conversation with the examining magistrate on the journey from Paris
to Epinaysur-Orge, I was certain that The Yellow Room had been
hermetically sealed, so to speak, and that consequently the murderer
had escaped before Mademoiselle Stangerson had gone into her chamber
at midnight.

"At the time I was much puzzled. Mademoiselle Stangerson could
not have been her own murderer, since the evidences pointed to some
other person. The assassin, then, had come before. If that were so,
how was it that Mademoiselle had been attacked after? or rather,
that she appeared to have been attacked after? It was necessary for
me to reconstruct the occurrence and make of it two phases--each
separated from the other, in time, by the space of several hours.
One phase in which Mademoiselle Stangerson had really been attacked
--the other phase in which those who heard her cries thought she
was being attacked. I had not then examined The Yellow Room. What
were the marks on Mademoiselle Stangerson? There were marks of
strangulation and the wound from a hard blow on the temple. The
marks of strangulation did not interest me much; they might have
been made before, and Mademoiselle Stangerson could have concealed
them by a collarette, or any similar article of apparel. I had to
suppose this the moment I was compelled to reconstruct the occurrence
by two phases. Mademoiselle Stangerson had, no doubt, her own
reasons for so doing, since she had told her father nothing of it,
and had made it understood to the examining magistrate that the
attack had taken place in the night, during the second phase. She
was forced to say that, otherwise her father would have questioned
her as to her reason for having said nothing about it.

"But I could not explain the blow on the temple. I understood it