That is to say, I was very near the place where the crime occurred later." "And the desk ?" I asked, obeying, in thus mixing myself in the conversation, the express orders of my chief, "as soon as you heard the cry of 'murder' followed by the revolver shots, what became of the desk ?" Daddy Jacques answered.
"We pushed it back against the wall, here--close to where it is at the present moment-so as to be able to get at the door at once." I followed up my reasoning, to which, however, I attached but little importance, regarding it as only a weak hypothesis, with another question.
"Might not a man in the room, the desk being so near to the door, by stooping and slipping under the desk, have left it unobserved ?" "You are forgetting," interrupted Monsieur Stangerson wearily, "that my daughter had locked and bolted her door, that the door had remained fastened, that we vainly tried to force it open when we heard the noise, and that we were at the door while the struggle between the murderer and my poor child was going on--immediately after we heard her stifled cries as she was being held by the fingers that have left their red mark upon her throat.

Rapid as the attack was, we were no less rapid in our endeavors to get into the room where the tragedy was taking place." I rose from my seat and once more examined the door with the greatest care.

Then I returned to my place with a despairing gesture.
"If the lower panel of the door," I said, "could be removed without the whole door being necessarily opened, the problem would be solved.

But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an examination of the door--it's of oak, solid and massive.

You can see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the attempt to burst it open." "Ah!" cried Daddy Jacques, "it is an old and solid door that was brought from the chateau--they don't make such doors now.