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Updated: June 11, 2025
My young friend seemed to have received the same impression, for he said, bluntly: "Monsieur Darzac, don't you want me to find out who the murderer was?" "Oh! I should like to kill him with my own hand!" cried Mademoiselle Stangerson's fiance, with a vehemence that amazed me. "I believe you," said Rouletabille gravely; "but you have not answered my question."
I could not help admiring the bold stroke of the young journalist, because I felt certain his motive had been to protect both Mademoiselle Stangerson and rid Darzac of an enemy at the same time. The crowd had barely recovered from the effect of the astonishing revelation when the hearing was resumed.
He who could understand all this, would have to assume that Mademoiselle Stangerson knew that the murderer was coming she could not prevent his coming again unknown to her father, unknown to all but to Monsieur Robert Darzac. For he must know it now perhaps he had known it before!
One day, however, Monsieur Stangerson, as he was leaving the Academy of Science, announced that the marriage of his daughter and Monsieur Robert Darzac would be celebrated in the privacy of the Chateau du Glandier, as soon as he and his daughter had put the finishing touches to their report summing up their labours on the "Dissociation of Matter."
"I was then thinking of Larsan, the murderer. It was that same evening that Darzac begged me to watch over Mademoiselle Stangerson. I made no efforts until after we had dined with Larsan, until ten o'clock. He was right there before me, and I could afford to wait.
The sentence of the presbytery and the bright garden sufficed to open the gate of the chateau. If you ask me if I believe now that Monsieur Darzac is the murderer, I must say I do not. I do not think I ever quite thought that. At the time I could not really think seriously of anything. I had so little evidence to go on.
Suddenly, some weeks before the events with which we are occupied, a report to which nobody attached any importance, so incredible did it sound was spread about Paris, that Mademoiselle Stangerson had at last consented to "crown" the inextinguishable flame of Monsieur Robert Darzac!
You expressed a hope; but the hope implies a doubt. Why do you doubt?" Monsieur Stangerson made a visible effort to recover himself. "Yes, Monsieur," he said at length, "you are right. It will be best that you should know something which, if I concealed it, might appear to be of importance; Monsieur Darzac agrees with me in this."
"At one time I did believe in the possibility of his guilt. That was when we arrived here for the first time. The time has come for me to tell you what has passed between Monsieur Darzac and myself." Here Rouletabille interrupted himself and asked me if I had brought the revolvers. I showed him them. Having examined both, he pronounced them excellent, and handed them back to me.
At that moment Rance and I were in the vestibule discussing Mathieu's guilt or innocence, while Rouletabille stood apart buried, apparently, in thought. The examining magistrate and his Registrar were in the little green drawing-room, while Darzac was with the doctor and Stangerson in the lady's chamber.
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