He came nearer to me and whispered:
“Frédéric Larsan is working with might and main against Darzac.”
This did not astonish me. I had seen the poor show Mademoiselle Stangerson’s fiancé had made at the time of the examination of the footprints. However, I immediately asked:—
“What about that cane?”
“It is still in the hands of Frédéric Larsan. He never lets go of it.”
“But does n’t it prove the alibi for Monsieur Darzac?”
“Not at all. Gently questioned by me, Darzac denied having, on that evening, or on any other, purchased a cane at Cassette’s. However,” said Rouletabille, “I ’ll not swear to anything; Monsieur Darzac has such strange fits of silence that one does not know exactly what to think of what he says.”
“To Frédéric Larsan this cane must mean a piece of very damaging evidence. But in what way? The time when it was bought shows it could not have been in the murderer’s possession.”
“The time does n’t worry Larsan. He is not obliged to adopt my theory which assumes that the murderer got into The Yellow Room between five and six o’clock. But there ’s nothing to prevent him assuming that the murderer got in between ten and eleven o’clock at night? At that hour Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson, assisted by Daddy Jacques, were engaged in making an interesting chemical experiment in the part of the laboratory taken up by the furnaces. Larsan says, unlikely as that may seem, that the murderer may have slipped behind them. He has already got the examining magistrate to listen to him. When one looks closely into it, the reasoning is absurd, seeing that the ‘intimate’—if there is one—must have known that the professor would shortly leave the pavilion, and that the ‘friend’ had only to put off operating till after the professor’s departure. Why should he have risked crossing the laboratory while the professor was in it? And then, when he had got into The Yellow Room?—
“There are many points to be cleared up before Larsan’s theory can be admitted. I sha’n’t waste my time over it, for my theory won’t allow me to occupy myself with mere imagination. Only, as I am obliged for the moment to keep silent, and Larsan sometimes talks, he may finish by coming out openly against Monsieur Darzac,—if I ’m not there,” added the young reporter proudly. “For there are surface evidences against Darzac, much more convincing than the cane, which remains incomprehensible to me, all the more so as Larsan does not in the least hesitate to let Darzac see him with it!—I understand many things in Larsan’s theory, but I can’t make anything of that cane.”