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At the Villa Rose

by A. E. W. Mason · English · Gutenberg #4745 · 421,029 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: At the Villa Rose

Author: A. E. W. Mason


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4745]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE VILLA ROSE ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










AT THE VILLA ROSE


A.E.W. Mason




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I. SUMMER LIGHTNING
    II. A CRY FOR HELP
   III. PERRICHET'S STORY
    IV. AT THE VILLA
     V. IN THE SALON
    VI. HELENE VAUQUIER'S EVIDENCE
   VII. A STARTLING DISCOVERY
  VIII. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP
    IX. MME. DAUVRAY'S MOTOR-CAR
     X. NEWS FROM GENEVA
    XI. THE UNOPENED LETTER
   XII. THE ALUMINIUM FLASK
  XIII. IN THE HOUSE AT GENEVA
   XIV. MR. RICARDO IS BEWILDERED
    XV. CELIA'S STORY
   XVI. THE FIRST MOVE
  XVII. THE AFTERNOON OF TUESDAY
 XVIII. THE SEANCE
   XIX. HELENE EXPLAINS
    XX. THE GENEVA ROAD
   XXI. HANAUD EXPLAINS




AT THE VILLA ROSE




CHAPTER I

SUMMER LIGHTNING


It was Mr. Ricardo's habit as soon as the second week of August came
round to travel to Aix-les-Bains, in Savoy, where for five or six weeks
he lived pleasantly. He pretended to take the waters in the morning, he
went for a ride in his motor-car in the afternoon, he dined at the
Cercle in the evening, and spent an hour or two afterwards in the
baccarat-rooms at the Villa des Fleurs. An enviable, smooth life
without a doubt, and it is certain that his acquaintances envied him.
At the same time, however, they laughed at him and, alas with some
justice; for he was an exaggerated person. He was to be construed in
the comparative. Everything in his life was a trifle overdone, from the
fastidious arrangement of his neckties to the feminine nicety of his
little dinner-parties. In age Mr. Ricardo was approaching the fifties;
in condition he was a widower--a state greatly to his liking, for he
avoided at once the irksomeness of marriage and the reproaches justly
levelled at the bachelor; finally, he was rich, having amassed a
fortune in Mincing Lane, which he had invested in profitable securities.

Ten years of ease, however, had not altogether obliterated in him the
business look. Though he lounged from January to December, he lounged
with the air of a financier taking a holiday; and when he visited, as
he frequently did, the studio of a painter, a stranger would have
hesitated to decide whether he had been drawn thither by a love of art
or by the possibility of an investment. His "acquaintances" have been
mentioned, and the word is suitable. For while he mingled in many
circles, he stood aloof from all. He affected the company of artists,
by whom he was regarded as one ambitious to become a connoisseur; and
amongst the younger business men, who had never dealt with him, he
earned the disrespect reserved for the dilettante. If he had a grief,
it was that he had discovered no great man who in return for practical
favours would engrave his memory in brass. He was a Maecenas without a
Horace, an Earl of Southampton without a Shakespeare. In a word,
Aix-les-Bains in the season was the very place for him; and never for a
moment did it occur to him that he was here to be dipped in agitations,
and hurried from excitement to excitement. The beauty of the little
town, the crowd of well-dressed and agreeable people, the rose-coloured
life of the place, all made their appeal to him. But it was the Villa
des Fleurs which brought him to Aix. Not that he played for anything
more than an occasional louis; nor, on the other hand, was he merely a
cold looker-on. He had a bank-note or two in his pocket on most
evenings at the service of the victims of the tables. But the pleasure
to his curious and dilettante mind lay in the spectacle of the battle
which was waged night after night between raw nature and good manners.
It was extraordinary to him how constantly manners prevailed. There
were, however, exceptions.

For instance. On the first evening of this particular visit he found
the rooms hot, and sauntered out into the little semicircular garden at
the back. He sat there for half an hour under a flawless sky of stars
watching the people come and go in the light of the electric lamps, and
appreciating the gowns and jewels of the women with the eye of a
connoisseur; and then into this starlit quiet there came suddenly a
flash of vivid life. A girl in a soft, clinging frock of white satin
darted swiftly from the rooms and flung herself nervously upon a bench.
She could not, to Ricardo's thinking, be more than twenty years of age.
She was certainly quite young. The supple slenderness of her figure
proved it, and he had moreover caught a glimpse, as she rushed out, of
a fresh and very pretty face; but he had lost sight of it now. For the
girl wore a big black satin hat with a broad brim, from which a couple
of white ostrich feathers curved over at the back, and in the shadow of
that hat her face was masked. All that he could see was a pair of long
diamond eardrops, which sparkled and trembled as she moved her
head--and that she did constantly. Now she stared moodily at the
ground; now she flung herself back; then she twisted nervously to the
right, and then a moment afterwards to the left; and then again she
stared in front of her, swinging a satin slipper backwards and forwards
against the pavement with the petulance of a child. All her movements
were spasmodic; she was on the verge of hysteria. Ricardo was expecting
her to burst into tears, when she sprang up and as swiftly as she had
come she hurried back into the rooms. "Summer lightning," thought Mr.
Ricardo.

Near to him a woman sneered, and a man said, pityingly: "She was
pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost."

A few minutes afterwards Ricardo finished his cigar and strolled back
into the rooms, making his way to the big table just on the right hand
of the entrance, where the play as a rule runs high. It was clearly
running high to-night. For so deep a crowd thronged about the table that
Ricardo could only by standing on tiptoe see the faces of the players.
Of the banker he could not catch a glimpse. But though the crowd
remained, its units were constantly changing, and it was not long
before Ricardo found himself standing in the front rank of the
spectators, just behind the players seated in the chairs. The oval
green table was spread out beneath him littered with bank-notes.
Ricardo turned his eyes to the left, and saw seated at the middle of
the table the man who was holding the bank. Ricardo recognised him with
a start of surprise. He was a young Englishman, Harry Wethermill, who,
after a brilliant career at Oxford and at Munich, had so turned his
scientific genius to account that he had made a fortune for himself at
the age of twenty-eight.

He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual player
upon his cleanly chiselled face. But it was plain that his good fortune
stayed at his elbow to-night, for opposite to him the croupier was
arranging with extraordinary deftness piles of bank-notes in the order
of their value. The bank was winning heavily. Even as Ricardo looked
Wethermill turned up "a natural," and the croupier swept in the stakes
from either side.

"Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Le jeu est fait?" the croupier cried, all
in a breath, and repeated the words. Wethermill waited with his hand
upon the wooden frame in which the cards were stacked. He glanced round
the table while the stakes were being laid upon the cloth, and suddenly
his face flashed from languor into interest. Almost opposite to him a
small, white-gloved hand holding a five-louis note was thrust forward
between the shoulders of two men seated at the table. Wethermill leaned
forward and shook his head with a smile. With a gesture he refused the
stake. But he was too late. The fingers of the hand had opened, the
note fluttered down on to the cloth, the money was staked.

At once he leaned back in his chair.

"Il y a une suite," he said quietly. He relinquished the bank rather
than play against that five-louis note. The stakes were taken up by
their owners.

The croupier began to count Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo, curious
to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought
the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the
young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves
had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her
now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was
moderately tall, fair of skin, with a fresh colouring upon her cheeks
which she owed to nothing but her youth. Her hair was of a light brown
with a sheen upon it, her forehead broad, her eyes dark and wonderfully
clear. But there was something more than her beauty to attract him. He
had a strong belief that somewhere, some while ago, he had already seen
her. And this belief grew and haunted him. He was still vaguely
puzzling his brains to fix the place when the croupier finished his
reckoning.

"There are two thousand louis in the bank," he cried. "Who will take on
the bank for two thousand louis?"

No one, however, was willing. A fresh bank was put up for sale, and
Wethermill, still sitting in the dealer's chair, bought it. He spoke at
once to an attendant, and the man slipped round the table, and, forcing
his way through the crowd, carried a message to the girl in the black
hat. She looked towards Wethermill and smiled; and the smile made her
face a miracle of tenderness. Then she disappeared, and in a few
moments Ricardo saw a way open in the throng behind the banker, and she
appeared again only a yard or two away, just behind Wethermill. He
turned, and taking her hand into his, shook it chidingly.

"I couldn't let you play against me, Celia," he said, in English; "my
luck's too good to-night. So you shall be my partner instead. I'll put
in the capital and we'll share the winnings."

The girl's face flushed rosily. Her hand still lay clasped in his. She
made no effort to withdraw it.

"I couldn't do that," she exclaimed.

"Why not?" said he. "See!" and loosening her fingers he took from them
the five-louis note and tossed it over to the croupier to be added to
his bank. "Now you can't help yourself. We're partners."

The girl laughed, and the company at the table smiled, half in
sympathy, half with amusement. A chair was brought for her, and she sat
down behind Wethermill, her lips parted, her face joyous with
excitement. But all at once Wethermill's luck deserted him. He renewed
his bank three times, and had lost the greater part of his winnings
when he had dealt the cards through. He took a fourth bank, and rose
from that, too, a loser.

"That's enough, Celia," he said. "Let us go out into the garden; it
will be cooler there."

"I have taken your good luck away," said the girl remorsefully.
Wethermill put his arm through hers.

"You'll have to take yourself away before you can do that," he
answered, and the couple walked together out of Ricardo's hearing.

Ricardo was left to wonder about Celia. She was just one of those
problems which made Aix-les-Bains so unfailingly attractive to him. She
dwelt in some street of Bohemia; so much was clear. The frankness of
her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it.
She passed from one to the other while you could deal a pack of cards.
She was at no pains to wear a mask. Moreover, she was a young girl of
nineteen or twenty, running about those rooms alone, as unembarrassed
as if she had been at home. There was the free use, too, of Christian
names. Certainly she dwelt in Bohemia. But it seemed to Ricardo that
she could pass in any company and yet not be overpassed. She would look
a little more picturesque than most girls of her age, and she was
certainly a good deal more soignee than many, and she had the
Frenchwoman's knack of putting on her clothes. But those would be all
the differences, leaving out the frankness. Ricardo wondered in what
street of Bohemia she dwelt. He wondered still more when he saw her
again half an hour afterwards at the entrance to the Villa des Fleurs.
She came down the long hall with Harry Wethermill at her side. The
couple were walking slowly, and talking as they walked with so complete
an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their
surroundings. At the bottom of the steps a stout woman of fifty-five
over-jewelled, and over-dressed and raddled with paint, watched their
approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement. When they came near
enough to hear she said in French:

"Well, Celie, are you ready to go home?"

The girl looked up with a start.

"Of course, madame," she said, with a certain submissiveness which
surprised Ricardo. "I hope I have not kept you waiting."

She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.

"Good-bye, Harry," she said, dwelling upon his name and looking out
upon him with soft and smiling eyes.

"I shall see you to-morrow evening," he said, holding her hand. Again
she let it stay within his keeping, but she frowned, and a sudden
gravity settled like a cloud upon her face. She turned to the elder
woman with a sort of appeal.

"No, I do not think we shall be here, to-morrow, shall we, madame?" she
said reluctantly.

"Of course not," said madame briskly. "You have not forgotten what we
have planned? No, we shall not be here to-morrow; but the night
after--yes."

Celia turned back again to Wethermill.

"Yes, we have plans for to-morrow," she said, with a very wistful note
of regret in her voice; and seeing that madame was already at the door,
she bent forward and said timidly, "But the night after I shall want
you."

"I shall thank you for wanting me," Wethermill rejoined; and the girl
tore her hand away and ran up the steps.

Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms. Mr. Ricardo did not follow him.
He was too busy with the little problem which had been presented to him
that night. What could that girl, he asked himself, have in common with
the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed, there had been
a note of more than respect in her voice. There had been something of
affection. Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in what street in
Bohemia Celia dwelt--and as he walked up to the hotel there came yet
other questions to amuse him.

"Why," he asked, "could neither Celia nor madame come to the Villa des
Fleurs to-morrow night? What are the plans they have made? And what was
it in those plans which had brought the sudden gravity and reluctance
into Celia's face?"

Ricardo had reason to remember those questions during the next few
days, though he only idled with them now.




CHAPTER II

A CRY FOR HELP


It was on a Monday evening that Ricardo saw Harry Wethermill and the
girl Celia together. On the Tuesday he saw Wethermill in the rooms
alone and had some talk with him.

Wethermill was not playing that night, and about ten o'clock the two
men left the Villa des Fleurs together.

"Which way do you go?" asked Wethermill.

"Up the hill to the Hotel Majestic," said Ricardo.

"We go together, then. I, too, am staying there," said the young man,
and they climbed the steep streets together. Ricardo was dying to put
some questions about Wethermill's young friend of the night before, but
discretion kept him reluctantly silent. They chatted for a few moments
in the hall upon indifferent topics and so separated for the night. Mr.
Ricardo, however, was to learn something more of Celia the next
morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror Wethermill
burst into his dressing-room. Mr. Ricardo forgot his curiosity in the
surge of his indignation. Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage
upon the gentle tenor of his life. The business of the morning toilette
was sacred. To interrupt it carried a subtle suggestion of anarchy.
Where was his valet? Where was Charles, who should have guarded the
door like the custodian of a chapel?

"I cannot speak to you for at least another half-hour," said Mr.
Ricardo, sternly.

But Harry Wethermill was out of breath and shaking with agitation.

"I can't wait," he cried, with a passionate appeal. "I have got to see
you. You must help me, Mr. Ricardo--you must, indeed!"

Ricardo spun round upon his heel. At first he had thought that the help
wanted was the help usually wanted at Aix-les-Bains. A glance at
Wethermills face, however, and the ringing note of anguish in his
voice, told him that the thought was wrong. Mr. Ricardo slipped out of
his affectations as out of a loose coat. "What has happened?" he asked
quietly.

"Something terrible." With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a
newspaper. "Read it," he said.

It was a special edition of a local newspaper, Le Journal de Savoie,
and it bore the date of that morning.

"They are crying it in the streets," said Wethermill. "Read!"

A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page,
and leaped to the eyes.

"Late last night," it ran, "an appalling murder was committed at the
Villa Rose, on the road to Lac Bourget. Mme. Camille Dauvray, an
elderly, rich woman who was well known at Aix, and had occupied the
villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor
of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her
maid, Helene Vauquier, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her hands
tied securely behind her back. At the time of going to press she had
not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in
attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to
throw some light on this dastardly affair. The police are properly
reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement
may be accepted without hesitation:

"The murder was discovered at twelve o'clock at night by the
sergent-de-ville Perrichet, to whose intelligence more than a word of
praise is due, and it is obvious from the absence of all marks upon the
door and windows that the murderer was admitted from within the villa.
Meanwhile Mme. Dauvray's motor-car has disappeared, and with it a young
Englishwoman who came to Aix with her as her companion. The motive of
the crime leaps to the eyes. Mme. Dauvray was famous in Aix for her
jewels, which she wore with too little prudence. The condition of the
house shows that a careful search was made for them, and they have
disappeared. It is anticipated that a description of the young
Englishwoman, with a reward for her apprehension, will be issued
immediately. And it is not too much to hope that the citizens of Aix,
and indeed of France, will be cleared of all participation in so cruel
and sinister a crime."

Ricardo read through the paragraph with a growing consternation, and
laid the paper upon his dressing-table.

"It is infamous," cried Wethermill passionately.

"The young Englishwoman is, I suppose, your friend Miss Celia?" said
Ricardo slowly.

Wethermill started forward.

"You know her, then?" he cried in amazement.

"No; but I saw her with you in the rooms. I heard you call her by that
name."

"You saw us together?" exclaimed Wethermill. "Then you can understand
how infamous the suggestion is."

But Ricardo had seen the girl half an hour before he had seen her with
Harry Wethermill. He could not but vividly remember the picture of her
as she flung herself on to the bench in the garden in a moment of
hysteria, and petulantly kicked a satin slipper backwards and forwards
against the stones. She was young, she was pretty, she had a charm of
freshness, but--but--strive against it as he would, this picture in the
recollection began more and more to wear a sinister aspect. He
remembered some words spoken by a stranger. "She is pretty, that little
one. It is regrettable that she has lost."

Mr. Ricardo arranged his tie with even a greater deliberation than he
usually employed.

"And Mme. Dauvray?" he asked. "She was the stout woman with whom your
young friend went away?"

"Yes," said Wethermill.

Ricardo turned round from the mirror.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Hanaud is at Aix. He is the cleverest of the French detectives. You
know him. He dined with you once."

It was Mr. Ricardo's practice to collect celebrities round his
dinner-table, and at one such gathering Hanaud and Wethermill had been
present together.

"You wish me to approach him?"

"At once."

"It is a delicate position," said Ricardo. "Here is a man in charge of
a case of murder, and we are quietly to go to him--"

To his relief Wethermill interrupted him.

"No, no," he cried; "he is not in charge of the case. He is on his
holiday. I read of his arrival two days ago in the newspaper. It was
stated that he came for rest. What I want is that he should take charge
of the case."

The superb confidence of Wethermill shook Mr. Ricardo for a moment, but
his recollections were too clear.

"You are going out of your way to launch the acutest of French
detectives in search of this girl. Are you wise, Wethermill?"

Wethermill sprang up from his chair in desperation.

"You, too, think her guilty! You have seen her. You think her
guilty--like this detestable newspaper, like the police."

"Like the police?" asked Ricardo sharply.

"Yes," said Harry Wethermill sullenly. "As soon as I saw that rag I ran
down to the villa. The police are in possession. They would not let me
into the garden. But I talked with one of them. They, too, think that
she let in the murderers."

Ricardo took a turn across the room. Then he came to a stop in front of
Wethermill.

"Listen to me," he said solemnly. "I saw this girl half an hour before
I saw you. She rushed out into the garden. She flung herself on to a
bench. She could not sit still. She was hysterical. You know what that
means. She had been losing. That's point number one."

Mr. Ricardo ticked it off upon his finger.

"She ran back into the rooms. You asked her to share the winnings of
your bank. She consented eagerly. And you lost. That's point number
two. A little later, as she was going away, you asked her whether she
would be in the rooms the next night--yesterday night--the night when
the murder was committed. Her face clouded over. She hesitated. She
became more than grave. There was a distinct impression as though she
shrank from the contemplation of what it was proposed she should do on
the next night. And then she answered you, 'No, we have other plans.'
That's number three." And Mr. Ricardo ticked off his third point.

"Now," he asked, "do you still ask me to launch Hanaud upon the case?"

"Yes, and at once," cried Wethermill.

Ricardo called for his hat and his stick.

"You know where Hanaud is staying?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Wethermill, and he led Ricardo to an unpretentious
little hotel in the centre of the town. Ricardo sent in his name, and
the two visitors were immediately shown into a small sitting-room,
where M. Hanaud was enjoying his morning chocolate. He was stout and
broad-shouldered, with a full and almost heavy face. In his morning
suit at his breakfast-table he looked like a prosperous comedian.

