If you ask why Larsan bought the cane, if he had no
intention of manufacturing evidence against Darzac by means of it,
the answer is quite simple. He had been wounded in the hand by
Mademoiselle Stangerson, so that the cane was useful to enable him
to close his hand in carrying it. You remember I noticed that he
always carried it?
"All these details came back to my mind when I had once fixed on
Larsan as the criminal. But they were too late then to be of any
use to me. On the evening when he pretended to be drugged I looked
at his hand and saw a thin silk bandage covering the signs of a
slight healing wound. Had we taken a quicker initiative at the
time Larsan told us that lie about the cane, I am certain he would
have gone off, to avoid suspicion. All the same, we worried Larsan
or Ballmeyer without our knowing it."
"But," I interrupted, "if Larsan had no intention of using the cane
as evidence against Darzac, why had he made himself up to look like
the man when he went in to buy it?"
"He had not specially 'made up' as Darzac to buy the cane; he had
come straight to Cassette's immediately after he had attacked
Mademoiselle Stangerson.
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