ing her hair back
from her forehead. If she had worn it in bands, the blow she received
on the temple would have been weakened.' It seems strange to me that you
should attach so much importance to this point."

"Oh! if she had not her hair in bands, I give it up," said Rouletabille,
with a despairing gesture.

"And was the wound on her temple a bad one?" he asked presently.

"Terrible."

"With what weapon was it made?"

"That is a secret of the investigation."

"Have you found the weapon--whatever it was?"

The magistrate did not answer.

"And the wound in the throat?"

Here the examining magistrate readily confirmed the decision of the
doctor that, if the murderer had pressed her throat a few seconds
longer, Mademoiselle Stangerson would have died of strangulation.

"The affair as reported in the 'Matin,'" said Rouletabille eagerly,
"seems to me more and more inexplicable. Can you tell me, Monsieur, how
many openings there are in the pavilion? I mean doors and windows."

"There are five," replied Monsieur de Marquet, after having coughed
once or twice, but no longer resisting the desire he felt to talk of
the whole of the incredible mystery of the affair he was investigating.
"There are five, of which the door of the vestibule is the only entrance
to the pavilion,--a door always automatically closed, which cannot be
opened, either from the outer or inside, except with the two special
keys which are never out of the possession of either Daddy Jacques or
Monsieur Stangerson. Mademoiselle Stangerson had no need for one, since
Daddy Jacques lodged in the pavilion and because, during the daytime,
she never left her father. When they, all four, rushed into The Yellow
Room, after breaking open the door of the laboratory, the door in the
vestibule remained closed as usual and, of the two keys for opening it,
Daddy Jacques had one in his pocket, and Monsieur Stangerson the other.
As to the windows of the pavilion, there are four; the one window of The
Yellow Room and those of the laboratory looking out on to the country;
the window in the vestibule looking into the park."

"It is by that window that he escaped from the pavilion!" cried
Rouletabille.

"How do you know that?" demanded Monsieur de Marquet, fixing a strange
look on my young friend.

"We'll see later how he got away from The Yellow Room," replied
Rouletabille, "but he must have left the pavilion by the vestibule
window."

"Once more,--how do you