He came forward with a smile of welcome, extending both his hands to
Mr. Ricardo.

"Ah, my good friend," he said, "it is pleasant to see you. And Mr.
Wethermill," he exclaimed, holding a hand out to the young inventor.

"You remember me, then?" said Wethermill gladly.

"It is my profession to remember people," said Hanaud, with a laugh.
"You were at that amusing dinner-party of Mr. Ricardo's in Grosvenor
Square."

"Monsieur," said Wethermill, "I have come to ask your help."

The note of appeal in his voice was loud. M. Hanaud drew up a chair by
the window and motioned to Wethermill to take it. He pointed to
another, with a bow of invitation to Mr. Ricardo.

"Let me hear," he said gravely.

"It is the murder of Mme. Dauvray," said Wethermill.

Hanaud started.

"And in what way, monsieur," he asked, "are you interested in the
murder of Mme. Dauvray?"

"Her companion," said Wethermill, "the young English girl--she is a
great friend of mine."

Hanaud's face grew stern. Then came a sparkle of anger in his eyes.

"And what do you wish me to do, monsieur?" he asked coldly.

"You are upon your holiday, M. Hanaud. I wish you--no, I implore you,"
Wethermill cried, his voice ringing with passion, "to take up this
case, to discover the truth, to find out what has become of Celia."

Hanaud leaned back in his chair with his hands upon the arms. He did
not take his eyes from Harry Wethermill, but the anger died out of them.

"Monsieur," he said, "I do not know what your procedure is in England.
But in France a detective does not take up a case or leave it alone
according to his pleasure. We are only servants. This affair is in the
hands of M. Fleuriot, the Juge d'instruction of Aix."

"But if you offered him your help it would be welcomed," cried
Wethermill. "And to me that would mean so much. There would be no
bungling. There would be no waste of time. Of that one would be sure."

Hanaud shook his head gently. His eyes were softened now by a look of
pity. Suddenly he stretched out a forefinger.

"You have, perhaps, a photograph of the young lady in that card-case in
your breast-pocket."

Wethermill flushed red, and, drawing out the card-case, handed the
portrait to Hanaud. Hanaud looked at it carefully for a few moments.

"It was taken lately, here?" he asked.

"Yes; for me," replied Wethermill quietly.

"And it is a good likeness?"

"Very."

"How long have you known this Mlle. Celie?" he asked.

Wethermill looked at Hanaud with a certain defiance.

"For a fortnight."

Hanaud raised his eyebrows.

"You met her here?"

"Yes."

"In the rooms, I suppose? Not at the house of one of your friends?"

"That is so," said Wethermill quietly. "A friend of mine who had met
her in Paris introduced me to her at my request."

Hanaud handed back the portrait and drew forward his chair nearer to
Wethermill. His face had grown friendly. He spoke with a tone of
respect.

"Monsieur, I know something of you. Our friend, Mr. Ricardo, told me
your history; I asked him for it when I saw you at his dinner. You are
of those about whom one does ask questions, and I know that you are not
a romantic boy, but who shall say that he is safe from the appeal of
beauty? I have seen women, monsieur, for whose purity of soul I would
myself have stood security, condemned for complicity in brutal crimes
on evidence that could not be gainsaid; and I have known them turn
foul-mouthed, and hideous to look upon, the moment after their just
sentence has been pronounced."

"No doubt, monsieur," said Wethermill, with perfect quietude. "But
Celia Harland is not one of those women."

"I do not now say that she is," said Hanaud. "But the Juge
d'instruction here has already sent to me to ask for my assistance, and
I refused. I replied that I was just a good bourgeois enjoying his
holiday. Still it is difficult quite to forget one's profession. It was
the Commissaire of Police who came to me, and naturally I talked with
him for a little while. The case is dark, monsieur, I warn you."

"How dark?" asked Harry Wethermill.

"I will tell you," said Hanaud, drawing his chair still closer to the
young man. "Understand this in the first place. There was an accomplice
within the villa. Some one let the murderers in. There is no sign of an
entrance being forced; no lock was picked, there is no mark of a thumb
on any panel, no sign of a bolt being forced. There was an accomplice
within the house. We start from that."

Wethermill nodded his head sullenly. Ricardo drew his chair up towards
the others. But Hanaud was not at that moment interested in Ricardo.

"Well, then, let us see who there are in Mme. Dauvray's household. The
list is not a long one. It was Mme. Dauvray's habit to take her
luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was all that
she required to get ready her 'petit dejeuner' in the morning and her
'sirop' at night. Let us take the members of the household one by one.
There is first the chauffeur, Henri Servettaz. He was not at the villa
last night. He came back to it early this morning."

"Ah!" said Ricardo, in a significant exclamation. Wethermill did not
stir. He sat still as a stone, with a face deadly white and eyes
burning upon Hanaud's face.

"But wait," said Hanaud, holding up a warning hand to Ricardo.
"Servettaz was in Chambery, where his parents live. He travelled to
Chambery by the two o'clock train yesterday. He was with them in the
afternoon. He went with them to a cafe in the evening. Moreover, early
this morning the maid, Helene Vauquier, was able to speak a few words
in answer to a question. She said Servettaz was in Chambery. She gave
his address. A telephone message was sent to the police in that town,
and Servettaz was found in bed. I do not say that it is impossible that
Servettaz was concerned in the crime. That we shall see. But it is
quite clear, I think, that it was not he who opened the house to the
murderers, for he was at Chambery in the evening, and the murder was
already discovered here by midnight. Moreover--it is a small point--he
lives, not in the house, but over the garage in a corner of the garden.
Then besides the chauffeur there was a charwoman, a woman of Aix, who
came each morning at seven and left in the evening at seven or eight.
Sometimes she would stay later if the maid was alone in the house, for
the maid is nervous. But she left last night before nine--there is
evidence of that--and the murder did not take place until afterwards.
That is also a fact, not a conjecture. We can leave the charwoman, who
for the rest has the best of characters, out of our calculations. There
remain then, the maid, Helene Vauquier, and"--he shrugged his
shoulders--"Mlle. Celie."

Hanaud reached out for the matches and lit a cigarette.

"Let us take first the maid, Helene Vauquier. Forty years old, a
Normandy peasant woman--they are not bad people, the Normandy peasants,
monsieur--avaricious, no doubt, but on the whole honest and most
respectable. We know something of Helene Vauquier, monsieur. See!" and
he took up a sheet of paper from the table. The paper was folded
lengthwise, written upon only on the inside. "I have some details here.
Our police system is, I think, a little more complete than yours in
England. Helene Vauquier has served Mme. Dauvray for seven years. She
has been the confidential friend rather than the maid. And mark this,
M. Wethermill! During those seven years how many opportunities has she
had of conniving at last night's crime? She was found chloroformed and
bound. There is no doubt that she was chloroformed. Upon that point Dr.
Peytin is quite, quite certain. He saw her before she recovered
consciousness. She was violently sick on awakening. She sank again into
unconsciousness. She is only now in a natural sleep. Besides those
people, there is Mlle. Celie. Of her, monsieur, nothing is known. You
yourself know nothing of her. She comes suddenly to Aix as the
companion of Mme. Dauvray--a young and pretty English girl. How did she
become the companion of Mme. Dauvray?"

Wethermill stirred uneasily in his seat. His face flushed. To Mr.
Ricardo that had been from the beginning the most interesting problem
of the case. Was he to have the answer now?

"I do not know," answered Wethermill, with some hesitation, and then it
seemed that he was at once ashamed of his hesitation. His accent
gathered strength, and in a low but ringing voice, he added: "But I say
this. You have told me, M. Hanaud, of women who looked innocent and
were guilty. But you know also of women and girls who can live
untainted and unspoilt amidst surroundings which are suspicious."

Hanaud listened, but he neither agreed nor denied. He took up a second
slip of paper.

"I shall tell you something now of Mme. Dauvray," he said. "We will not
take up her early history. It might not be edifying and, poor woman,
she is dead. Let us not go back beyond her marriage seventeen years ago
to a wealthy manufacturer of Nancy, whom she had met in Paris. Seven
years ago M. Dauvray died, leaving his widow a very rich woman. She had
a passion for jewellery, which she was now able to gratify. She
collected jewels. A famous necklace, a well-known stone--she was not,
as you say, happy till she got it. She had a fortune in precious
stones--oh, but a large fortune! By the ostentation of her jewels she
paraded her wealth here, at Monte Carlo, in Paris. Besides that, she
was kind-hearted and most impressionable. Finally, she was, like so
many of her class, superstitious to the degree of folly."

Suddenly Mr. Ricardo started in his chair. Superstitious! The word was
a sudden light upon his darkness. Now he knew what had perplexed him
during the last two days. Clearly--too clearly--he remembered where he
had seen Celia Harland, and when. A picture rose before his eyes, and
it seemed to strengthen like a film in a developing-dish as Hanaud
continued:

"Very well! take Mme. Dauvray as we find her--rich, ostentatious,
easily taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superstitious--and
you have in her a living provocation to every rogue. By a hundred
instances she proclaimed herself a dupe. She threw down a challenge to
every criminal to come and rob her. For seven years Helene Vauquier
stands at her elbow and protects her from serious trouble. Suddenly
there is added to her--your young friend, and she is robbed and
murdered. And, follow this, M. Wethermill, our thieves are, I think,
more brutal to their victims than is the case with you."

Wethermill shut his eyes in a spasm of pain and the pallor of his face
increased.

"Suppose that Celia were one of the victims?" he cried in a stifled
voice.

Hanaud glanced at him with a look of commiseration.

"That perhaps we shall see," he said. "But what I meant was this. A
stranger like Mlle. Celie might be the accomplice in such a crime as
the crime of the Villa Rose, meaning only robbery. A stranger might
only have discovered too late that murder would be added to the theft."

Meanwhile, in strong, clear colours, Ricardo's picture stood out before
his eyes. He was startled by hearing Wethermill say, in a firm voice:

"My friend Ricardo has something to add to what you have said."

"I!" exclaimed Ricardo. How in the world could Wethermill know of that
clear picture in his mind?

"Yes. You saw Celia Harland on the evening before the murder."

Ricardo stared at his friend. It seemed to him that Harry Wethermill
had gone out of his mind. Here he was corroborating the suspicions of
the police by facts--damning and incontrovertible facts.

"On the night before the murder," continued Wethermill quietly, "Celia
Harland lost money at the baccarat-table. Ricardo saw her in the garden
behind the rooms, and she was hysterical. Later on that same night he
saw her again with me, and he heard what she said. I asked her to come
to the rooms on the next evening--yesterday, the night of the
crime--and her face changed, and she said, 'No, we have other plans for
to-morrow. But the night after I shall want you.'"

Hanaud sprang up from his chair.

"And YOU tell me these two things!" he cried.

"Yes," said Wethermill. "You were kind enough to say to me I was not a
romantic boy. I am not. I can face facts."

Hanaud stared at his companion for a few moments. Then, with a
remarkable air of consideration, he bowed.

"You have won, monsieur," he said. "I will take up this case. But," and
his face grew stern and he brought his fist down upon the table with a
bang, "I shall follow it to the end now, be the consequences bitter as
death to you."

"That is what I wish, monsieur," said Wethermill.

Hanaud locked up the slips of paper in his lettercase. Then he went out
of the room and returned in a few minutes.

"We will begin at the beginning," he said briskly. "I have telephoned
to the Depot. Perrichet, the sergent-de-ville who discovered the crime,
will be here at once. We will walk down to the villa with him, and on
the way he shall tell us exactly what he discovered and how he
discovered it. At the villa we shall find Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge
d'instruction, who has already begun his examination, and the
Commissaire of Police. In company with them we will inspect the villa.
Except for the removal of Mme. Dauvray's body from the salon to her
bedroom and the opening of the windows, the house remains exactly as it
was."

"We may come with you?" cried Harry Wethermill eagerly.

"Yes, on one condition--that you ask no questions, and answer none
unless I put them to you. Listen, watch, examine--but no interruptions!"

Hanaud's manner had altogether changed. It was now authoritative and
alert. He turned to Ricardo.

"You will swear to what you saw in the garden and to the words you
heard?" he asked. "They are important."

"Yes," said Ricardo.

But he kept silence about that clear picture in his mind which to him
seemed no less important, no less suggestive.

The Assembly Hall at Leamington, a crowded audience chiefly of ladies,
a platform at one end on which a black cabinet stood. A man, erect and
with something of the soldier in his bearing, led forward a girl,
pretty and fair-haired, who wore a black velvet dress with a long,
sweeping train. She moved like one in a dream. Some half-dozen people
from the audience climbed on to the platform, tied the girl's hands
with tape behind her back, and sealed the tape. She was led to the
cabinet, and in full view of the audience fastened to a bench. Then the
door of the cabinet was closed, the people upon the platform descended
into the body of the hall, and the lights were turned very low. The
audience sat in suspense, and then abruptly in the silence and the
darkness there came the rattle of a tambourine from the empty platform.
Rappings and knockings seemed to flicker round the panels of the hall,
and in the place where the door of the cabinet should be there appeared
a splash of misty whiteness. The whiteness shaped itself dimly into the
figure of a woman, a face dark and Eastern became visible, and a deep
voice spoke in a chant of the Nile and Antony. Then the vision faded,
the tambourines and cymbals rattled again. The lights were turned up,
the door of the cabinet thrown open, and the girl in the black velvet
dress was seen fastened upon the bench within.

It was a spiritualistic performance at which Julius Ricardo had been
present two years ago. The young, fair-haired girl in black velvet, the
medium, was Celia Harland.

That was the picture which was in Ricardo's mind, and Hanaud's
description of Mme. Dauvray made a terrible commentary upon it. "Easily
taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superstitious, a living
provocation to every rogue." Those were the words, and here was a
beautiful girl of twenty versed in those very tricks of imposture which
would make Mme. Dauvray her natural prey!

Ricardo looked at Wethermill, doubtful whether he should tell what he
knew of Celia Harland or not. But before he had decided a knock came
upon the door.

"Here is Perrichet," said Hanaud, taking up his hat. "We will go down
to the Villa Rose."




CHAPTER III

PERRICHET'S STORY


Perrichet was a young, thick-set man, with a red, fair face, and a
moustache and hair so pale in colour that they were almost silver. He
came into the room with an air of importance.

"Aha!" said Hanaud, with a malicious smile. "You went to bed late last
night, my friend. Yet you were up early enough to read the newspaper.
Well, I am to have the honour of being associated with you in this
case."

Perrichet twirled his cap awkwardly and blushed.

"Monsieur is pleased to laugh at me," he said. "But it was not I who
called myself intelligent. Though indeed I would like to be so, for the
good God knows I do not look it."

Hanaud clapped him on the shoulder.

"Then congratulate yourself! It is a great advantage to be intelligent
and not to look it. We shall get on famously. Come!"

The four men descended the stairs, and as they walked towards the villa
Perrichet related, concisely and clearly, his experience of the night.

"I passed the gate of the villa about half-past nine," he said. "The
gate was closed. Above the wall and bushes of the garden I saw a bright
light in the room upon the first floor which faces the road at the
south-western comer of the villa. The lower windows I could not see.
More than an hour afterwards I came back, and as I passed the villa
again I noticed that there was now no light in the room upon the first
floor, but that the gate was open. I thereupon went into the garden,
and, pulling the gate, let it swing to and latch. But it occurred to me
as I did so that there might be visitors at the villa who had not yet
left, and for whom the gate had been set open. I accordingly followed
the drive which winds round to the front door. The front door is not on
the side of the villa which faces the road, but at the back. When I
came to the open space where the carriages turn, I saw that the house
was in complete darkness. There were wooden latticed doors to the long
windows on the ground floor, and these were closed. I tried one to make
certain, and found the fastenings secure. The other windows upon that
floor were shuttered. No light gleamed anywhere. I then left the
garden, closing the gate behind me. I heard a clock strike the hour a
few minutes afterwards, so that I can be sure of the time. It was now
eleven o'clock. I came round a third time an hour after, and to my
astonishment I found the gate once more open. I had left it closed and
the house shut up and dark. Now it stood open! I looked up to the
windows and I saw that in a room on the second floor, close beneath the
roof, a light was burning brightly. That room had been dark an hour
before. I stood and watched the light for a few minutes, thinking that
I should see it suddenly go out. But it did not: it burned quite
steadily. This light and the gate opened and reopened aroused my
suspicions. I went again into the garden, but this time with greater
caution. It was a clear night, and, although there was no moon, I could
see without the aid of my lantern. I stole quietly along the drive.
When I came round to the front door, I noticed immediately that the
shutters of one of the ground-floor windows were swung back, and that
the inside glass window which descended to the ground stood open. The
sight gave me a shock. Within the house those shutters had been opened.
I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins and a chill crept along my
spine. I thought of that solitary light burning steadily under the
roof. I was convinced that something terrible had happened."

"Yes, yes. Quite so," said Hanaud. "Go on, my friend."

"The interior of the room gaped black," Perrichet resumed. "I crept up
to the window at the side of the wall and flashed my lantern into the
room. The window, however, was in a recess which opened into the room
through an arch, and at each side of the arch curtains were draped. The
curtains were not closed, but between them I could see nothing but a
strip of the room. I stepped carefully in, taking heed not to walk on
the patch of grass before the window. The light of my lantern showed me
a chair overturned upon the floor, and to my right, below the middle
one of the three windows in the right-hand side wall, a woman lying
huddled upon the floor. It was Mme. Dauvray. She was dressed. There was
a little mud upon her shoes, as though she had walked after the rain
had ceased. Monsieur will remember that two heavy showers fell last
evening between six and eight."

"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his approval.

"She was quite dead. Her face was terribly swollen and black, and a
piece of thin strong cord was knotted so tightly about her neck and had
sunk so deeply into her flesh that at first I did not see it. For Mme.
Dauvray was stout."

"Then what did you do?" asked Hanaud.

"I went to the telephone which was in the hall and rang up the police.
Then I crept upstairs very cautiously, trying the doors. I came upon no
one until I reached the room under the roof where the light was
burning; there I found Helene Vauquier, the maid, snoring in bed in a
terrible fashion."

The four men turned a bend in the road. A few paces away a knot of
people stood before a gate which a sergent-de-ville guarded.

"But here we are at the villa," said Hanaud.

They all looked up and, from a window at the corner upon the first
floor a man looked out and drew in his head.

"That is M. Besnard, the Commissaire of our police in Aix," said
Perrichet.

"And the window from which he looked," said Hanaud, "must be the window
of that room in which you saw the bright light at half-past nine on
your first round?"

"Yes, m'sieur," said Perrichet; "that is the window."

They stopped at the gate. Perrichet spoke to the sergent-de-ville, who
at once held the gate open. The party passed into the garden of the
villa.




