
to leave the chateau and, according to his habit, to walk to the
station.

Monsieur Stangerson confirmed what Rance had said, adding that he had
not asked Rance to dine with him because his friend had taken his final
leave of the