Larsan searched for that stone without finding it, and at once imagined that it had been used by the murderer with which to sink the boots in the lake.

Fred's calculation was an excellent one, as the success of his search proves.

That escaped me; but my mind was turned in another direction by the large number of false indications of his track which the murderer left, and by the measure of the black foot-marks corresponding with that of Daddy Jacques's boots, which I had established without his suspecting it, on the floor of The Yellow Room.

All which was a proof, in my eyes, that the murderer had sought to turn suspicion on to the old servant.

Up to that point, Larsan and I are in accord; but no further.