Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/122

 "With your permission, gentlemen—as examinations lead to nothing—we will, for once, abandon the old system of interrogation. I will not have you brought before me one by one, but we will all remain here as we are,—Monsieur Stangerson, Monsieur Robert Darzac, Daddy Jacques and the two concierges, the Chief of the Sûreté, the Registrar, and myself.  We shall all be on the same footing.  The concierges may, for the moment, forget that they have been arrested.  We are going to confer together.  We are on the spot where the crime was committed.  We have nothing else to discuss but the crime.  So let us discuss it freely—intelligently or otherwise, so long as we speak just what is in our minds.  There need be no formality or method since this won't help us in any way."

Then, passing before me, he said in a low voice:

"What do you think of that, eh? What a scene!  Could you have thought of that?  I'll make a little piece out of it for the Vaudeville." And he rubbed his hands with glee.

I turned my eyes on Monsieur Stangerson. The hope he had received from the doctor's latest reports, which stated that Mademoiselle Stangerson might recover from her wounds, had not been able to efface from his noble features the marks of the great sorrow that was upon him. He had believed his daughter to be dead, and he was still broken by that belief. His clear, soft, blue eyes expressed infinite sorrow. I had had occasion, many times, to see Monsieur Stangerson at public ceremonies, and from the first had been struck