He owes his reputation solely to his ability; but he lacks reasoning power,--the mathematics of his ideas are very poor." I looked closely at Rouletabille and could not help smiling, on hearing this boy of eighteen talking of a man who had proved to the world that he was the finest police sleuth in Europe.
"You smile," he said?
"you are wrong! I swear I will outwit him--and in a striking way! But I must make haste about it, for he has an enormous start on me--given him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, who is this evening going to increase it still more.

Think of it!--every time the murderer comes to the chateau, Monsieur Darzac, by a strange fatality, absents himself and refuses to give any account of how he employs his time." "Every time the assassin comes to the chateau!" I cried.

"Has he returned then-- ?" "Yes, during that famous night when the strange phenomenon occurred." I was now going to learn about the astonishing phenomenon to which Rouletabille had made allusion half an hour earlier without giving me any explanation of it.

But I had learned never to press Rouletabille in his narratives.

He spoke when the fancy took him and when he judged it to be right.