CHAPTER IV

AT THE VILLA


The drive curved between trees and high bushes towards the back of the
house, and as the party advanced along it a small, trim, soldier-like
man, with a pointed beard, came to meet them. It was the man who had
looked out from the window, Louis Besnard, the Commissaire of Police.

"You are coming, then, to help us, M. Hanaud!" he cried, extending his
hands. "You will find no jealousy here; no spirit amongst us of
anything but good will; no desire except one to carry out your
suggestions. All we wish is that the murderers should be discovered.
Mon Dieu, what a crime! And so young a girl to be involved in it! But
what will you?"

"So you have already made your mind up on that point!" said Hanaud
sharply.

The Commissaire shrugged his shoulders.

"Examine the villa and then judge for yourself whether any other
explanation is conceivable," he said; and turning, he waved his hand
towards the house. Then he cried, "Ah!" and drew himself into an
attitude of attention. A tall, thin man of about forty-five years,
dressed in a frock coat and a high silk hat, had just come round an
angle of the drive and was moving slowly towards them. He wore the
soft, curling brown beard of one who has never used a razor on his
chin, and had a narrow face with eyes of a very light grey, and a round
bulging forehead.

"This is the Juge d'Instruction?" asked Hanaud.

"Yes; M. Fleuriot," replied Louis Besnard in a whisper.

M. Fleuriot was occupied with his own thoughts, and it was not until
Besnard stepped forward noisily on the gravel that he became aware of
the group in the garden.

"This is M. Hanaud, of the Surete in Paris," said Louis Besnard.

M. Fleuriot bowed with cordiality.

"You are very welcome, M. Hanaud. You will find that nothing at the
villa has been disturbed. The moment the message arrived over the
telephone that you were willing to assist us I gave instructions that
all should be left as we found it. I trust that you, with your
experience, will see a way where our eyes find none."

Hanaud bowed in reply.

"I shall do my best, M. Fleuriot. I can say no more," he said.

"But who are these gentlemen?" asked Fleuriot, waking, it seemed, now
for the first time to the presence of Harry Wethermill and Mr. Ricardo.

"They are both friends of mine," replied Hanaud. "If you do not object
I think their assistance may be useful. Mr. Wethermill, for instance,
was acquainted with Celia Harland."

"Ah!" cried the judge; and his face took on suddenly a keen and eager
look. "You can tell me about her perhaps?"

"All that I know I will tell readily," said Harry Wethermill.

Into the light eyes of M. Fleuriot there came a cold, bright gleam. He
took a step forward. His face seemed to narrow to a greater sharpness.
In a moment, to Mr. Ricardo's thought, he ceased to be the judge; he
dropped from his high office; he dwindled into a fanatic.

"She is a Jewess, this Celia Harland?" he cried.

"No, M. Fleuriot, she is not," replied Wethermill. "I do not speak in
disparagement of that race, for I count many friends amongst its
members. But Celia Harland is not one of them."

"Ah!" said Fleuriot; and there was something of disappointment,
something, too, of incredulity, in his voice. "Well, you will come and
report to me when you have made your investigation." And he passed on
without another question or remark.

The group of men watched him go, and it was not until he was out of
earshot that Besnard turned with a deprecating gesture to Hanaud.

"Yes, yes, he is a good judge, M. Hanaud--quick, discriminating,
sympathetic; but he has that bee in his bonnet, like so many others.
Everywhere he must see l'affaire Dreyfus. He cannot get it out of his
head. No matter how insignificant a woman is murdered, she must have
letters in her possession which would convict Dreyfus. But you know!
There are thousands like that--good, kindly, just people in the
ordinary ways of life, but behind every crime they see the Jew."

Hanaud nodded his head.

"I know; and in a Juge d'Instruction it is very embarrassing. Let us
walk on."

Half-way between the gate and the villa a second carriage-road struck
off to the left, and at the entrance to it stood a young, stout man in
black leggings.

"The chauffeur?" asked Hanaud. "I will speak to him."

The Commissaire called the chauffeur forward.

"Servettaz," he said, "you will answer any questions which monsieur may
put to you."

"Certainly, M. le Commissaire," said the chauffeur. His manner was
serious, but he answered readily. There was no sign of fear upon his
face.

"How long have you been with Mme. Dauvray?" Hanaud asked.

"Four months, monsieur. I drove her to Aix from Paris."

"And since your parents live at Chambery you wished to seize the
opportunity of spending a day with them while you were so near?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"When did you ask for permission?"

"On Saturday, monsieur."

"Did you ask particularly that you should have yesterday, the Tuesday?"

"No, monsieur; I asked only for a day whenever it should be convenient
to madame."

"Quite so," said Hanaud. "Now, when did Mme. Dauvray tell you that you
might have Tuesday?"

Servettaz hesitated. His face became troubled. When he spoke, he spoke
reluctantly.

"It was not Mme. Dauvray, monsieur, who told me that I might go on
Tuesday," he said.

"Not Mme. Dauvray! Who was it, then?" Hanaud asked sharply.

Servettaz glanced from one to another of the grave faces which
confronted him.

"It was Mlle. Celie," he said, "who told me."

"Oh!" said Hanaud, slowly. "It was Mlle. Celie. When did she tell you?"

"On Monday morning, monsieur. I was cleaning the car. She came to the
garage with some flowers in her hand which she had been cutting in the
garden, and she said: 'I was right, Alphonse. Madame has a kind heart.
You can go to-morrow by the train which leaves Aix at 1.52 and arrives
at Chambery at nine minutes after two.'"

Hanaud started.

"'I was right, Alphonse.' Were those her words? And 'Madame has a kind
heart.' Come, come, what is all this?" He lifted a warning finger and
said gravely, "Be very careful, Servettaz."

"Those were her words, monsieur."

"'I was right, Alphonse. Madame has a kind heart'?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Then Mlle. Celie had spoken to you before about this visit of yours to
Chambery," said Hanaud, with his eyes fixed steadily upon the
chauffeur's face. The distress upon Servettaz's face increased.
Suddenly Hanaud's voice rang sharply. "You hesitate. Begin at the
beginning. Speak the truth, Servettaz!"

"Monsieur, I am speaking the truth," said the chauffeur. "It is true I
hesitate ... I have heard this morning what people are saying ... I do
not know what to think. Mlle. Celie was always kind and thoughtful for
me ... But it is true"--and with a kind of desperation he went
on--"yes, it is true that it was Mlle. Celie who first suggested to me
that I should ask for a day to go to Chambery."

"When did she suggest it?"

"On the Saturday."

To Mr. Ricardo the words were startling. He glanced with pity towards
Wethermill. Wethermill, however, had made up his mind for good and all.
He stood with a dogged look upon his face, his chin thrust forward, his
eyes upon the chauffeur. Besnard, the Commissaire, had made up his
mind, too. He merely shrugged his shoulders. Hanaud stepped forward and
laid his hand gently on the chauffeur's arm.

"Come, my friend," he said, "let us hear exactly how this happened!"

"Mlle. Celie," said Servettaz, with genuine compunction in his voice,
"came to the garage on Saturday morning and ordered the car for the
afternoon. She stayed and talked to me for a little while, as she often
did. She said that she had been told that my parents lived at Chambery,
and since I was so near I ought to ask for a holiday. For it would not
be kind if I did not go and see them."

"That was all?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Very well." And the detective resumed at once his brisk voice and
alert manner. He seemed to dismiss Servettaz's admission from his mind.
Ricardo had the impression of a man tying up an important document
which for the moment he has done with, and putting it away ticketed in
some pigeon-hole in his desk. "Let us see the garage!"

They followed the road between the bushes until a turn showed them the
garage with its doors open.

"The doors were found unlocked?"

"Just as you see them."

Hanaud nodded. He spoke again to Servettaz. "What did you do with the
key on Tuesday?"

"I gave it to Helene Vauquier, monsieur, after I had locked up the
garage. And she hung it on a nail in the kitchen."

"I see," said Hanaud. "So any one could easily, have found it last
night?"

"Yes, monsieur--if one knew where to look for it."

At the back of the garage a row of petrol-tins stood against the brick
wall.

"Was any petrol taken?" asked Hanaud.

"Yes, monsieur; there was very little petrol in the car when I went
away. More was taken, but it was taken from the middle tins--these."
And he touched the tins.

"I see," said Hanaud, and he raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. The
Commissaire moved with impatience.

"From the middle or from the end--what does it matter?" he exclaimed.
"The petrol was taken."

Hanaud, however, did not dismiss the point so lightly.

"But it is very possible that it does matter," he said gently. "For
example, if Servettaz had had no reason to examine his tins it might
have been some while before he found out that the petrol had been
taken."

"Indeed, yes," said Servettaz. "I might even have forgotten that I had
not used it myself."

"Quite so," said Hanaud, and he turned to Besnard. "I think
that may be important. I do not know," he said.

"But since the car is gone," cried Besnard, "how could the chauffeur
not look immediately at his tins?"

The question had occurred to Ricardo, and he wondered in what way
Hanaud meant to answer it. Hanaud, however, did not mean to answer it.
He took little notice of it at all. He put it aside with a superb
indifference to the opinion which his companions might form of him.

"Ah, yes," he said, carelessly. "Since the car is gone, as you say,
that is so." And he turned again to Servettaz.

"It was a powerful car?" he asked.

"Sixty horse-power," said Servettaz.

Hanaud turned to the Commissaire.

"You have the number and description, I suppose? It will be as well to
advertise for it. It may have been seen; it must be somewhere."

The Commissaire replied that the description had already been printed,
and Hanaud, with a nod of approval, examined the ground. In front of
the garage there was a small stone courtyard, but on its surface there
was no trace of a footstep.

"Yet the gravel was wet," he said, shaking his head. "The man who
fetched that car fetched it carefully."

He turned and walked back with his eyes upon the ground. Then he ran to
the grass border between the gravel and the bushes.

"Look!" he said to Wethermill; "a foot has pressed the blades of grass
down here, but very lightly--yes, and there again. Some one ran along
the border here on his toes. Yes, he was very careful."

They turned again into the main drive, and, following it for a few
yards, came suddenly upon a space in front of the villa. It was a small
toy pleasure-house, looking on to a green lawn gay with flower-beds. It
was built of yellow stone, and was almost square in shape. A couple of
ornate pillars flanked the door, and a gable roof, topped by a gilt
vane, surmounted it. To Ricardo it seemed impossible that so sordid and
sinister a tragedy had taken place within its walls during the last
twelve hours. It glistened so gaudily in the blaze of sunlight. Here
and there the green outer shutters were closed; here and there the
windows stood open to let in the air and light. Upon each side of the
door there was a window lighting the hall, which was large; beyond
those windows again, on each side, there were glass doors opening to
the ground and protected by the ordinary green latticed shutters of
wood, which now stood hooked back against the wall. These glass doors
opened into rooms oblong in shape, which ran through towards the back
of the house, and were lighted in addition by side windows. The room
upon the extreme left, as the party faced the villa, was the
dining-room, with the kitchen at the back; the room on the right was
the salon in which the murder had been committed. In front of the glass
door to this room a strip of what had once been grass stretched to the
gravel drive. But the grass had been worn away by constant use, and the
black mould showed through. This strip was about three yards wide, and
as they approached they saw, even at a distance, that since the rain of
last night it had been trampled down.

"We will go round the house first," said Hanaud, and he turned along
the side of the villa and walked in the direction of the road. There
were four windows just above his head, of which three lighted the
salon, and the fourth a small writing-room behind it. Under these
windows there was no disturbance of the ground, and a careful
investigation showed conclusively that the only entrance used had been
the glass doors of the salon facing the drive. To that spot, then, they
returned. There were three sets of footmarks upon the soil. One set ran
in a distinct curve from the drive to the side of the door, and did not
cross the others.

"Those," said Hanaud, "are the footsteps of my intelligent friend,
Perrichet, who was careful not to disturb the ground."

Perrichet beamed all over his rosy face, and Besnard nodded at him with
condescending approval.

"But I wish, M. le Commissaire"--and Hanaud pointed to a blur of
marks--"that your other officers had been as intelligent. Look! These
run from the glass door to the drive, and, for all the use they are to
us, a harrow might have been dragged across them."

Besnard drew himself up.

"Not one of my officers has entered the room by way of this door. The
strictest orders were given and obeyed. The ground, as you see it, is
the ground as it was at twelve o'clock last night."

Hanaud's face grew thoughtful.

"Is that so?" he said, and he stooped to examine the second set of
marks. They were at the righthand side of the door. "A woman and a
man," he said. "But they are mere hints rather than prints. One might
almost think--" He rose up without finishing his sentence, and he
turned to the third set and a look of satisfaction gleamed upon his
face. "Ah! here is something more interesting," he said.

There were just three impressions; and, whereas the blurred marks were
at the side, these three pointed straight from the middle of the glass
doors to the drive. They were quite clearly defined, and all three were
the impressions made by a woman's small, arched, high-heeled shoe. The
position of the marks was at first sight a little peculiar. There was
one a good yard from the window, the impression of the right foot, and
the pressure of the sole of the shoe was more marked than that of the
heel. The second, the impression of the left foot, was not quite so far
from the first as the first was from the window, and here again the
heel was the more lightly defined. But there was this difference--the
mark of the toe, which was pointed in the first instance, was, in this,
broader and a trifle blurred. Close beside it the right foot was again
visible; only now the narrow heel was more clearly defined than the
ball of the foot. It had, indeed, sunk half an inch into the soft
ground. There were no further imprints. Indeed, these two were not
merely close together, they were close to the gravel of the drive and
on the very border of the grass.

Hanaud looked at the marks thoughtfully. Then he turned to the
Commissaire.

"Are there any shoes in the house which fit those marks?"

"Yes. We have tried the shoes of all the women--Celie Harland, the
maid, and even Mme. Dauvray. The only ones which fit at all are those
taken from Celie Harland's bedroom."

He called to an officer standing in the drive, and a pair of grey suede
shoes were brought to him from the hall.

"See, M. Hanaud, it is a pretty little foot which made those clear
impressions," he said, with a smile; "a foot arched and slender. Mme.
Dauvray's foot is short and square, the maid's broad and flat. Neither
Mme. Dauvray nor Helene Vauquier could have worn these shoes. They were
lying, one here, one there, upon the floor of Celie Harland's room, as
though she had kicked them off in a hurry. They are almost new, you
see. They have been worn once, perhaps, no more, and they fit with
absolute precision into those footmarks, except just at the toe of that
second one."

Hanaud took the shoes and, kneeling down, placed them one after the
other over the impressions. To Ricardo it was extraordinary how exactly
they covered up the marks and filled the indentations.

"I should say," said the Commissaire, "that Celie Harland went away
wearing a new pair of shoes made on the very same last as those."

As those she had left carelessly lying on the floor of her room for the
first person to notice, thought Ricardo! It seemed as if the girl had
gone out of her way to make the weight of evidence against her as heavy
as possible. Yet, after all, it was just through inattention to the
small details, so insignificant at the red moment of crime, so terribly
instructive the next day, that guilt was generally brought home.

Hanaud rose to his feet and handed the shoes back to the officer.

"Yes," he said, "so it seems. The shoemaker can help us here. I see the
shoes were made in Aix."

Besnard looked at the name stamped in gold letters upon the lining of
the shoes.

"I will have inquiries made," he said.

Hanaud nodded, took a measure from his pocket and measured the ground
between the window and the first footstep, and between the first
footstep and the other two.

"How tall is Mlle. Celie?" he asked, and he addressed the question to
Wethermill. It struck Ricardo as one of the strangest details in all
this strange affair that the detective should ask with confidence for
information which might help to bring Celia Harland to the guillotine
from the man who had staked his happiness upon her innocence.

"About five feet seven," he answered.

Hanaud replaced his measure in his pocket. He turned with a grave face
to Wethermill.

"I warned you fairly, didn't I?" he said.

Wethermill's white face twitched.

"Yes," he said. "I am not afraid." But there was more of anxiety in his
voice than there had been before.

Hanaud pointed solemnly to the ground.

"Read the story those footprints write in the mould there. A young and
active girl of about Mlle. Celie's height, and wearing a new pair of
Mlle. Celie's shoes, springs from that room where the murder was
committed, where the body of the murdered woman lies. She is running.
She is wearing a long gown. At the second step the hem of the gown
catches beneath the point of her shoe. She stumbles. To save herself
from falling she brings up the other foot sharply and stamps the heel
down into the ground. She recovers her balance. She steps on to the
drive. It is true the gravel here is hard and takes no mark, but you
will see that some of the mould which has clung to her shoes has
dropped off. She mounts into the motor-car with the man and the other
woman and drives off--some time between eleven and twelve."

"Between eleven and twelve? Is that sure?" asked Besnard.

"Certainly," replied Hanaud. "The gate is open at eleven, and Perrichet
closes it. It is open again at twelve. Therefore the murderers had not
gone before eleven. No; the gate was open for them to go, but they had
not gone. Else why should the gate again be open at midnight?"

Besnard nodded in assent, and suddenly Perrichet started forward, with
his eyes full of horror.

"Then, when I first closed the gate," he cried, "and came into the
garden and up to the house they were here--in that room? Oh, my God!"
He stared at the window, with his mouth open.

"I am afraid, my friend, that is so," said Hanaud gravely.

"But I knocked upon the wooden door, I tried the bolts; and they were
within--in the darkness within, holding their breath not three yards
from me."

He stood transfixed.

"That we shall see," said Hanaud.

He stepped in Perrichet's footsteps to the sill of the room. He
examined the green wooden doors which opened outwards, and the glass
doors which opened inwards, taking a magnifying-glass from his pocket.
He called Besnard to his side.

"See!" he said, pointing to the woodwork.

"Finger-marks!" asked Besnard eagerly.

"Yes; of hands in gloves," returned Hanaud. "We shall learn nothing
from these marks except that the assassins knew their trade."

Then he stooped down to the sill, where some traces of steps were
visible. He rose with a gesture of resignation.

"Rubber shoes," he said, and so stepped into the room, followed by
Wethermill and the others. They found themselves in a small recess
which was panelled with wood painted white, and here and there
delicately carved into festoons of flowers. The recess ended in an
arch, supported by two slender pillars, and on the inner side of the
arch thick curtains of pink silk were hung. These were drawn back
carelessly, and through the opening between them the party looked down
the length of the room beyond. They passed within.




