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Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
page 293 of 301 (97%)
that the cane had been bought by a person dressed very like Robert
Darzac, though, as we learned later, from Darzac himself, it was
not he who had made the purchase. Couple this with the fact we
already knew, from the letter at the poste restante, that there was
actually a man in Paris who was passing as Robert Darzac, why did
we not immediately fix on Fred himself?

"Of course, his position at the Surete was against us; but when we
saw the evident eagerness on his part to find convicting evidence
against Darzac, nay, even the passion he displayed in his pursuit
of the man, the lie about the cane should have had a new meaning
for us. If you ask why Larsan bought the cane, if he had no
intention of manufacturing evidence against Darzac by means of it,
the answer is quite simple. He had been wounded in the hand by
Mademoiselle Stangerson, so that the cane was useful to enable him
to close his hand in carrying it. You remember I noticed that he
always carried it?

"All these details came back to my mind when I had once fixed on
Larsan as the criminal. But they were too late then to be of any
use to me. On the evening when he pretended to be drugged I looked
at his hand and saw a thin silk bandage covering the signs of a
slight healing wound. Had we taken a quicker initiative at the
time Larsan told us that lie about the cane, I am certain he would
have gone off, to avoid suspicion. All the same, we worried Larsan
or Ballmeyer without our knowing it."

"But," I interrupted, "if Larsan had no intention of using the cane
as evidence against Darzac, why had he made himself up to look like
the man when he went in to buy it?"
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