d by Frederic Larsan appear to be
really the footprints of Mademoiselle Stangerson's fiance. The marks
made by the bicycle may have been made by his bicycle. He had usually
left it at the chateau; why did he take it to Paris on that particular
occasion? Was it because he was not going to return again to the
chateau? Was it because, owing to the breaking off of his marriage, his
relations with the Stangersons were to cease? All who are interested in
the matter affirm that those relations were to continue unchanged.

"Frederic Larsan, however, believes that all relations were at an end.
From the day when Monsieur Darzac accompanied Mademoiselle Stangerson to
the Grands Magasins de la Louvre until the day after the crime, he had
not been at the Glandier. Remember that Mademoiselle Stangerson lost
her reticule containing the key with the brass head while she was in
his company. From that day to the evening at the Elysee, the Sorbonne
professor and Mademoiselle Stangerson did not see one another; but they
may have written to each other. Mademoiselle Stangerson went to the Post
Office to get a letter, which Larsan says was written by Robert Darzac;
for knowing nothing of what had passed at the Elysee, Larsan believes
that it was Monsieur Darzac himself who stole the reticule with the key,
with the design of forcing her consent, by getting possession of the
precious papers of her father--papers which he would have restored to
him on condition that the marriage engagement was to be fulfilled.

"All that would have been a very doubtful and almost absurd hypothesis,
as Larsan admitted to me, but for another and much graver circumstance.
In the first place here is something which I have not been able to
explain--Monsieur Darzac had himself, on the 24th, gone to the Post
Office to ask for the letter which Mademoiselle had called for and
received on the previous evening. The description of the man who made
application tallies in every respect with the appearance of Monsieur
Darzac, who, in answer to the questions put to him by the examining
magistrate, denies that he went to the Post Office. Now even admitting
that the letter was written by him--which I do not believe--he knew that
Mademoiselle Stangerson had received it, since he had seen it in her
hands in the garden at the Elysee. It could not have been he, then, who
had gone to the Post Office, the day after the 24th, to ask for a letter
which he knew was no longer there.

"To