we cannot form the least idea of what has passed in The Yellow Room
in which Mdlle. Stangerson, in her night-dress, was found lying on
the floor in the agonies of death. We have, at least, been able
to interview Daddy Jacques--as he is called in the country--a
old servant in the Stangerson family. Daddy Jacques entered The
Room at the same time as the Professor. This chamber adjoins the
laboratory. Laboratory and Yellow Room are in a pavilion at the
end of the park, about three hundred metres (a thousand feet) from
the chateau.

"'It was half-past twelve at night,' this honest old man told us,
'and I was in the laboratory, where Monsieur Stangerson was still
working, when the thing happened. I had been cleaning and putting
instruments in order all the evening and was waiting for Monsieur
Stangerson to go to bed. Mademoiselle Stangerson had worked with
her father up to midnight; when the twelve strokes of midnight had
sounded by the cuckoo-clock in the laboratory, she rose, kissed
Monsieur Stangerson and bade him good-night. To me she said "bon
soir, Daddy Jacques" as she passed into The Yellow Room. We heard
her lock the door and shoot the bolt, so that I could not help
laughing, and said to Monsieur: "There's Mademoiselle double-locking
herself in,--she must be afraid of the 'Bete du bon Dieu!'"
Monsieur did not even hear me, he was so deeply absorbed in what he
was doing. Just then we heard the distant miawing of a cat. "Is
that going to keep us awake all night?" I said to myself; for I
must tell you, Monsieur, that, to the end of October, I live in an
attic of the pavilion over The Yellow Room, so that Mademoiselle
should not be left alone through the night in the lonely park. It
was the fancy of Mademoiselle to spend the fine weather in the
pavilion; no doubt, she found it more cheerful than the chateau and,