Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/250

 "When did you leave this room?"

"Towards dawn."

"I guess you have been hard at work?"

"Rather!"

"Have you found out anything?"

"Two sets of footprints!"

"Do they explain anything?"

"Yes."

"Have they anything to do with the mystery of the keeper's body?"

"Yes; the mystery is no longer a mystery. This morning, walking round the château, I found two distinct sets of footprints, made at the same time, last night.  They were made by two persons walking side by side.  I followed them from the court towards the oak grove. Larsan joined me.  They were the same kind of footprints as were made at the time of the assault in The Yellow Room—one set was from clumsy boots and the other was made by neat ones, except that the big toe of one of the sets was of a different size from the one measured in The Yellow Room incident.  I compared the marks with the paper patterns I had previously made.

"Still following the tracks of the prints, Larsan and I passed out of the oak grove and reached the border of the lake. There they turned off to a little path leading to the high road to Epinay where we lost the traces in the newly macadamised highway.

"We went back to the château and parted at the courtyard. We met again, however, in Daddy Jacques's room to which our separate trains of thinking had led us both.  We found the old