CHAPTER V

IN THE SALON


Julius Ricardo pushed aside the curtains with a thrill of excitement.
He found himself standing within a small oblong room which was
prettily, even daintily, furnished. On his left, close by the recess,
was a small fireplace with the ashes of a burnt-out fire in the grate.
Beyond the grate a long settee covered in pink damask, with a crumpled
cushion at each end, stood a foot or two away from the wall, and beyond
the settee the door of the room opened into the hall. At the end a long
mirror was let into the panelling, and a writing-table stood by the
mirror. On the right were the three windows, and between the two
nearest to Mr. Ricardo was the switch of the electric light. A
chandelier hung from the ceiling, an electric lamp stood upon the
writing-table, a couple of electric candles on the mantel-shelf. A
round satinwood table stood under the windows, with three chairs about
it, of which one was overturned, one was placed with its back to the
electric switch, and the third on the opposite side facing it.

Ricardo could hardly believe that he stood actually upon the spot
where, within twelve hours, a cruel and sinister tragedy had taken
place. There was so little disorder. The three windows on his right
showed him the blue sunlit sky and a glimpse of flowers and trees;
behind him the glass doors stood open to the lawn, where birds piped
cheerfully and the trees murmured of summer. But he saw Hanaud stepping
quickly from place to place, with an extraordinary lightness of step
for so big a man, obviously engrossed, obviously reading here and there
some detail, some custom of the inhabitants of that room.

Ricardo leaned with careful artistry against the wall.

"Now, what has this room to say to me?" he asked importantly. Nobody
paid the slightest attention to his question, and it was just as well.
For the room had very little information to give him. He ran his eye
over the white Louis Seize furniture, the white panels of the wall, the
polished floor, the pink curtains. Even the delicate tracery of the
ceiling did not escape his scrutiny. Yet he saw nothing likely to help
him but an overturned chair and a couple of crushed cushions on a
settee. It was very annoying, all the more annoying because M. Hanaud
was so uncommonly busy. Hanaud looked carefully at the long settee and
the crumpled cushions, and he took out his measure and measured the
distance between the cushion at one end and the cushion at the other.
He examined the table, he measured the distance between the chairs. He
came to the fireplace and raked in the ashes of the burnt-out fire. But
Ricardo noticed a singular thing. In the midst of his search Hanaud's
eyes were always straying back to the settee, and always with a look of
extreme perplexity, as if he read there something, definitely
something, but something which he could not explain. Finally he went
back to it; he drew it farther away from the wall, and suddenly with a
little cry he stooped and went down on his knees. When he rose he was
holding some torn fragments of paper in his hand. He went over to the
writing-table and opened the blotting-book. Where it fell open there
were some sheets of note-paper, and one particular sheet of which half
had been torn off. He compared the pieces which he held with that torn
sheet, and seemed satisfied.

There was a rack for note-paper upon the table, and from it he took a
stiff card.

"Get me some gum or paste, and quickly," he said. His voice had become
brusque, the politeness had gone from his address. He carried the card
and the fragments of paper to the round table. There he sat down and,
with infinite patience, gummed the fragments on to the card, fitting
them together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.

The others over his shoulders could see spaced words, written in
pencil, taking shape as a sentence upon the card. Hanaud turned
abruptly in his seat toward Wethermill.

"You have, no doubt, a letter written by Mlle. Celie?"

Wethermill took his letter-case from his pocket and a letter out of the
case. He hesitated for a moment as he glanced over what was written.
The four sheets were covered. He folded back the letter, so that only
the two inner sheets were visible, and handed it to Hanaud. Hanaud
compared it with the handwriting upon the card.

"Look!" he said at length, and the three men gathered behind him. On
the card the gummed fragments of paper revealed a sentence:

"Je ne sais pas."

"'I do not know,'" said Ricardo; "now this is very important."

Beside the card Celia's letter to Wethermill was laid.

"What do you think?" asked Hanaud.

Besnard, the Commissaire of Police, bent over Hanaud's shoulder.

"There are strong resemblances," he said guardedly.

Ricardo was on the look-out for deep mysteries. Resemblances were not
enough for him; they were inadequate to the artistic needs of the
situation.

"Both were written by the same hand," he said definitely; "only in the
sentence written upon the card the handwriting is carefully disguised."

"Ah!" said the Commissaire, bending forward again. "Here is an idea!
Yes, yes, there are strong differences."

Ricardo looked triumphant.

"Yes, there are differences," said Hanaud. "Look how long the up stroke
of the 'p' is, how it wavers! See how suddenly this 's' straggles off,
as though some emotion made the hand shake. Yet this," and touching
Wethermill's letter he smiled ruefully, "this is where the emotion
should have affected the pen." He looked up at Wethermill's face and
then said quietly:

"You have given us no opinion, monsieur. Yet your opinion should be the
most valuable of all. Were these two papers written by the same hand?"

"I do not know," answered Wethermill.

"And I, too," cried Hanaud, in a sudden exasperation, "je ne sais pas.
I do not know. It may be her hand carelessly counterfeited. It may be
her hand disguised. It may be simply that she wrote in a hurry with her
gloves on."

"It may have been written some time ago," said Mr. Ricardo, encouraged
by his success to another suggestion.

"No; that is the one thing it could not have been," said Hanaud. "Look
round the room. Was there ever a room better tended? Find me a little
pile of dust in any one corner if you can! It is all as clean as a
plate. Every morning, except this one morning, this room has been swept
and polished. The paper was written and torn up yesterday."

He enclosed the card in an envelope as he spoke, and placed it in his
pocket. Then he rose and crossed again to the settee. He stood at the
side of it, with his hands clutching the lapels of his coat and his
face gravely troubled. After a few moments of silence for himself, of
suspense for all the others who watched him, he stooped suddenly.
Slowly, and with extraordinary care, he pushed his hands under the
head-cushion and lifted it up gently, so that the indentations of its
surface might not be disarranged. He carried it over to the light of
the open window. The cushion was covered with silk, and as he held it
to the sunlight all could see a small brown stain.

Hanaud took his magnifying-glass from his pocket and bent his head over
the cushion. But at that moment, careful though he had been, the down
swelled up within the cushion, the folds and indentations disappeared,
the silk covering was stretched smooth.

"Oh!" cried Besnard tragically. "What have you done?"

Hanaud's face flushed. He had been guilty of a clumsiness--even he.

Mr. Ricardo took up the tale.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "what have you done?"

Hanaud looked at Ricardo in amazement at his audacity.

"Well, what have I done?" he asked. "Come! tell me!"

"You have destroyed a clue," replied Ricardo impressively.

The deepest dejection at once overspread Hanaud's burly face.

"Don't say that, M. Ricardo, I beseech you!" he implored. "A clue! and
I have destroyed it! But what kind of a clue? And how have I destroyed
it? And to what mystery would it be a clue if I hadn't destroyed it?
And what will become of me when I go back to Paris, and say in the Rue
de Jerusalem, 'Let me sweep the cellars, my good friends, for M.
Ricardo knows that I destroyed a clue. Faithfully he promised me that
he would not open his mouth, but I destroyed a clue, and his
perspicacity forced him into speech.'"

It was the turn of M. Ricardo to grow red.

Hanaud turned with a smile to Besnard.

"It does not really matter whether the creases in this cushion remain,"
he said, "we have all seen them." And he replaced the glass in his
pocket.

He carried that cushion back and replaced it. Then he took the other,
which lay at the foot of the settee, and carried it in its turn to the
window. This was indented too, and ridged up, and just at the marks the
nap of the silk was worn, and there was a slit where it had been cut.
The perplexity upon Hanaud's face greatly increased. He stood with the
cushion in his hands, no longer looking at it, but looking out through
the doors at the footsteps so clearly defined--the foot-steps of a girl
who had run from this room and sprung into a motor-car and driven away.
He shook his head, and, carrying back the cushion, laid it carefully
down. Then he stood erect, gazed about the room as though even yet he
might force its secrets out from its silence, and cried, with a sudden
violence:

"There is something here, gentlemen, which I do not understand."

Mr. Ricardo heard some one beside him draw a deep breath, and turned.
Wethermill stood at his elbow. A faint colour had come back to his
cheeks, his eyes were fixed intently upon Hanaud's face.

"What do you think?" he asked; and Hanaud replied brusquely:

"It's not my business to hold opinions, monsieur; my business is to
make sure."

There was one point, and only one, of which he had made every one in
that room sure. He had started confident. Here was a sordid crime,
easily understood. But in that room he had read something which had
troubled him, which had raised the sordid crime on to some higher and
perplexing level.

"Then M. Fleuriot after all might be right?" asked the Commissaire
timidly.

Hanaud stared at him for a second, then smiled.

"L'affaire Dreyfus?" he cried. "Oh la, la, la! No, but there is
something else."

What was that something? Ricardo asked himself. He looked once more
about the room. He did not find his answer, but he caught sight of an
ornament upon the wall which drove the question from his mind. The
ornament, if so it could be called, was a painted tambourine with a
bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim; and it was hung upon the wall
between the settee and the fireplace at about the height of a man's
head. Of course it might be no more than it seemed to be--a rather
gaudy and vulgar toy, such as a woman like Mme. Dauvray would be very
likely to choose in order to dress her walls. But it swept Ricardo's
thoughts back of a sudden to the concert-hall at Leamington and the
apparatus of a spiritualistic show. After all, he reflected
triumphantly, Hanaud had not noticed everything, and as he made the
reflection Hanaud's voice broke in to corroborate him.

"We have seen everything here; let us go upstairs," he said. "We will
first visit the room of Mlle. Celie. Then we will question the maid,
Helene Vauquier."

The four men, followed by Perrichet, passed out by the door into the
hall and mounted the stairs. Celia's room was in the southwest angle of
the villa, a bright and airy room, of which one window overlooked the
road, and two others, between which stood the dressing-table, the
garden. Behind the room a door led into a little white-tiled bathroom.
Some towels were tumbled upon the floor beside the bath. In the bedroom
a dark-grey frock of tussore and a petticoat were flung carelessly on
the bed; a big grey hat of Ottoman silk was lying upon a chest of
drawers in the recess of a window; and upon a chair a little pile of
fine linen and a pair of grey silk stockings, which matched in shade
the grey suede shoes, were tossed in a heap.

"It was here that you saw the light at half-past nine?" Hanaud said,
turning to Perrichet.

"Yes, monsieur," replied Perrichet.

"We may assume, then, that Mlle. Celie was changing her dress at that
time."

Besnard was looking about him, opening a drawer here, a wardrobe there.

"Mlle. Celie," he said, with a laugh, "was a particular young lady, and
fond of her fine clothes, if one may judge from the room and the order
of the cupboards. She must have changed her dress last night in an
unusual hurry."

There was about the whole room a certain daintiness, almost, it seemed
to Mr. Ricardo, a fragrance, as though the girl had impressed something
of her own delicate self upon it. Wethermill stood upon the threshold
watching with a sullen face the violation of this chamber by the
officers of the police.

No such feelings, however, troubled Hanaud. He went over to the
dressing-room and opened a few small leather cases which held Celia's
ornaments. In one or two of them a trinket was visible; others were
empty. One of these latter Hanaud held open in his hand, and for so
long that Besnard moved impatiently.

"You see it is empty, monsieur," he said, and suddenly Wethermill moved
forward into the room.

"Yes, I see that," said Hanaud dryly.

It was a case made to hold a couple of long ear-drops--those diamond
ear-drops, doubtless, which Mr. Ricardo had seen twinkling in the
garden.

"Will monsieur let me see?" asked Wethermill, and he took the case in
his hands. "Yes," he said. "Mlle. Celie's ear-drops," and he handed the
case back with a thoughtful air.

It was the first time he had taken a definite part in the
investigation. To Ricardo the reason was clear. Harry Wethermill had
himself given those ear-drops to Celia. Hanaud replaced the case and
turned round.

"There is nothing more for us to see here," he said. "I suppose that no
one has been allowed to enter the room?" And he opened the door.

"No one except Helene Vauquier," replied the Commissaire.

Ricardo felt indignant at so obvious a piece of carelessness. Even
Wethermill looked surprised. Hanaud merely shut the door again.

"Oho, the maid!" he said. "Then she has recovered!"

"She is still weak," said the Commissaire. "But I thought it was
necessary that we should obtain at once a description of what Celie
Harland wore when she left the house. I spoke to M. Fleuriot about it,
and he gave me permission to bring Helene Vauquier here, who alone
could tell us. I brought her here myself just before you came. She
looked through the girl's wardrobe to see what was missing."

"Was she alone in the room?"

"Not for a moment," said M. Besnard haughtily. "Really, monsieur, we
are not so ignorant of how an affair of this kind should be conducted.
I was in the room myself the whole time, with my eye upon her."

"That was just before I came," said Hanaud. He crossed carelessly to
the open window which overlooked the road and, leaning out of it,
looked up the road to the corner round which he and his friends had
come, precisely as the Commissaire had done. Then he turned back into
the room.

"Which was the last cupboard or drawer that Helene Vauquier touched?"
he asked.

"This one."

Besnard stooped and pulled open the bottom drawer of a chest which
stood in the embrasure of the window. A light-coloured dress was lying
at the bottom.

"I told her to be quick," said Besnard, "since I had seen that you were
coming. She lifted this dress out and said that nothing was missing
there. So I took her back to her room and left her with the nurse."

Hanaud lifted the light dress from the drawer, shook it out in front of
the window, twirled it round, snatched up a corner of it and held it to
his eyes, and then, folding it quickly, replaced it in the drawer.

"Now show me the first drawer she touched." And this time he lifted out
a petticoat, and, taking it to the window, examined it with a greater
care. When he had finished with it he handed it to Ricardo to put away,
and stood for a moment or two thoughtful and absorbed. Ricardo in his
turn examined the petticoat. But he could see nothing unusual. It was
an attractive petticoat, dainty with frills and lace, but it was hardly
a thing to grow thoughtful over. He looked up in perplexity and saw
that Hanaud was watching his investigations with a smile of amusement.

"When M. Ricardo has put that away," he said, "we will hear what Helene
Vauquier has to tell us."

He passed out of the door last, and, locking it, placed the key in his
pocket.

"Helene Vauquier's room is, I think, upstairs," he said. And he moved
towards the staircase.

But as he did so a man in plain clothes, who had been waiting upon the
landing, stepped forward. He carried in his hand a piece of thin,
strong whipcord.

"Ah, Durette!" cried Besnard. "Monsieur Hanaud, I sent Durette this
morning round the shops of Aix with the cord which was found knotted
round Mme. Dauvray's neck."

Hanaud advanced quickly to the man.

"Well! Did you discover anything?"

"Yes, monsieur," said Durette. "At the shop of M. Corval, in the Rue du
Casino, a young lady in a dark-grey frock and hat bought some cord of
this kind at a few minutes after nine last night. It was just as the
shop was being closed. I showed Corval the photograph of Celie Harland
which M. le Commissaire gave me out of Mme. Dauvray's room, and he
identified it as the portrait of the girl who had bought the cord."

Complete silence followed upon Durette's words. The whole party stood
like men stupefied. No one looked towards Wethermill; even Hanaud
averted his eyes.

"Yes, that is very important," he said awkwardly. He turned away and,
followed by the others, went up the stairs to the bedroom of Helene
Vauquier.




CHAPTER VI

HELENE VAUQUIER'S EVIDENCE


A nurse opened the door. Within the room Helene Vauquier was leaning
back in a chair. She looked ill, and her face was very white. On the
appearance of Hanaud, the Commissaire, and the others, however, she
rose to her feet. Ricardo recognised the justice of Hanaud's
description. She stood before them a hard-featured, tall woman of
thirty-five or forty, in a neat black stuff dress, strong with the
strength of a peasant, respectable, reliable. She looked what she had
been, the confidential maid of an elderly woman. On her face there was
now an aspect of eager appeal.

"Oh, monsieur!" she began, "let me go from here--anywhere--into prison
if you like. But to stay here--where in years past we were so
happy--and with madame lying in the room below. No, it is
insupportable."

She sank into her chair, and Hanaud came over to her side.

"Yes, yes," he said, in a soothing voice. "I can understand your
feelings, my poor woman. We will not keep you here. You have, perhaps,
friends in Aix with whom you could stay?"

"Oh yes, monsieur!" Helene cried gratefully. "Oh, but I thank you! That
I should have to sleep here to-night! Oh, how the fear of that has
frightened me!"

"You need have had no such fear. After all, we are not the visitors of
last night," said Hanaud, drawing a chair close to her and patting her
hand sympathetically. "Now, I want you to tell these gentlemen and
myself all that you know of this dreadful business. Take your time,
mademoiselle! We are human."

"But, monsieur, I know nothing," she cried. "I was told that I might go
to bed as soon as I had dressed Mlle. Celie for the seance."

"Seance!" cried Ricardo, startled into speech. The picture of the
Assembly Hall at Leamington was again before his mind. But Hanaud
turned towards him, and, though Hanaud's face retained its benevolent
expression, there was a glitter in his eyes which sent the blood into
Ricardo's face.

"Did you speak again, M. Ricardo?" the detective asked. "No? I thought
it was not possible." He turned back to Helene Vauquier. "So Mlle.
Celie practised seances. That is very strange. We will hear about them.
Who knows what thread may lead us to the truth?"

Helene Vauquier shook her head.

"Monsieur, it is not right that you should seek the truth from me. For,
consider this! I cannot speak with justice of Mlle. Celie. No, I
cannot! I did not like her. I was jealous--yes, jealous. Monsieur, you
want the truth--I hated her!" And the woman's face flushed and she
clenched her hand upon the arm of her chair. "Yes, I hated her. How
could I help it?" she asked.

"Why?" asked Hanaud gently. "Why could you not help it?"

Helene Vauquier leaned back again, her strength exhausted, and smiled
languidly.

"I will tell you. But remember it is a woman speaking to you, and
things which you will count silly and trivial mean very much to her.
There was one night last June--only last June! To think of it! So
little while ago there was no Mlle. Celie--" and, as Hanaud raised his
hand, she said hurriedly, "Yes, yes; I will control myself. But to
think of Mme. Dauvray now!"

And thereupon she blurted out her story and explained to Mr. Ricardo
the question which had so perplexed him: how a girl of so much
distinction as Celia Harland came to be living with a woman of so
common a type as Mme. Dauvray.

"Well, one night in June," said Helene Vauquier, "madame went with a
party to supper at the Abbaye Restaurant in Montmartre. And she brought
home for the first time Mlle. Celie. But you should have seen her! She
had on a little plaid skirt and a coat which was falling to pieces, and
she was starving--yes, starving. Madame told me the story that night as
I undressed her. Mlle. Celie was there dancing amidst the tables for a
supper with any one who would be kind enough to dance with her."

The scorn of her voice rang through the room. She was the rigid,
respectable peasant woman, speaking out her contempt. And Wethermill
must needs listen to it. Ricardo dared not glance at him.

"But hardly any one would dance with her in her rags, and no one would
give her supper except madame. Madame did. Madame listened to her story
of hunger and distress. Madame believed it, and brought her home.
Madame was so kind, so careless in her kindness. And now she lies
murdered for a reward!" An hysterical sob checked the woman's
utterances, her face began to work, her hands to twitch.

