her vexed and replied:

"I don't know,--but anything appears possible"--

"The examining magistrate had the same idea, monsieur," said Daddy
Jacques, "and he carefully examined the mattress. He was obliged to
laugh at the idea, monsieur, as your friend is doing now,--for whoever
heard of a mattress having a double bottom?"

I was myself obliged to laugh, on seeing that what I had said was
absurd; but in an affair like this one hardly knows where an absurdity
begins or ends.

My friend alone seemed able to talk intelligently. He called out from
under the bed.

"The mat here has been moved out of place,--who did it?"

"We did, monsieur," explained Daddy Jacques. "When we could not find
the assassin, we asked ourselves whether there was not some hole in the
floor--"

"There is not," replied Rouletabille. "Is there a cellar?"

"No, there's no cellar. But that has not stopped our searching, and has
not prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studying
the floor plank by plank, as if there had been a cellar under it."

The reporter then reappeared. His eyes were sparkling and his nostrils
quivered. He remained on his hands and knees. He could not be better
likened than to an admirable sporting dog on the scent of some unusual
game. And, indeed, he was scenting the steps of a man,--the man whom he
has sworn to report to his master, the manager of the "Epoque." It must
not be forgotten that Rouletabille was first and last a journalist.

Thus, on his hands and knees, he made his way to the four corners of the
room, so to speak, sniffing and going round everything--everything that
we could see, which was not much, and everything that we could not see,
which must have been infinite.

The toilette table was a simple table standing on four legs; there was
nothing about it by which it could possibly be changed into a temporary
hiding-place. There was not a closet or cupboard. Mademoiselle
Stangerson kept her wardrobe at the chateau.

Rouletabille literally passed his nose and hands along the walls,
constructed of solid brickwork. When he had finished with the walls, and
passed his agile fingers over every portion of the yellow paper covering
them, he reached to the ceiling, which he was able to touch by mounting
on a chair placed on the toilette table, and by moving this ingeniously
constructed stage from place to place he examined every foot of it. When
he had finished his scrutiny of the ceiling, wher