even less when I learned that the mutton-bone had been found in her
room. She could not hide the fact that she had been struck on the
head, and yet that wound appeared evidently to have been inflicted
during the first phase, since it required the presence of the
murderer! I thought Mademoiselle Stangerson had hidden the wound
by arranging her hair in bands on her forehead.

"As to the mark of the hand on the wall, that had evidently been
made during the first phase--when the murderer was really there.
All the traces of his presence had naturally been left during the
first phase; the mutton-bone, the black footprints, the Basque cap,
the handkerchief, the blood on the wall, on the door, and on the
floor. If those traces were still all there, they showed that
Mademoiselle Stangerson--who desired that nothing should be known
--had not yet had time to clear them away. This led me to the
conclusion that the two phases had taken place one shortly after
the other. She had not had the opportunity, after leaving her room
and going back to the laboratory to her father, to get back again
to her room and put it in order. Her father was all the time with
her, working. So that after the first phase she did not re-enter
her chamber till midnight. Daddy Jacques was there at ten o'clock,
as he was every night; but he went in merely to close the blinds
and light the night-light. Owing to her disturbed state of mind
she had forgotten that Daddy Jacques would go into her room and
had begged him not to trouble himself. All this was set forth in
the article in the 'Matin.' Daddy Jacques did go, however, and, in
the dim light of the room, saw nothing.

"Mademoiselle Stangerson must have lived some anxious moments while
Daddy Jacques was absent; but I think she was not aware that so