"Come, come!" said Hanaud gently, "calm yourself, mademoiselle."

Helene Vauquier paused for a moment or two to recover her composure. "I
beg your pardon, monsieur, but I have been so long with madame--oh, the
poor woman! Yes, yes, I will calm myself. Well, madame brought her
home, and in a week there was nothing too good for Mlle. Celie. Madame
was like a child. Always she was being deceived and imposed upon. Never
she learnt prudence. But no one so quickly made her way to madame's
heart as Mlle. Celie. Mademoiselle must live with her. Mademoiselle
must be dressed by the first modistes. Mademoiselle must have lace
petticoats and the softest linen, long white gloves, and pretty ribbons
for her hair, and hats from Caroline Reboux at twelve hundred francs.
And madame's maid must attend upon her and deck her out in all these
dainty things. Bah!"

Vauquier was sitting erect in her chair, violent, almost rancorous with
anger. She looked round upon the company and shrugged her shoulders.

"I told you not to come to me!" she said, "I cannot speak impartially,
or even gently of mademoiselle. Consider! For years I had been more
than madame's maid--her friend; yes, so she was kind enough to call me.
She talked to me about everything, consulted me about everything, took
me with her everywhere. Then she brings home, at two o'clock in the
morning, a young girl with a fresh, pretty face, from a Montmartre
restaurant, and in a week I am nothing at all--oh, but nothing--and
mademoiselle is queen."

"Yes, it is quite natural," said Hanaud sympathetically. "You would not
have been human, mademoiselle, if you had not felt some anger. But tell
us frankly about these seances. How did they begin?"

"Oh, monsieur," Vauquier answered, "it was not difficult to begin them.
Mme. Dauvray had a passion for fortune-tellers and rogues of that kind.
Any one with a pack of cards and some nonsense about a dangerous woman
with black hair or a man with a limp--Monsieur knows the stories they
string together in dimly lighted rooms to deceive the credulous--any
one could make a harvest out of madame's superstitions. But monsieur
knows the type."

"Indeed I do," said Hanaud, with a laugh.

"Well, after mademoiselle had been with us three weeks, she said to me
one morning when I was dressing her hair that it was a pity madame was
always running round the fortune-tellers, that she herself could do
something much more striking and impressive, and that if only I would
help her we could rescue madame from their clutches. Sir, I did not
think what power I was putting into Mlle. Celie's hands, or assuredly I
would have refused. And I did not wish to quarrel with Mlle. Celie; so
for once I consented, and, having once consented, I could never
afterwards refuse, for, if I had, mademoiselle would have made some
fine excuse about the psychic influence not being en rapport, and
meanwhile would have had me sent away. While if I had confessed the
truth to madame, she would have been so angry that I had been a party
to tricking her that again I would have lost my place. And so the
seances went on."

"Yes," said Hanaud. "I understand that your position was very
difficult. We shall not, I think," and he turned to the Commissaire
confidently for corroboration of his words, "be disposed to blame you."

"Certainly not," said the Commissaire. "After all, life is not so easy."

"Thus, then, the seances began," said Hanaud, leaning forward with a
keen interest. "This is a strange and curious story you are telling me,
Mlle. Vauquier. Now, how were they conducted? How did you assist? What
did Mlle. Celie do? Rap on the tables in the dark and rattle
tambourines like that one with the knot of ribbons which hangs upon the
wall of the salon?"

There was a gentle and inviting irony in Hanaud's tone. M. Ricardo was
disappointed. Hanaud had after all not overlooked the tambourine.
Without Ricardo's reason to notice it, he had none the less observed it
and borne it in his memory.

"Well?" he asked.

"Oh, monsieur, the tambourines and the rapping on the table!" cried
Helene. "That was nothing--oh, but nothing at all. Mademoiselle Celie
would make spirits appear and speak!"

"Really! And she was never caught out! But Mlle. Celie must have been a
remarkably clever girl."

"Oh, she was of an address which was surprising. Sometimes madame and I
were alone. Sometimes there were others, whom madame in her pride had
invited. For she was very proud, monsieur, that her companion could
introduce her to the spirits of dead people. But never was Mlle. Celie
caught out. She told me that for many years, even when quite a child,
she had travelled through England giving these exhibitions."

"Oho!" said Hanaud, and he turned to Wethermill. "Did you know that?"
he asked in English.

"I did not," he said. "I do not now."

Hanaud shook his head.

"To me this story does not seem invented," he replied. And then he
spoke again in French to Helene Vauquier. "Well, continue,
mademoiselle! Assume that the company is assembled for our seance."

"Then Mlle. Celie, dressed in a long gown of black velvet, which set
off her white arms and shoulders well--oh, mademoiselle did not forget
those little trifles," Helene Vauquier interrupted her story, with a
return of her bitterness, to interpolate--"mademoiselle would sail into
the room with her velvet train flowing behind her, and perhaps for a
little while she would say there was a force working against her, and
she would sit silent in a chair while madame gaped at her with open
eyes. At last mademoiselle would say that the powers were favourable
and the spirits would manifest themselves to-night. Then she would be
placed in a cabinet, perhaps with a string tied across the door
outside--you will understand it was my business to see after the
string--and the lights would be turned down, or perhaps out altogether.
Or at other times we would sit holding hands round a table, Mlle. Celie
between Mme. Dauvray and myself. But in that case the lights would be
turned out first, and it would be really my hand which held Mme.
Dauvray's. And whether it was the cabinet or the chairs, in a moment
mademoiselle would be creeping silently about the room in a little pair
of soft-soled slippers without heels, which she wore so that she might
not be heard, and tambourines would rattle as you say, and fingers
touch the forehead and the neck, and strange voices would sound from
corners of the room, and dim apparitions would appear--the spirits of
great ladies of the past, who would talk with Mme. Dauvray. Such ladies
as Mme. de Castiglione, Marie Antoinette, Mme. de Medici--I do not
remember all the names, and very likely I do not pronounce them
properly. Then the voices would cease and the lights be turned up, and
Mlle. Celie would be found in a trance just in the same place and
attitude as she had been when the lights were turned out. Imagine,
messieurs, the effect of such seances upon a woman like Mme. Dauvray.
She was made for them. She believed in them implicitly. The words of
the great ladies from the past--she would remember and repeat them, and
be very proud that such great ladies had come back to the world merely
to tell her--Mme. Dauvray--about their lives. She would have had
seances all day, but Mlle. Celie pleaded that she was left exhausted at
the end of them. But Mlle. Celie was of an address! For instance--it
will seem very absurd and ridiculous to you, gentlemen, but you must
remember what Mme. Dauvray was--for instance, madame was particularly
anxious to speak with the spirit of Mme. de Montespan. Yes, yes! She
had read all the memoirs about that lady. Very likely Mlle. Celie had
put the notion into Mme. Dauvray's head, for madame was not a scholar.
But she was dying to hear that famous woman's voice and to catch a dim
glimpse of her face. Well, she was never gratified. Always she hoped.
Always Mlle. Celie tantalised her with the hope. But she would not
gratify it. She would not spoil her fine affairs by making these treats
too common. And she acquired--how should she not?--a power over Mme.
Dauvray which was unassailable. The fortune-tellers had no more to say
to Mme. Dauvray. She did nothing but felicitate herself upon the happy
chance which had sent her Mlle. Celie. And now she lies in her room
murdered!"

Once more Helene's voice broke upon the words. But Hanaud poured her
out a glass of water and held it to her lips. Helene drank it eagerly.

"There, that is better, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, monsieur," said Helene Vauquier, recovering herself. "Sometimes,
too," she resumed, "messages from the spirits would flutter down in
writing on the table."

"In writing?" exclaimed Hanaud quickly.

"Yes; answers to questions. Mlle. Celie had them ready. Oh, but she was
of an address altogether surprising.

"I see," said Hanaud slowly; and he added, "But sometimes, I suppose,
the questions were questions which Mlle. Celie could not answer?"

"Sometimes," Helene Vauquier admitted, "when visitors were present.
When Mme. Dauvray was alone--well, she was an ignorant woman, and any
answer would serve. But it was not so when there were visitors whom
Mlle. Celie did not know, or only knew slightly. These visitors might
be putting questions to test her, of which they knew the answers, while
Mlle. Celie did not."

"Exactly," said Hanaud. "What happened then?"

All who were listening understood to what point he was leading Helene
Vauquier. All waited intently for her answer.

She smiled.

"It was all one to Mlle. Celie."

"She was prepared with an escape from the difficulty?"

"Perfectly prepared."

Hanaud looked puzzled.

"I can think of no way out of it except the one," and he looked round
to the Commissaire and to Ricardo as though he would inquire of them
how many ways they had discovered. "I can think of no escape except
that a message in writing should flutter down from the spirit appealed
to saying frankly," and Hanaud shrugged his shoulders, "'I do not
know.'"

"Oh no no, monsieur," replied Helene Vauquier in pity for Hanaud's
misconception, "I see that you are not in the habit of attending
seances. It would never do for a spirit to admit that it did not know.
At once its authority would be gone, and with it Mlle. Celie's as well.
But on the other hand, for inscrutable reasons the spirit might not be
allowed to answer."

"I understand," said Hanaud, meekly accepting the correction. "The
spirit might reply that it was forbidden to answer, but never that it
did not know."

"No, never that," said Helene. So it seemed that Hanaud must look
elsewhere for the explanation of that sentence. "I do not know," Helene
continued: "Oh, Mlle. Celie--it was not easy to baffle her, I can tell
you. She carried a lace scarf which she could drape about her head, and
in a moment she would be, in the dim light, an old, old woman, with a
voice so altered that no one could know it. Indeed, you said rightly,
monsieur--she was clever."

To all who listened Helene Vauquier's story carried its conviction.
Mme. Dauvray rose vividly before their minds as a living woman. Celie's
trickeries were so glibly described that they could hardly have been
invented, and certainly not by this poor peasant-woman whose lips so
bravely struggled with Medici, and Montespan, and the names of the
other great ladies. How, indeed, should she know of them at all? She
could never have had the inspiration to concoct the most convincing
item of her story--the queer craze of Mme. Dauvray for an interview
with Mme. de Montespan. These details were assuredly the truth.

Ricardo, indeed, knew them to be true. Had he not himself seen the girl
in her black velvet dress shut up in a cabinet, and a great lady of the
past dimly appear in the darkness? Moreover, Helene Vauquier's jealousy
was so natural and inevitable a thing. Her confession of it
corroborated all her story.

"Well, then," said Hanaud, "we come to last night. There was a seance
held in the salon last night."

"No, monsieur," said Vauquier, shaking her head; "there was no seance
last night."

"But already you have said--" interrupted the Commissaire; and Hanaud
held up his hand.

"Let her speak, my friend."

"Yes, monsieur shall hear," said Vauquier.

It appeared that at five o'clock in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and
Mlle. Celie prepared to leave the house on foot. It was their custom to
walk down at this hour to the Villa des Fleurs, pass an hour or so
there, dine in a restaurant, and return to the Rooms to spend the
evening. On this occasion, however, Mme. Dauvray informed Helene that
they should be back early and bring with them a friend who was
interested in, but entirely sceptical of, spiritualistic
manifestations. "But we shall convince her to-night, Celie," she said
confidently; and the two women then went out. Shortly before eight
Helene closed the shutters both of the upstair and the downstair
windows and of the glass doors into the garden, and returned to the
kitchen, which was at the back of the house--that is, on the side
facing the road. There had been a fall of rain at seven which had
lasted for the greater part of the hour, and soon after she had shut
the windows the rain fell again in a heavy shower, and Helene, knowing
that madame felt the chill, lighted a small fire in the salon. The
shower lasted until nearly nine, when it ceased altogether and the
night cleared up.

It was close upon half-past nine when the bell rang from the salon.
Vauquier was sure of the hour, for the charwoman called her attention
to the clock.

"I found Mme. Dauvray, Mlle. Celie, and another woman in the salon,"
continued Helene Vauquier.

"Madame had let them in with her latchkey."

"Ah, the other woman!" cried Besnard. "Had you seen her before?"

"No, monsieur."

"What was she like?"

"She was sallow, with black hair and bright eyes like beads. She was
short and about forty-five years old, though it is difficult to judge
of these things. I noticed her hands, for she was taking her gloves
off, and they seemed to me to be unusually muscular for a woman."

"Ah!" cried Louis Besnard. "That is important."

"Mme. Dauvray was, as she always was before a seance, in a feverish
flutter. 'You will help Mlle. Celie to dress, Helene, and be very
quick,' she said; and with an extraordinary longing she added, 'Perhaps
we shall see her to-night.' Her, you understand, was Mme. de Montespan."
And she turned to the stranger and said, "You will believe, Adele,
after to-night."

"Adele!" said the Commissaire wisely. "Then Adele was the strange
woman's name?"

"Perhaps," said Hanaud dryly.

Helene Vauquier reflected.

"I think Adele was the name," she said in a more doubtful tone. "It
sounded like Adele."

The irrepressible Mr. Ricardo was impelled to intervene.

"What Monsieur Hanaud means," he explained, with the pleasant air of a
man happy to illuminate the dark intelligence of a child, "is that
Adele was probably a pseudonym."

Hanaud turned to him with a savage grin.

"Now that is sure to help her!" he cried. "A pseudonym! Helene Vauquier
is sure to understand that simple and elementary word. How bright this
M. Ricardo is! Where shall we find a new pin more bright? I ask you,"
and he spread out his hands in a despairing admiration.

Mr. Ricardo flushed red, but he answered never a word. He must endure
gibes and humiliations like a schoolboy in a class. His one constant
fear was lest he should be turned out of the room. The Commissaire
diverted wrath from him however.

"What he means by pseudonym," he said to Helene Vauquier, explaining
Mr. Ricardo to her as Mr. Ricardo had presumed to explain Hanaud, "is a
false name. Adele may have been, nay, probably was, a false name
adopted by this strange woman."

"Adele, I think, was the name used," replied Helene, the doubt in her
voice diminishing as she searched her memory. "I am almost sure."

"Well, we will call her Adele," said Hanaud impatiently. "What does it
matter? Go on, Mademoiselle Vauquier."

"The lady sat upright and squarely upon the edge of a chair, with a
sort of defiance, as though she was determined nothing should convince
her, and she laughed incredulously."

Here, again, all who heard were able vividly to conjure up the
scene--the defiant sceptic sitting squarely on the edge of her chair,
removing her gloves from her muscular hands; the excited Mme. Dauvray,
so absorbed in the determination to convince; and Mlle. Celie running
from the room to put on the black gown which would not be visible in
the dim light.

"Whilst I took off mademoiselle's dress," Vauquier continued, "she
said: 'When I have gone down to the salon you can go to bed, Helene.
Mme. Adele'--yes, it was Adele--'will be fetched by a friend in a
motorcar, and I can let her out and fasten the door again. So if you
hear the car you will know that it has come for her.'"

"Oh, she said that!" said Hanaud quickly.

"Yes, monsieur."

Hanaud looked gloomily towards Wethermill. Then he exchanged a sharp
glance with the Commissaire, and moved his shoulders in an almost
imperceptible shrug. But Mr. Ricardo saw it, and construed it into one
word. He imagined a jury uttering the word "Guilty."

Helene Vauquier saw the movement too.

"Do not condemn her too quickly, monsieur," she, said, with an impulse
of remorse. "And not upon my words. For, as I say, I--hated her."

Hanaud nodded reassuringly, and she resumed:

"I was surprised, and I asked mademoiselle what she would do without
her confederate. But she laughed, and said there would be no
difficulty. That is partly why I think there was no seance held last
night. Monsieur, there was a note in her voice that evening which I did
not as yet understand. Mademoiselle then took her bath while I laid out
her black dress and the slippers with the soft, noiseless soles. And
now I tell you why I am sure there was no seance last night--why Mlle.
Celie never meant there should be one."

"Yes, let us hear that," said Hanaud curiously, and leaning forward
with his hands upon his knees.

"You have here, monsieur, a description of how mademoiselle was dressed
when she went away." Helene Vauquier picked up a sheet of paper from
the table at her side. "I wrote it out at the request of M. le
Commissaire." She handed the paper to Hanaud, who glanced through it as
she continued. "Well, except for the white lace coat, monsieur, I
dressed Mlle. Celie just in that way. She would have none of her plain
black robe. No, Mlle. Celie must wear her fine new evening frock of
pale reseda-green chiffon over soft clinging satin, which set off her
fair beauty so prettily. It left her white arms and shoulders bare, and
it had a long train, and it rustled as she moved. And with that she
must put on her pale green silk stockings, her new little satin
slippers to match, with the large paste buckles--and a sash of green
satin looped through another glittering buckle at the side of the
waist, with long ends loosely knotted together at the knee. I must tie
her fair hair with a silver ribbon, and pin upon her curls a large hat
of reseda green with a golden-brown ostrich feather drooping behind. I
warned mademoiselle that there was a tiny fire burning in the salon.
Even with the fire-screen in front of it there would still be a little
light upon the floor, and the glittering buckles on her feet would
betray her, even if the rustle of her dress did not. But she said she
would kick her slippers off. Ah, gentlemen, it is, after all, not so
that one dresses for a seance," she cried, shaking her head. "But it is
just so--is it not?--that one dresses to go to meet a lover."

The suggestion startled every one who heard it. It fairly took Mr.
Ricardo's breath away. Wethermill stepped forward with a cry of revolt.
The Commissaire exclaimed, admiringly, "But here is an idea!" Even
Hanaud sat back in his chair, though his expression lost nothing of its
impassivity, and his eyes never moved from Helene Vauquier's face.

"Listen!" she continued, "I will tell you what I think. It was my habit
to put out some sirop and lemonade and some little cakes in the
dining-room, which, as you know, is at the other side of the house
across the hall. I think it possible, messieurs, that while Mlle. Celie
was changing her dress Mme. Dauvray and the stranger, Adele, went into
the dining-room. I know that Mlle. Celie, as soon as she was dressed,
ran downstairs to the salon. Well, then, suppose Mlle. Celie had a
lover waiting with whom she meant to run away. She hurries through the
empty salon, opens the glass doors, and is gone, leaving the doors
open. And the thief, an accomplice of Adele, finds the doors open and
hides himself in the salon until Mme. Dauvray returns from the
dining-room. You see, that leaves Mlle. Celie innocent."

Vauquier leaned forward eagerly, her white face flushing. There was a
moment's silence, and then Hanaud said:

"That is all very well, Mlle. Vauquier. But it does not account for the
lace coat in which the girl went away. She must have returned to her
room to fetch that after you had gone to bed."

Helene Vauquier leaned back with an air of disappointment.

"That is true. I had forgotten the coat. I did not like Mlle. Celie,
but I am not wicked--"

"Nor for the fact that the sirop and the lemonade had not been touched
in the dining-room," said the Commissaire, interrupting her.

