own reasons for
so doing, since she had told her father nothing of it, and had made it
understood to the examining magistrate that the attack had taken place
in the night, during the second phase. She was forced to say that,
otherwise her father would have questioned her as to her reason for
having said nothing about it.

"But I could not explain the blow on the temple. I understood it even
less when I learned that the mutton-bone had been found in her room. She
could not hide the fact that she had been struck on the head, and yet
that wound appeared evidently to have been inflicted during the first
phase, since it required the presence of the murderer! I thought
Mademoiselle Stangerson had hidden the wound by arranging her hair in
bands on her forehead.

"As to the mark of the hand on the wall, that had evidently been made
during the first phase--when the murderer was really there. All the
traces of his presence had naturally been left during the first phase;
the mutton-bone, the black footprints, the Basque cap, the handkerchief,
the blood on the wall, on the door, and on the floor. If those traces
were still all there, they showed that Mademoiselle Stangerson--who
desired that nothing should be known--had not yet had time to clear them
away. This led me to the conclusion that the two phases had taken place
one shortly after the other. She had not had the opportunity, after
leaving her room and going back to the laboratory to her father, to get
back again to her room and put it in order. Her father was all the time
with her, working. So that after the first phase she did not re-enter
her chamber till midnight. Daddy Jacques was there at ten o'clock, as he
was every night; but he went in merely to close the blinds and light the
night-light. Owing to her disturbed state of mind she had forgotten that
Daddy Jacques would go into her room and had begged him not to trouble
himself. All this was set forth in the article in the 'Matin.' Daddy
Jacques did go, however, and, in the dim light of the room, saw nothing.

"Mademoiselle Stangerson must have lived some anxious moments while
Daddy Jacques was absent; but I think she was not aware that so many
evidences had been left. After she had been attacked she had only time
to hide the traces of the man's fingers on her neck and to hurry to the
laboratory. Had she known of the bone, the cap, and the handkerchief,
she would have made away with them after she had gone back to he