Gaston Leroux: The Mystery of the Yellow Room

CHAPTER 11: In Which Frederic Larsan Explains How the Murderer Was Able to Get Out of The Yellow Room (continued)

"And then," continued Frederic Larsan, "the old Basque cap also found in The Yellow Room might at one time have been worn by Daddy Jacques himself. All this, gentlemen, proves, I think, that the murderer wished to disguise his real personality. He did it in a very clumsy way - or, at least, so it appears to us. Don't be alarmed, Daddy Jacques; we are quite sure that you were not the murderer; you never left the side of Monsieur Stangerson. But if Monsieur Stangerson had not been working that night and had gone back to the chateau after parting with his daughter, and Daddy Jacques had gone to sleep in his attic, no one would have doubted that he was the murderer. He owes his safety, therefore, to the tragedy having been enacted too soon, - the murderer, no doubt, from the silence in the laboratory, imagined that it was empty, and that the moment for action had come. The man who had been able to introduce himself here so mysteriously and to leave so many evidences against Daddy Jacques, was, there can be no doubt, familiar with the house. At what hour exactly he entered, whether in the afternoon or in the evening, I cannot say. One familiar with the proceedings and persons of this pavilion could choose his own time for entering The Yellow Room."

"He could not have entered it if anybody had been in the laboratory," said Monsieur de Marquet.

"How do we know that?" replied Larsan. "There was the dinner in the laboratory, the coming and going of the servants in attendance. There was a chemical experiment being carried on between ten and eleven o'clock, with Monsieur Stangerson, his daughter, and Daddy Jacques engaged at the furnace in a corner of the high chimney. Who can say that the murderer - an intimate! - a friend! - did not take advantage of that moment to slip into The Yellow Room, after having taken off his boots in the lavatory?"

"It is very improbable," said Monsieur Stangerson.

"Doubtless - but it is not impossible. I assert nothing. As to the escape from the pavilion - that's another thing, the most natural thing in the world."

For a moment Frederic Larsan paused, - a moment that appeared to us a very long time. The eagerness with which we awaited what he was going to tell us may be imagined.