Again the disappointment overspread Vauquier's face.

"Is that so?" she asked. "I did not know--I have been kept a prisoner
here."

The Commissaire cut her short with a cry of satisfaction.

"Listen! listen!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Here is a theory which
accounts for all, which combines Vauquier's idea with ours, and
Vauquier's idea is, I think, very just, up to a point. Suppose, M.
Hanaud, that the girl was going to meet her lover, but the lover is the
murderer. Then all becomes clear. She does not run away to him; she
opens the door for him and lets him in."

Both Hanaud and Ricardo stole a glance at Wethermill. How did he take
the theory? Wethermill was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed,
his face white and contorted with a spasm of pain. But he had the air
of a man silently enduring an outrage rather than struck down by the
conviction that the woman he loved was worthless.

"It is not for me to say, monsieur," Helene Vauquier continued. "I only
tell you what I know. I am a woman, and it would be very difficult for
a girl who was eagerly expecting her lover so to act that another woman
would not know it. However uncultivated and ignorant the other woman
was, that at all events she would know. The knowledge would spread to
her of itself, without a word. Consider, gentlemen!" And suddenly
Helene Vauquier smiled. "A young girl tingling with excitement from
head to foot, eager that her beauty just at this moment should be more
fresh, more sweet than ever it was, careful that her dress should set
it exquisitely off. Imagine it! Her lips ready for the kiss! Oh, how
should another woman not know? I saw Mlle. Celie, her cheeks rosy, her
eyes bright. Never had she looked so lovely. The pale-green hat upon
her fair head heavy with its curls! From head to foot she looked
herself over, and then she sighed--she sighed with pleasure because she
looked so pretty. That was Mlle. Celie last night, monsieur. She
gathered up her train, took her long white gloves in the other hand,
and ran down the stairs, her heels clicking on the wood, her buckles
glittering. At the bottom she turned and said to me:

"'Remember, Helene, you can go to bed.' That was it monsieur."

And now violently the rancour of Helene Vauquier's feelings burst out
once more.

"For her the fine clothes, the pleasure, and the happiness. For me--I
could go to bed!"

Hanaud looked again at the description which Helene Vauquier had
written out, and read it through carefully. Then he asked a question,
of which Ricardo did not quite see the drift.

"So," he said, "when this morning you suggested to Monsieur the
Commissaire that it would be advisable for you to go through Mlle.
Celie's wardrobe, you found that nothing more had been taken away
except the white lace coat?"

"That is so."

"Very well. Now, after Mlle. Celie had gone down the stairs--"

"I put the lights out in her room and, as she had ordered me to do, I
went to bed. The next thing that I remember--but no! It terrifies me
too much to think of it."

Helene shuddered and covered her face spasmodically with her hands.
Hanaud drew her hands gently down.

"Courage! You are safe now, mademoiselle. Calm yourself!"

She lay back with her eyes closed.

"Yes, yes; it is true. I am safe now. But oh! I feel I shall never dare
to sleep again!" And the tears swam in her eyes. "I woke up with a
feeling of being suffocated. Mon Dieu! There was the light burning in
the room, and a woman, the strange woman with the strong hands, was
holding me down by the shoulders, while a man with his cap drawn over
his eyes and a little black moustache pressed over my lips a pad from
which a horribly sweet and sickly taste filled my mouth. Oh, I was
terrified! I could not scream. I struggled. The woman told me roughly
to keep quiet. But I could not. I must struggle. And then with a
brutality unheard of she dragged me up on to my knees while the man
kept the pad right over my mouth. The man, with the arm which was free,
held me close to him, and she bound my hands with a cord behind me.
Look!"

She held out her wrists. They were terribly bruised. Red and angry
lines showed where the cord had cut deeply into her flesh.

"Then they flung me down again upon my back, and the next thing I
remember is the doctor standing over me and this kind nurse supporting
me."

She sank back exhausted in her chair and wiped her forehead with her
handkerchief. The sweat stood upon it in beads.

"Thank you, mademoiselle," said Hanaud gravely. "This has been a trying
ordeal for you. I understand that. But we are coming to the end. I want
you to read this description of Mlle. Celie through again to make sure
that nothing is omitted." He gave the paper into the maid's hands. "It
will be advertised, so it is important that it should be complete. See
that you have left out nothing."

Helene Vauquier bent her head over the paper.

"No," said Helene at last. "I do not think I have omitted anything."
And she handed the paper back.

"I asked you," Hanaud continued suavely, "because I understand that
Mlle. Celie usually wore a pair of diamond ear-drops, and they are not
mentioned here."

A faint colour came into the maid's face.

"That is true, monsieur. I had forgotten. It is quite true."

"Any one might forget," said Hanaud, with a reassuring smile. "But you
will remember now. Think! think! Did Mlle. Celie wear them last night?"
He leaned forward, waiting for her reply. Wethermill too, made a
movement. Both men evidently thought the point of great importance. The
maid looked at Hanaud for a few moments without speaking.

"It is not from me, mademoiselle, that you will get the answer," said
Hanaud quietly.

"No, monsieur. I was thinking," said the maid, her face flushing at the
rebuke.

"Did she wear them when she went down the stairs last night?" he
insisted.

"I think she wore them," she said doubtfully. "Ye-es--yes," and the
words came now firm and clear. "I remember well. Mlle. Celie had taken
them off before her bath, and they lay on the dressing-table. She put
them into her ears while I dressed her hair and arranged the bow of
ribbon in it."

"Then we will add the earrings to your description," said Hanaud, as he
rose from his chair with the paper in his hand, "and for the moment we
need not trouble you any more about Mademoiselle Celie." He folded the
paper up, slipped it into his letter-case, and put it away in his
pocket. "Let us consider that poor Madame Dauvray! Did she keep much
money in the house?"

"No, monsieur; very little. She was well known in Aix and her cheques
were everywhere accepted without question. It was a high pleasure to
serve madame, her credit was so good," said Helene Vauquier, raising
her head as though she herself had a share in the pride of that good
credit.

"No doubt," Hanaud agreed. "There are many fine households where the
banking account is overdrawn, and it cannot be pleasant for the
servants."

"They are put to so many shifts to hide it from the servants of their
neighbours," said Helene. "Besides," and she made a little grimace of
contempt, "a fine household and an overdrawn banking account--it is
like a ragged petticoat under a satin dress. That was never the case
with Madame Dauvray."

"So that she was under no necessity to have ready money always in her
pocket," said Hanaud. "I understand that. But at times perhaps she won
at the Villa des Fleurs?"

Helene Vauquier shook her head.

"She loved the Villa des Fleurs, but she never played for high sums and
often never played at all. If she won a few louis, she was as delighted
with her gains and as afraid to lose them again at the tables as if she
were of the poorest, and she stopped at once. No, monsieur; twenty or
thirty louis--there was never more than that in the house."

"Then it was certainly for her famous collection of jewellery that
Madame Dauvray was murdered?"

"Certainly, monsieur."

"Now, where did she keep her jewellery?"

"In a safe in her bedroom, monsieur. Every night she took off what she
had been wearing and locked it up with the rest. She was never too
tired for that."

"And what did she do with the keys?"

"That I cannot tell you. Certainly she locked her rings and necklaces
away whilst I undressed her. And she laid the keys upon the
dressing-table or the mantel-shelf--anywhere. But in the morning the
keys were no longer where she had left them. She had put them secretly
away."

Hanaud turned to another point.

"I suppose that Mademoiselle Celie knew of the safe and that the jewels
were kept there?"

"Oh yes! Mademoiselle indeed was often in Madame Dauvray's room when
she was dressing or undressing. She must often have seen madame take
them out and lock them up again. But then, monsieur, so did I."

Hanaud nodded to her with a friendly smile.

"Thank you once more, mademoiselle," he said. "The torture is over. But
of course Monsieur Fleuriot will require your presence."

Helene Vauquier looked anxiously towards him.

"But meanwhile I can go from this villa, monsieur?" she pleaded, with a
trembling voice.

"Certainly; you shall go to your friends at once."

"Oh, monsieur, thank you!" she cried, and suddenly she gave way. The
tears began to flow from her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and
sobbed. "It is foolish of me, but what would you?" She jerked out the
words between her sobs. "It has been too terrible."

"Yes, yes," said Hanaud soothingly. "The nurse will put a few things
together for you in a bag. You will not leave Aix, of course, and I
will send some one with you to your friends."

The maid started violently.

"Oh, not a sergent-de-ville, monsieur, I beg of you. I should be
disgraced."

"No. It shall be a man in plain clothes, to see that you are not
hindered by reporters on the way."

Hanaud turned towards the door. On the dressing-table a cord was lying.
He took it up and spoke to the nurse.

"Was this the cord with which Helene Vauquier's hands were tied?"

"Yes, monsieur," she replied.

Hanaud handed it to the Commissaire.

"It will be necessary to keep that," he said.

It was a thin piece of strong whipcord. It was the same kind of cord as
that which had been found tied round Mme. Dauvray's throat. Hanaud
opened the door and turned back to the nurse.

"We will send for a cab for Mlle. Vauquier. You will drive with her to
her door. I think after that she will need no further help. Pack up a
few things and bring them down. Mlle. Vauquier can follow, no doubt,
now without assistance." And, with a friendly nod, he left the room.

Ricardo had been wondering, through the examination, in what light
Hanaud considered Helene Vauquier. He was sympathetic, but the sympathy
might merely have been assumed to deceive. His questions betrayed in no
particular the colour of his mind. Now, however, he made himself clear.
He informed the nurse, in the plainest possible way, that she was no
longer to act as jailer. She was to bring Vauquier's things down; but
Vauquier could follow by herself. Evidently Helene Vauquier was cleared.




CHAPTER VII

A STARTLING DISCOVERY


Harry Wethermill, however, was not so easily satisfied.

"Surely, monsieur, it would be well to know whither she is going," he
said, "and to make sure that when she has gone there she will stay
there--until we want her again?"

Hanaud looked at the young man pityingly.

"I can understand, monsieur, that you hold strong views about Helene
Vauquier. You are human, like the rest of us. And what she has said to
us just now would not make you more friendly. But--but--" and he
preferred to shrug his shoulders rather than to finish in words his
sentence. "However," he said, "we shall take care to know where Helene
Vauquier is staying. Indeed, if she is at all implicated in this affair
we shall learn more if we leave her free than if we keep her under lock
and key. You see that if we leave her quite free, but watch her very,
very carefully, so as to awaken no suspicion, she may be emboldened to
do something rash--or the others may."

Mr. Ricardo approved of Hanaud's reasoning.

"That is quite true," he said. "She might write a letter."

"Yes, or receive one," added Hanaud, "which would be still more
satisfactory for us--supposing, of course, that she has anything to do
with this affair"; and again he shrugged his shoulders. He turned
towards the Commissaire.

"You have a discreet officer whom you can trust?" he asked.

"Certainly. A dozen."

"I want only one."

"And here he is," said the Commissaire.

They were descending the stairs. On the landing of the first floor
Durette, the man who had discovered where the cord was bought, was
still waiting. Hanaud took Durette by the sleeve in the familiar way
which he so commonly used and led him to the top of the stairs, where
the two men stood for a few moments apart. It was plain that Hanaud was
giving, Durette receiving, definite instructions. Durette descended the
stairs; Hanaud came back to the others.

"I have told him to fetch a cab," he said, "and convey Helene Vauquier
to her friends." Then he looked at Ricardo, and from Ricardo to the
Commissaire, while he rubbed his hand backwards and forwards across his
shaven chin.

"I tell you," he said, "I find this sinister little drama very
interesting to me. The sordid, miserable struggle for mastery in this
household of Mme. Dauvray--eh? Yes, very interesting. Just as much
patience, just as much effort, just as much planning for this small end
as a general uses to defeat an army--and, at the last, nothing gained.
What else is politics? Yes, very interesting."

His eyes rested upon Wethermill's face for a moment, but they gave the
young man no hope. He took a key from his pocket.

"We need not keep this room locked," he said. "We know all that there
is to be known." And he inserted the key into the lock of Celia's room
and turned it.

"But is that wise, monsieur?" said Besnard.

Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not?" he asked.

"The case is in your hands," said the Commissaire. To Ricardo the
proceedings seemed singularly irregular. But if the Commissaire was
content, it was not for him to object.

"And where is my excellent friend Perrichet?" asked Hanaud; and leaning
over the balustrade he called him up from the hall.

"We will now," said Hanaud, "have a glance into this poor murdered
woman's room."

The room was opposite to Celia's. Besnard produced the key and unlocked
the door. Hanaud took off his hat upon the threshold and then passed
into the room with his companions. Upon the bed, outlined under a
sheet, lay the rigid form of Mme. Dauvray. Hanaud stepped gently to the
bedside and reverently uncovered the face. For a moment all could see
it--livid, swollen, unhuman.

"A brutal business," he said in a low voice, and when he turned again
to his companions his face was white and sickly. He replaced the sheet
and gazed about the room.

It was decorated and furnished in the same style as the salon
downstairs, yet the contrast between the two rooms was remarkable.

Downstairs, in the salon, only a chair had been overturned. Here there
was every sign of violence and disorder. An empty safe stood open in
one corner; the rugs upon the polished floor had been tossed aside;
every drawer had been torn open, every wardrobe burst; the very bed had
been moved from its position.

"It was in this safe that Madame Dauvray hid her jewels each night,"
said the Commissaire as Hanaud gazed about the room.

"Oh, was it so?" Hanaud asked slowly. It seemed to Ricardo that he read
something in the aspect of this room too, which troubled his mind and
increased his perplexity.

"Yes," said Besnard confidently. "Every night Mme. Dauvray locked her
jewels away in this safe. Vauquier told us so this morning. Every night
she was never too tired for that. Besides, here"--and putting his hand
into the safe he drew out a paper--"here is the list of Mme. Dauvray's
jewellery."

Plainly, however, Hanaud was not satisfied. He took the list and
glanced through the items. But his thoughts were not concerned with it.

"If that is so," he said slowly, "Mme. Dauvray kept her jewels in this
safe, why has every drawer been ransacked, why was the bed moved?
Perrichet, lock the door--quietly--from the inside. That is right. Now
lean your back against it."

Hanaud waited until he saw Perrichet's broad back against the door.
Then he went down upon his knees, and, tossing the rugs here and there,
examined with the minutest care the inlaid floor. By the side of the
bed a Persian mat of blue silk was spread. This in its turn he moved
quickly aside. He bent his eyes to the ground, lay prone, moved this
way and that to catch the light upon the floor, then with a spring he
rose upon his knees. He lifted his finger to his lips. In a dead
silence he drew a pen-knife quickly from his pocket and opened it. He
bent down again and inserted the blade between the cracks of the
blocks. The three men in the room watched him with an intense
excitement. A block of wood rose from the floor, he pulled it out, laid
it noiselessly down, and inserted his hand into the opening.

Wethermill at Ricardo's elbow uttered a stifled cry. "Hush!" whispered
Hanaud angrily. He drew out his hand again. It was holding a green
leather jewel-case. He opened it, and a diamond necklace flashed its
thousand colours in their faces. He thrust in his hand again and again
and again, and each time that he withdrew it, it held a jewel-case.
Before the astonished eyes of his companions he opened them. Ropes of
pearls, collars of diamonds, necklaces of emeralds, rings of
pigeon-blood rubies, bracelets of gold studded with opals--Mme.
Dauvray's various jewellery was disclosed.

"But that is astounding," said Besnard, in an awe-struck voice.

"Then she was never robbed after all?" cried Ricardo.

Hanaud rose to his feet.

"What a piece of irony!" he whispered. "The poor woman is murdered for
her jewels, the room's turned upside down, and nothing is found. For
all the while they lay safe in this cache. Nothing is taken except what
she wore. Let us see what she wore."

"Only a few rings, Helene Vauquier thought," said Besnard. "But she was
not sure."

"Ah!" said Hanaud. "Well, let us make sure!" and, taking the list from
the safe, he compared it with the jewellery in the cases on the floor,
ticking off the items one by one. When he had finished he knelt down
again, and, thrusting his hand into the hole, felt carefully about.

"There is a pearl necklace missing," he said. "A valuable necklace,
from the description in the list and some rings. She must have been
wearing them;" and he sat back upon his heels. "We will send the
intelligent Perrichet for a bag," he said, "and we will counsel the
intelligent Perrichet not to breathe a word to any living soul of what
he has seen in this room. Then we will seal up in the bag the jewels,
and we will hand it over to M. le Commissaire, who will convey it with
the greatest secrecy out of this villa. For the list--I will keep it,"
and he placed it carefully in his pocket-book.

He unlocked the door and went out himself on to the landing. He looked
down the stairs and up the stairs; then he beckoned Perrichet to him.

"Go!" he whispered. "Be quick, and when you come back hide the bag
carefully under your coat."

Perrichet went down the stairs with pride written upon his face. Was he
not assisting the great M. Hanaud from the Surete in Paris? Hanaud
returned into Mme. Dauvray's room and closed the door. He looked into
the eyes of his companions.

"Can't you see the scene?" he asked with a queer smile of excitement.
He had forgotten Wethermill; he had forgotten even the dead woman
shrouded beneath the sheet. He was absorbed. His eyes were bright, his
whole face vivid with life. Ricardo saw the real man at this
moment--and feared for the happiness of Harry Wethermill. For nothing
would Hanaud now turn aside until he had reached the truth and set his
hands upon the quarry. Of that Ricardo felt sure. He was trying now to
make his companions visualise just what he saw and understood.

"Can't you see it? The old woman locking up her jewels in this safe
every night before the eyes of her maid or her companion, and then, as
soon as she was alone, taking them stealthily out of the safe and
hiding them in this secret place. But I tell you--this is human. Yes,
it is interesting just because it is so human. Then picture to
yourselves last night, the murderers opening this safe and finding
nothing--oh, but nothing!--and ransacking the room in deadly haste,
kicking up the rugs, forcing open the drawers, and always finding
nothing--nothing--nothing. Think of their rage, their stupefaction, and
finally their fear! They must go, and with one pearl necklace, when
they had hoped to reap a great fortune. Oh, but this is
interesting--yes, I tell you--I, who have seen many strange
things--this is interesting."

Perrichet returned with a canvas bag, into which Hanaud placed the
jewel-cases. He sealed the bag in the presence of the four men and
handed it to Besnard. He replaced the block of wood in the floor,
covered it over again with the rug, and rose to his feet.

"Listen!" he said, in a low voice, and with a gravity which impressed
them all. "There is something in this house which I do not understand.
I have told you so. I tell you something more now. I am afraid--I am
afraid." And the word startled his hearers like a thunderclap, though
it was breathed no louder than a whisper, "Yes, my friends," he
repeated, nodding his head, "terribly afraid." And upon the others fell
a discomfort, an awe, as though something sinister and dangerous were
present in the room and close to them. So vivid was the feeling,
instinctively they drew nearer together. "Now, I warn you solemnly.
There must be no whisper that these jewels have been discovered; no
newspaper must publish a hint of it; no one must suspect that here in
this room we have found them. Is that understood?"

