Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/142

 was so taken aback that he could not hide his agitation.

Then pointing to the handkerchief in the old man's hand, Frédéric Larsan said:

"That's a handkerchief astonishingly like the one found in The Yellow Room."

"I know," said Daddy Jacques, trembling, "they are almost alike."

"And then," continued Frédéric 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 château 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