Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/218

 I had not exaggerated its importance, so far as he was concerned.

"I had just learned that the concierges had been arrested. Daddy Mathieu spoke of them as of dear friends—people for whom one is sorry.  That was a reckless conjunction of ideas, I said to myself. 'Now,' that the concierges are arrested, 'we shall have to eat red meat.'  No more concierges, no more game!  The hatred expressed by Daddy Mathieu for Monsieur Stangerson's forest-keeper—a hatred he pretended was shared by the concierges led me easily to think of poaching.  Now as all the evidence showed the concierges had not been in bed at the time of the tragedy, why were they abroad that night?  As participants in the crime?  I was not disposed to think so.  I had already arrived at the conclusion, by steps of which I will tell you later—that the assassin had had no accomplice, and that the tragedy held a mystery between Mademoiselle Stangerson and the murderer, a mystery with which the concierges had nothing to do.

"With that theory in my mind, I searched for proof in their lodge, which, as you know, I entered. I found there under their bed, some springs and brass wire.  'Ah!' I thought, 'these things explain why they were out in the park at night!'  I was not surprised at the dogged silence they maintained before the examining magistrate, even under the accusation so grave as that of being accomplices in the crime.  Poaching would save them from the Assize Court, but it would lose them their places; and, as they were perfectly sure of