"Certainly," said the Commissaire.

"Yes," said Mr. Ricardo.

"To be sure, monsieur," said Perrichet.

As for Harry Wethermill, he made no reply. His burning eyes were fixed
upon Hanaud's face, and that was all. Hanaud, for his part, asked for
no reply from him. Indeed, he did not look towards Harry Wethermill's
face at all. Ricardo understood. Hanaud did not mean to be deterred by
the suffering written there.

He went down again into the little gay salon lit with flowers and
August sunlight, and stood beside the couch gazing at it with troubled
eyes. And, as he gazed, he closed his eyes and shivered. He shivered
like a man who has taken a sudden chill. Nothing in all this morning's
investigations, not even the rigid body beneath the sheet, nor the
strange discovery of the jewels, had so impressed Ricardo. For there he
had been confronted with facts, definite and complete; here was a
suggestion of unknown horrors, a hint, not a fact, compelling the
imagination to dark conjecture. Hanaud shivered. That he had no idea
why Hanaud shivered made the action still more significant, still more
alarming. And it was not Ricardo alone who was moved by it. A voice of
despair rang through the room. The voice was Harry Wethermill's, and
his face was ashy white.

"Monsieur!" he cried, "I do not know what makes you shudder; but I am
remembering a few words you used this morning."

Hanaud turned upon his heel. His face was drawn and grey and his eyes
blazed.

"My friend, I also am remembering those words," he said. Thus the two
men stood confronting one another, eye to eye, with awe and fear in
both their faces.

Ricardo was wondering to what words they both referred, when the sound
of wheels broke in upon the silence. The effect upon Hanaud was
magical. He thrust his hands in his pockets.

"Helene Vauquier's cab," he said lightly. He drew out his
cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette.

"Let us see that poor woman safely off. It is a closed cab I hope."

It was a closed landau. It drove past the open door of the salon to the
front door of the house. In Hanaud's wake they all went out into the
hall. The nurse came down alone carrying Helene Vauquier's bag. She
placed it in the cab and waited in the doorway.

"Perhaps Helene Vauquier has fainted," she said anxiously: "she does
not come." And she moved towards the stairs.

Hanaud took a singularly swift step forward and stopped her.

"Why should you think that?" he asked, with a queer smile upon his
face, and as he spoke a door closed gently upstairs. "See," he
continued, "you are wrong: she is coming."

Ricardo was puzzled. It had seemed to him that the door which had
closed so gently was nearer than Helene Vauquier's door. It seemed to
him that the door was upon the first, not the second landing. But
Hanaud had noticed nothing strange; so it could not be. He greeted
Helene Vauquier with a smile as she came down the stairs.

"You are better, mademoiselle," he said politely. "One can see that.
There is more colour in your cheeks. A day or two, and you will be
yourself again."

He held the door open while she got into the cab. The nurse took her
seat beside her; Durette mounted on the box. The cab turned and went
down the drive.

"Goodbye, mademoiselle," cried Hanaud, and he watched until the high
shrubs hid the cab from his eyes. Then he behaved in an extraordinary
way. He turned and sprang like lightning up the stairs. His agility
amazed Ricardo. The others followed upon his heels. He flung himself at
Celia's door and opened it He burst into the room, stood for a second,
then ran to the window. He hid behind the curtain, looking out. With
his hand he waved to his companions to keep back. The sound of wheels
creaking and rasping rose to their ears. The cab had just come out into
the road. Durette upon the box turned and looked towards the house.
Just for a moment Hanaud leaned from the window, as Besnard, the
Commissaire, had done, and, like Besnard again, he waved his hand. Then
he came back into the room and saw, standing in front of him, with his
mouth open and his eyes starting out of his head, Perrichet--the
intelligent Perrichet.

"Monsieur," cried Perrichet, "something has been taken from this room."

Hanaud looked round the room and shook his head.

"No," he said.

"But yes, monsieur," Perrichet insisted. "Oh, but yes. See! Upon this
dressing-table there was a small pot of cold cream. It stood here,
where my finger is, when we were in this room an hour ago. Now it is
gone."

Hanaud burst into a laugh.

"My friend Perrichet," he said ironically, "I will tell you the
newspaper did not do you justice. You are more intelligent. The truth,
my excellent friend, lies at the bottom of a well; but you would find
it at the bottom of a pot of cold cream. Now let us go. For in this
house, gentlemen, we have nothing more to do."

He passed out of the room. Perrichet stood aside, his face crimson, his
attitude one of shame. He had been rebuked by the great M. Hanaud, and
justly rebuked. He knew it now. He had wished to display his
intelligence--yes, at all costs he must show how intelligent he was.
And he had shown himself a fool. He should have kept silence about that
pot of cream.




CHAPTER VIII

THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP


Hanaud walked away from the Villa Rose in the company of Wethermill and
Ricardo.

"We will go and lunch," he said.

"Yes; come to my hotel," said Harry Wethermill. But Hanaud shook his
head.

"No; come with me to the Villa des Fleurs," he replied. "We may learn
something there; and in a case like this every minute is of importance.
We have to be quick."

"I may come too?" cried Mr. Ricardo eagerly.

"By all means," replied Hanaud, with a smile of extreme courtesy.
"Nothing could be more delicious than monsieur's suggestions"; and with
that remark he walked on silently.

Mr. Ricardo was in a little doubt as to the exact significance of the
words. But he was too excited to dwell long upon them. Distressed
though he sought to be at his friend's grief, he could not but assume
an air of importance. All the artist in him rose joyfully to the
occasion. He looked upon himself from the outside. He fancied without
the slightest justification that people were pointing him out. "That
man has been present at the investigation at the Villa Rose," he seemed
to hear people say. "What strange things he could tell us if he would!"

And suddenly, Mr. Ricardo began to reflect. What, after all, could he
have told them?

And that question he turned over in his mind while he ate his luncheon.
Hanaud wrote a letter between the courses. They were sitting at a
corner table, and Hanaud was in the corner with his back to the wall.
He moved his plate, too, over the letter as he wrote it. It would have
been impossible for either of his guests to see what he had written,
even if they had wished. Ricardo, indeed, did wish. He rather resented
the secrecy with which the detective, under a show of openness,
shrouded his thoughts and acts. Hanaud sent the waiter out to fetch an
officer in plain clothes, who was in attendance at the door, and he
handed the letter to this man. Then he turned with an apology to his
guests.

"It is necessary that we should find out," he explained, "as soon as
possible, the whole record of Mlle. Celie."

He lighted a cigar, and over the coffee he put a question to Ricardo.

"Now tell me what you make of the case. What M. Wethermill thinks--that
is clear, is it not? Helene Vauquier is the guilty one. But you, M.
Ricardo? What is your opinion?"

Ricardo took from his pocket-book a sheet of paper and from his pocket
a pencil. He was intensely flattered by the request of Hanaud, and he
proposed to do himself justice. "I will make a note here of what I
think the salient features of the mystery"; and he proceeded to
tabulate the points in the following way:

(1) Celia Harland made her entrance into Mme. Dauvray's household under
very doubtful circumstances.

(2) By methods still more doubtful she acquired an extraordinary
ascendency over Mme. Dauvray's mind.

(3) If proof were needed how complete that ascendency was, a glance at
Celia Harland's wardrobe would suffice; for she wore the most expensive
clothes.

(4) It was Celia Harland who arranged that Servettaz, the chauffeur,
should be absent at Chambery on the Tuesday night--the night of the
murder.

(5) It was Celia Harland who bought the cord with which Mme. Dauvray
was strangled and Helene Vauquier bound.

(6) The footsteps outside the salon show that Celia Harland ran from
the salon to the motor-car.

(7) Celia Harland pretended that there should be a seance on the
Tuesday, but she dressed as though she had in view an appointment with
a lover, instead of a spiritualistic seance.

(8) Celia Harland has disappeared.

These eight points are strongly suggestive of Celia Harland's
complicity in the murder. But I have no clue which will enable me to
answer the following questions:

(a) Who was the man who took part in the crime? (b) Who was the woman
who came to the villa on the evening of the murder with Mme. Dauvray
and Celia Harland?

(c) What actually happened in the salon? How was the murder committed?

(d) Is Helene Vauquier's story true?

(e) What did the torn-up scrap of writing mean? (Probably spirit
writing in Celia Harland's hand.)

(f) Why has one cushion on the settee a small, fresh, brown stain,
which is probably blood? Why is the other cushion torn?

Mr. Ricardo had a momentary thought of putting down yet another
question. He was inclined to ask whether or no a pot of cold cream had
disappeared from Celia Harland's bedroom; but he remembered that Hanaud
had set no store upon that incident, and he refrained. Moreover, he had
come to the end of his sheet of paper. He handed it across the table to
Hanaud and leaned back in his chair, watching the detective with all
the eagerness of a young author submitting his first effort to a critic.

Hanaud read it through slowly. At the end he nodded his head in
approval.

"Now we will see what M. Wethermill has to say," he said, and he
stretched out the paper towards Harry Wethermill, who throughout the
luncheon had not said a word.

"No, no," cried Ricardo.

But Harry Wethermill already held the written sheet in his hand. He
smiled rather wistfully at his friend.

"It is best that I should know just what you both think," he said, and
in his turn he began to read the paper through. He read the first eight
points, and then beat with his fist upon the table.

"No no," he cried; "it is not possible! I don't blame you, Ricardo.
These are facts, and, as I said, I can face facts. But there will be an
explanation--if only we can discover it."

He buried his face for a moment in his hands. Then he took up the paper
again.

"As for the rest, Helene Vauquier lied," he cried violently, and he
tossed the paper to Hanaud. "What do you make of it?"

Hanaud smiled and shook his head.

"Did you ever go for a voyage on a ship?" he asked.

"Yes; why?"

"Because every day at noon three officers take an observation to
determine the ship's position--the captain, the first officer, and the
second officer. Each writes his observation down, and the captain takes
the three observations and compares them. If the first or second
officer is out in his reckoning, the captain tells him so, but he does
not show his own. For at times, no doubt, he is wrong too. So,
gentlemen, I criticise your observations, but I do not show you mine."

He took up Ricardo's paper and read it through again.

"Yes," he said pleasantly. "But the two questions which are most
important, which alone can lead us to the truth--how do they come to be
omitted from your list, Mr. Ricardo?"

Hanaud put the question with his most serious air. But Ricardo was none
the less sensible of the raillery behind the solemn manner. He flushed
and made no answer.

"Still," continued Hanaud, "here are undoubtedly some questions. Let us
consider them! Who was the man who took a part in the crime? Ah, if we
only knew that, what a lot of trouble we should save ourselves! Who was
the woman? What a good thing it would be to know that too! How clearly,
after all, Mr. Ricardo puts his finger on the important points! What
did actually happen in the salon?" And as he quoted that question the
raillery died out of his voice. He leaned his elbows on the table and
bent forward.

"What did actually happen in that little pretty room, just twelve hours
ago?" he repeated. "When no sunlight blazed upon the lawn, and all the
birds were still, and all the windows shuttered and the world dark,
what happened? What dreadful things happened? We have not much to go
upon. Let us formulate what we know. We start with this. The murder was
not the work of a moment. It was planned with great care and cunning,
and carried out to the letter of the plan. There must be no noise, no
violence. On each side of the Villa Rose there are other villas; a few
yards away the road runs past. A scream, a cry, the noise of a
struggle--these sounds, or any one of them, might be fatal to success.
Thus the crime was planned; and there WAS no scream, there WAS no
struggle. Not a chair was broken, and only a chair upset. Yes, there
were brains behind that murder. We know that. But what do we know of
the plan? How far can we build it up? Let us see. First, there was an
accomplice in the house--perhaps two."

"No!" cried Harry Wethermill.

Hanaud took no notice of the interruption.

"Secondly the woman came to the house with Mme. Dauvray and Mlle. Celie
between nine and half-past nine. Thirdly, the man came afterwards, but
before eleven, set open the gate, and was admitted into the salon,
unperceived by Mme. Dauvray. That also we can safely assume. But what
happened in the salon? Ah! There is the question." Then he shrugged his
shoulders and said with the note of raillery once more in his voice:

"But why should we trouble our heads to puzzle out this mystery, since
M. Ricardo knows?"

"I?" cried Ricardo in amazement.

"To be sure," replied Hanaud calmly. "For I look at another of your
questions. 'WHAT DID THE TORN-UP SCRAP OF WRITING MEAN?' and you add:
'Probably spirit-writing.' Then there was a seance held last night in
the little salon! Is that so?"

Harry Wethermill started. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss.

"I had not followed my suggestion to its conclusion," he admitted
humbly.

"No," said Hanaud. "But I ask myself in sober earnest, 'Was there a
seance held in the salon last night?' Did the tambourine rattle in the
darkness on the wall?"

"But if Helene Vauquier's story is all untrue?" cried Wethermill, again
in exasperation.

"Patience, my friend. Her story was not all untrue. I say there were
brains behind this crime; yes, but brains, even the cleverest, would
not have invented this queer, strange story of the seances and of Mme.
de Montespan. That is truth. But yet, if there were a seance held, if
the scrap of paper were spirit-writing in answer to some awkward
question, why--and here I come to my first question, which M. Ricardo
has omitted--why did Mlle. Celie dress herself with so much elegance
last night? What Vauquier said is true. Her dress was not suited to a
seance. A light-coloured, rustling frock, which would be visible in a
dim light, or even in the dark, which would certainly be heard at every
movement she made, however lightly she stepped, and a big hat--no no! I
tell you, gentlemen, we shall not get to the bottom of this mystery
until we know why Mlle. Celie dressed herself as she did last night."

"Yes," Ricardo admitted. "I overlooked that point." "Did she--" Hanaud
broke off and bowed to Wethermill with a grace and a respect which
condoned his words. "You must bear with me, my young friend, while I
consider all these points. Did she expect to join that night a lover--a
man with the brains to devise this crime? But if so--and here I come to
the second question omitted from M. Ricardo's list--why, on the patch
of grass outside the door of the salon, were the footsteps of the man
and woman so carefully erased, and the footsteps of Mlle. Celie--those
little footsteps so easily identified--left for all the world to see
and recognise?"

Ricardo felt like a child in the presence of his schoolmaster. He was
convicted of presumption. He had set down his questions with the belief
that they covered the ground. And here were two of the utmost
importance, not forgotten, but never even thought of.

"Did she go, before the murder, to join a lover? Or after it? At some
time, you will remember, according to Vauquier's story, she must have
run upstairs to fetch her coat. Was the murder committed during the
interval when she was upstairs? Was the salon dark when she came down
again? Did she run through it quickly, eagerly, noticing nothing amiss?
And, indeed, how should she notice anything if the salon were dark, and
Mme. Dauvray's body lay under the windows at the side?"

Ricardo leaned forward eagerly.

"That must be the truth," he cried; and Wethermill's voice broke
hastily in:

"It is not the truth and I will tell you why. Celia Harland was to have
married me this week."

There was so much pain and misery in his voice that Ricardo was moved
as he had seldom been. Wethermill buried his face in his hands. Hanaud
shook his head and gazed across the table at Ricardo with an expression
which the latter was at no loss to understand. Lovers were
impracticable people. But he--Hanaud--he knew the world. Women had
fooled men before to-day.

Wethermill snatched his hands away from before his face.

"We talk theories," he cried desperately, "of what may have happened at
the villa. But we are not by one inch nearer to the man and woman who
committed the crime. It is for them we have to search."

"Yes; but except by asking ourselves questions, how shall we find them,
M. Wethermill?" said Hanaud. "Take the man! We know nothing of him. He
has left no trace. Look at this town of Aix, where people come and go
like a crowd about the baccarat-table! He may be at Marseilles to-day.
He may be in this very room where we are taking our luncheon. How shall
we find him?"

Wethermill nodded his head in a despairing assent.

"I know. But it is so hard to sit still and do nothing," he cried.

"Yes, but we are not sitting still," said Hanaud; and Wethermill looked
up with a sudden interest. "All the time that we have been lunching
here the intelligent Perrichet has been making inquiries. Mme. Dauvray
and Mlle. Celie left the Villa Rose at five, and returned on foot soon
after nine with the strange woman. And there I see Perrichet himself
waiting to be summoned."

Hanaud beckoned towards the sergent-de-ville.

"Perrichet will make an excellent detective," he said; "for he looks
more bovine and foolish in plain clothes than he does in uniform."

Perrichet advanced in his mufti to the table.

"Speak, my friend," said Hanaud.

"I went to the shop of M. Corval. Mlle. Celie was quite alone when she
bought the cord. But a few minutes later, in the Rue du Casino, she and
Mme. Dauvray were seen together, walking slowly in the direction of the
villa. No other woman was with them."

"That is a pity," said Hanaud quietly, and with a gesture he dismissed
Perrichet.

"You see, we shall find out nothing--nothing," said Wethermill, with a
groan.

"We must not yet lose heart, for we know a little more about the woman
than we do about the man," said Hanaud consolingly.

"True," exclaimed Ricardo. "We have Helene Vauquier's description of
her. We must advertise it."

Hanaud smiled.

"But that is a fine suggestion," he cried. "We must think over that,"
and he clapped his hand to his forehead with a gesture of
self-reproach. "Why did not such a fine idea occur to me, fool that I
am! However, we will call the head waiter."

The head waiter was sent for and appeared before them.

"You knew Mme. Dauvray?" Hanaud asked.

"Yes, monsieur--oh, the poor woman! And he flung up his hands.

"And you knew her young companion?"

"Oh yes, monsieur. They generally had their meals here. See, at that
little table over there! I kept it for them. But monsieur knows
well"--and the waiter looked towards Harry Wethermill--"for monsieur
was often with them."

"Yes," said Hanaud. "Did Mme. Dauvray dine at that little table last
night?"

"No, monsieur. She was not here last night."

"Nor Mlle. Celie?"

"No, monsieur! I do not think they were in the Villa des Fleurs at all."

"We know they were not," exclaimed Ricardo. "Wethermill and I were in
the rooms and we did not see them."

"But perhaps you left early," objected Hanaud.

"No," said Ricardo. "It was just ten o'clock when we reached the
Majestic."

"You reached your hotel at ten," Hanaud repeated. "Did you walk
straight from here?"

"Yes."

"Then you left here about a quarter to ten. And we know that Mme.
Dauvray was back at the villa soon after nine. Yes--they could not have
been here last night," Hanaud agreed, and sat for a moment silent. Then
he turned to the head waiter.

"Have you noticed any woman with Mme. Dauvray and her companion lately?"

"No, monsieur. I do not think so."

"Think! A woman, for instance, with red hair."

Harry Wethermill started forward. Mr. Ricardo stared at Hanaud in
amazement. The waiter reflected.

"No, monsieur. I have seen no woman with red hair."

"Thank you," said Hanaud, and the waiter moved away.

"A woman with red hair!" cried Wethermill. "But Helene Vauquier
described her. She was sallow; her eyes, her hair, were dark."

Hanaud turned with a smile to Harry Wethermill.

"Did Helene Vauquier, then, speak the truth?" he asked. "No; the woman
who was in the salon last night, who returned home with Mme. Dauvray
and Mlle. Celie, was not a woman with black hair and bright black eyes.
Look!" And, fetching his pocket-book from his pocket, he unfolded a
sheet of paper and showed them, lying upon its white surface a long red
hair.

"I picked that up on the table--the round satinwood table in the salon.
It was easy not to see it, but I did see it. Now, that is not Mlle.
Celie's hair, which is fair; nor Mme. Dauvray's, which is dyed brown;
nor Helene Vauquier's, which is black; nor the charwoman's, which, as I
have taken the trouble to find out, is grey. It is therefore from the
head of our unknown woman. And I will tell you more. This woman with
the red hair--she is in Geneva."

A startled exclamation burst from Ricardo. Harry Wethermill sat slowly
down. For the first time that day there had come some colour into his
cheeks, a sparkle into his eye.

"But that is wonderful!" he cried. "How did you find that out?"

Hanaud leaned back in his chair and took a pull at his cigar. He was
obviously pleased with Wethermill's admiration.

"Yes, how did you find it out?" Ricardo repeated.

Hanaud smiled.

"As to that," he said, "remember I am the captain of the ship, and I do
not show you my observation." Ricardo was disappointed. Harry
Wethermill, however, started to his feet.

"We must search Geneva, then," he cried. "It is there that we should
be, not here drinking our coffee at the Villa des Fleurs."

Hanaud raised his hand.

"The search is not being overlooked. But Geneva is a big city. It is
not easy to search Geneva and find, when we know nothing about the
woman for whom we are searching, except that her hair is red, and that
probably a young girl last night was with her. It is rather here, I
think--in Aix--that we must keep our eyes wide open."

"Here!" cried Wethermill in exasperation. He stared at Hanaud as though
he were mad.

"Yes, here; at the post office--at the telephone exchange. Suppose that
the man is in Aix, as he may well be; some time he will wish to send a
letter, or a telegram, or a message over the telephone. That, I tell
you, is our chance. But here is news for us."

Hanaud pointed to a messenger who was walking towards them. The man
handed Hanaud an envelope.

"From M. le Commissaire," he said; and he saluted and retired. "From M.
le Commissaire?" cried Ricardo excitedly.

But before Hanaud could open the envelope Harry Wethermill laid a hand
upon his sleeve.

"Before we pass to something new, M. Hanaud," he said, "I should be
very glad if you would tell me what made you shiver in the salon this
morning. It has distressed me ever since. What was it that those two
cushions had to tell you?"

There was a note of anguish in his voice difficult to resist. But
Hanaud resisted it. He shook his head.

"Again," he said gravely, "I am to remind you that I am captain of the
ship and do not show my observation."

He tore open the envelope and sprang up from his seat.

"Mme. Dauvray's motor-car has been found," he cried. "Let us go!"

Hanaud called for the bill and paid it. The three men left the Villa
des Fleurs together.




CHAPTER IX

MME. DAUVRAY'S MOTOR-CAR


They got into a cab outside the door. Perrichet mounted the box, and
the cab was driven along the upward-winding road past the Hotel
Bernascon. A hundred yards beyond the hotel the cab stopped opposite to
a villa. A hedge separated the garden of the villa from the road, and
above the hedge rose a board with the words "To Let" upon it. At the
gate a gendarme was standing, and just within the gate Ricardo saw
Louis Besnard, the Commissaire, and Servettaz, Mme. Dauvray's chauffeur.

"It is here," said Besnard, as the party descended from the cab, "in
the coach-house of this empty villa."

"Here?" cried Ricardo in amazement.

The discovery upset all his theories. He had expected to hear that it
had been found fifty leagues away; but here, within a couple of miles
of the Villa Rose itself--the idea seemed absurd! Why take it away at
all--unless it was taken away as a blind? That supposition found its
way into Ricardo's mind, and gathered strength as he thought upon it;
for Hanaud had seemed to lean to the belief that one of the murderers
might be still in Aix. Indeed, a glance at him showed that he was not
discomposed by their discovery.

"When was it found?" Hanaud asked.

"This morning. A gardener comes to the villa on two days a week to keep
the grounds in order. Fortunately Wednesday is one of his days.
Fortunately, too, there was rain yesterday evening. He noticed the
tracks of the wheels which you can see on the gravel, and since the
villa is empty he was surprised. He found the coach-house door forced
and the motor-car inside it. When he went to his luncheon he brought
the news of his discovery to the depot."

The party followed the Commissaire along the drive to the coach-house.

"We will have the car brought out," said Hanaud to Servettaz.

It was a big and powerful machine with a limousine body, luxuriously
fitted and cushioned in the shade of light grey. The outside panels of
the car were painted a dark grey. The car had hardly been brought out
into the sunlight before a cry of stupefaction burst from the lips of
Perrichet.

"Oh!" he cried, in utter abasement. "I shall never forgive
myself--never, never!"

"Why?" Hanaud asked, turning sharply as he spoke.

Perrichet was standing with his round eyes staring and his mouth agape.

"Because, monsieur, I saw that car--at four o'clock this morning--at
the corner of the road--not fifty yards from the Villa Rose."

"What!" cried Ricardo.

"You saw it!" exclaimed Wethermill.

Upon their faces was reflected now the stupefaction of Perrichet.

"But you must have made a mistake," said the Commissaire.

"No, no, monsieur," Perrichet insisted. "It was that car. It was that
number. It was just after daylight. I was standing outside the gate of
the villa on duty where M. le Commissaire had placed me. The car
appeared at the corner and slackened speed. It seemed to me that it was
going to turn into the road and come down past me. But instead the
driver, as if he were now sure of his way, put the car at its top speed
and went on into Aix."

"Was any one inside the car?" asked Hanaud.

"No, monsieur; it was empty."

"But you saw the driver!" exclaimed Wethermill.

"Yes; what was he like?" cried the Commissaire.

Perrichet shook his head mournfully.

"He wore a talc mask over the upper part of his face, and had a little
black moustache, and was dressed in a heavy great-coat of blue with a
white collar."

"That is my coat, monsieur," said Servettaz, and as he spoke he lifted
it up from the chauffeur's seat. "It is Mme. Dauvray's livery."

Harry Wethermill groaned aloud.

"We have lost him. He was within our grasp--he, the murderer!--and he
was allowed to go!"

Perrichet's grief was pitiable.

"Monsieur," he pleaded, "a car slackens its speed and goes on again--it
is not so unusual a thing. I did not know the number of Mme. Dauvray's
car. I did not even know that it had disappeared"; and suddenly tears
of mortification filled his eyes. "But why do I make these excuses?" he
cried. "It is better, M. Hanaud, that I go back to my uniform and stand
at the street corner. I am as foolish as I look."

"Nonsense, my friend," said Hanaud, clapping the disconsolate man upon
the shoulder. "You remembered the car and its number. That is
something--and perhaps a great deal," he added gravely. "As for the
talc mask and the black moustache, that is not much to help us, it is
true." He looked at Ricardo's crestfallen face and smiled. "We might
arrest our good friend M. Ricardo upon that evidence, but no one else
that I know."

Hanaud laughed immoderately at his joke. He alone seemed to feel no
disappointment at Perrichet's oversight. Ricardo was a little touchy on
the subject of his personal appearance, and bridled visibly. Hanaud
turned towards Servettaz.

"Now," he said, "you know how much petrol was taken from the garage?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Can you tell me, by the amount which has been used, how far that car
was driven last night?" Hanaud asked.

Servettaz examined the tank.

"A long way, monsieur. From a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty
kilometres, I should say."

"Yes, just about that distance, I should say," cried Hanaud.

His eyes brightened, and a smile, a rather fierce smile, came to his
lips. He opened the door, and examined with a minute scrutiny the floor
of the carriage, and as he looked, the smile faded from his face.
Perplexity returned to it. He took the cushions, looked them over and
shook them out.

"I see no sign--" he began, and then he uttered a little shrill cry of
satisfaction. From the crack of the door by the hinge he picked off a
tiny piece of pale green stuff, which he spread out upon the back of
his hand.

"Tell me, what is this?" he said to Ricardo.

"It is a green fabric," said Ricardo very wisely.

"It is green chiffon," said Hanaud. "And the frock in which Mlle. Celie
went away was of green chiffon over satin. Yes, Mlle. Celie travelled
in this car."

He hurried to the driver's seat. Upon the floor there was some dark
mould. Hanaud cleaned it off with his knife and held some of it in the
palm of his hand. He turned to Servettaz.

"You drove the car on Tuesday morning before you went to Chambery?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Where did you take up Mme. Dauvray and Mlle. Celie?"

"At the front door of the Villa Rose."

"Did you get down from the seat at all?"

"No, monsieur; not after I left the garage."

Hanaud returned to his companions.

"See!" And he opened his hand. "This is black soil--moist from last
night's rain--soil like the soil in front of Mme. Dauvray's salon.
Look, here is even a blade or two of the grass"; and he turned the
mould over in the palm of his hand. Then he took an empty envelope from
his pocket and poured the soil into it and gummed the flap down. He
stood and frowned at the motor-car.

"Listen," he said, "how I am puzzled! There was a man last night at the
Villa Rose. There were a man's blurred footmarks in the mould before
the glass door. That man drove madame's car for a hundred and fifty
kilometres, and he leaves the mould which clung to his boots upon the
floor of his seat. Mlle. Celie and another woman drove away inside the
car. Mlle. Celie leaves a fragment of the chiffon tunic of her frock
which caught in the hinge. But Mlle. Celie made much clearer
impressions in the mould than the man. Yet on the floor of the carriage
there is no trace of her shoes. Again I say there is something here
which I do not understand." And he spread out his hands with an
impulsive gesture of despair.

"It looks as if they had been careful and he careless," said Mr.
Ricardo, with the air of a man solving a very difficult problem.

"What a mind!" cried Hanaud, now clasping his hands together in
admiration. "How quick and how profound!"

There was at times something elephantinely elfish in M. Hanaud's
demeanour, which left Mr. Ricardo at a loss. But he had come to notice
that these undignified manifestations usually took place when Hanaud
had reached a definite opinion upon some point which had perplexed him.

"Yet there is perhaps, another explanation," Hanaud continued. "For
observe, M. Ricardo. We have other evidence to show that the careless
one was Mlle. Celie. It was she who left her footsteps so plainly
visible upon the grass, not the man. However, we will go back to M.
Wethermill's room at the Hotel Majestic and talk this matter over. We
know something now. Yes, we know--what do we know, monsieur?" he asked,
suddenly turning with a smile to Ricardo, and, as Ricardo paused:
"Think it over while we walk down to M. Wethermill's apartment in the
Hotel Majestic."

"We know that the murderer has escaped," replied Ricardo hotly.

"The murderer is not now the most important object of our search. He is
very likely at Marseilles by now. We shall lay our hands on him, never
fear," replied Hanaud, with a superb gesture of disdain. "But it was
thoughtful of you to remind me of him. I might so easily have clean
forgotten him, and then indeed my reputation would have suffered an
eclipse." He made a low, ironical bow to Ricardo and walked quickly
down the road.

"For a cumbersome man he is extraordinarily active," said Mr. Ricardo
to Harry Wethermill, trying to laugh, without much success. "A heavy,
clever, middle-aged man, liable to become a little gutter-boy at a
moment's notice."

Thus he described the great detective, and the description is quoted.
For it was Ricardo's best effort in the whole of this business.

The three men went straight to Harry Wethermill's apartment, which
consisted of a sitting-room and a bedroom on the first floor. A balcony
ran along outside. Hanaud stepped out on to it, looked about him, and
returned.

"It is as well to know that we cannot be overheard," he said.

Harry Wethermill meanwhile had thrown himself into a chair. The mask he
had worn had slipped from its fastenings for a moment. There was a look
of infinite suffering upon his face. It was the face of a man tortured
by misery to the snapping-point.

Hanaud, on the other hand, was particularly alert. The discovery of the
motor-car had raised his spirits. He sat at the table.

"I will tell you what we have learnt," he said, "and it is of
importance. The three of them--the man, the woman with the red hair,
and Mlle. Celie--all drove yesterday night to Geneva. That is only one
thing we have learnt."

"Then you still cling to Geneva?" said Ricardo.

"More than ever," said Hanaud.

He turned in his chair towards Wethermill.

"Ah, my poor friend!" he said, when he saw the young man's distress.

Harry Wethermill sprang up with a gesture as though to sweep the need
of sympathy away.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"You have a road map, perhaps?" said Hanaud.

"Yes," said Wethermill, "mine is here. There it is"; and crossing the
room he brought it from a sidetable and placed it in front of Hanaud.

Hanaud took a pencil from his pocket.

"One hundred and fifty kilometres was about the distance which the car
had travelled. Measure the distances here, and you will see that Geneva
is the likely place. It is a good city to hide in. Moreover the car
appears at the corner at daylight. How does it appear there? What road
is it which comes out at that corner? The road from Geneva. I am not
sorry that it is Geneva, for the Chef de la Surete is a friend of mine."

"And what else do we know?" asked Ricardo.

"This," said Hanaud. He paused impressively. "Bring up your chair to
the table, M. Wethermill, and consider whether I am right or wrong";
and he waited until Harry Wethermill had obeyed. Then he laughed in a
friendly way at himself.

"I cannot help it," he said; "I have an eye for dramatic effects. I
must prepare for them when I know they are coming. And one, I tell you,
is coming now."

He shook his finger at his companions. Ricardo shifted and shuffled in
his chair. Harry Wethermill kept his eyes fixed on Hanaud's face, but
he was quiet, as he had been throughout the long inquiry.

Hanaud lit a cigarette and took his time.

"What I think is this. The man who drove the car into Geneva drove it
back, because--he meant to leave it again in the garage of the Villa
Rose."

"Good heavens!" cried Ricardo, flinging himself back. The theory so
calmly enunciated took his breath away.

"Would he have dared?" asked Harry Wethermill.

Hanaud leaned across and tapped his fingers on the table to emphasise
his answer.

"All through this crime there are two things visible--brains and
daring; clever brains and extraordinary daring. Would he have dared? He
dared to be at the corner close to the Villa Rose at daylight. Why else
should he have returned except to put back the car? Consider! The
petrol is taken from tins which Servettaz might never have touched for
a fortnight, and by that time he might, as he said, have forgotten
whether he had not used them himself. I had this possibility in my mind
when I put the questions to Servettaz about the petrol which the
Commissaire thought so stupid. The utmost care is taken that there
shall be no mould left on the floor of the carriage. The scrap of
chiffon was torn off, no doubt, when the women finally left the car,
and therefore not noticed, or that, too, would have been removed. That
the exterior of the car was dirty betrayed nothing, for Servettaz had
left it uncleaned."

Hanaud leaned back and, step by step, related the journey of the car.

"The man leaves the gate open; he drives into Geneva the two women, who
are careful that their shoes shall leave no marks upon the floor. At
Geneva they get out. The man returns. If he can only leave the car in
the garage he covers all traces of the course he and his friends have
taken. No one would suspect that the car had ever left the garage. At
the corner of the road, just as he is turning down to the villa, he
sees a sergent-de-ville at the gate. He knows that the murder is
discovered. He puts on full speed and goes straight out of the town.
What is he to do? He is driving a car for which the police in an hour
or two, if not now already, will be surely watching. He is driving it
in broad daylight. He must get rid of it, and at once, before people
are about to see it, and to see him in it. Imagine his feelings! It is
almost enough to make one pity him. Here he is in a car which convicts
him as a murderer, and he has nowhere to leave it. He drives through
Aix. Then on the outskirts of the town he finds an empty villa. He
drives in at the gate, forces the door of the coach-house, and leaves
his car there. Now, observe! It is no longer any use for him to pretend
that he and his friends did not disappear in that car. The murder is
already discovered, and with the murder the disappearance of the car.
So he no longer troubles his head about it. He does not remove the
traces of mould from the place where his feet rested, which otherwise,
no doubt, he would have done. It no longer matters. He has to run to
earth now before he is seen. That is all his business. And so the state
of the car is explained. It was a bold step to bring that car
back--yes, a bold and desperate step. But a clever one. For, if it had
succeeded, we should have known nothing of their movements--oh, but
nothing--nothing. Ah! I tell you this is no ordinary blundering affair.
They are clever people who devised this crime--clever, and of an
audacity which is surprising."

Then Hanaud lit another cigarette.

Mr. Ricardo, on the other hand, could hardly continue to smoke for
excitement.

"I cannot understand your calmness," he exclaimed.

"No?" said Hanaud. "Yet it is so obvious. You are the amateur, I am the
professional--that is all."

He looked at his watch and rose to his feet.

"I must go" he said and as he turned towards the door a cry sprang from
Mr. Ricardo's lips "It is true. I am the amateur. Yet I have knowledge,
Monsieur Hanaud which the professional would do well to obtain."

Hanaud turned a guarded face towards Ricardo. There was no longer any
raillery in his manner. He spoke slowly, coldly.

"Let me have it then!"

"I have driven in my motor-car from Geneva to Aix," Ricardo cried
excitedly. "A bridge crosses a ravine high up amongst the mountains. At
the bridge there is a Custom House. There--at the Pont de la
Caille--your car is stopped. It is searched. You must sign your name in
a book. And there is no way round. You would find sure and certain
proof whether or no Madame Dauvray's car travelled last night to
Geneva. Not so many travellers pass along that road at night. You would
find certain proof too of how many people were in the car. For they
search carefully at the Pont de la Caille."

A dark flush overspread Hanaud's face. Ricardo was in the seventh
Heaven. He had at last contributed something to the history of this
crime. He had repaired an omission. He had supplied knowledge to the
omniscient. Wethermill looked up drearily like one who has lost heart.

"Yes, you must not neglect that clue," he said.

Hanaud replied testily:

"It is not a clue. M. Ricardo tells that he travelled from Geneva into
France and that his car was searched. Well, we know already that the
officers are particular at the Custom Houses of France. But travelling
from France into Switzerland is a very different affair. In
Switzerland, hardly a glance, hardly a word." That was true. M. Ricardo
crestfallen recognized the truth. But his spirits rose again at once.
"But the car came back from Geneva into France!" he cried.

"Yes, but when the car came back, the man was alone in it," Hanaud
answered. "I have more important things to attend to. For instance I
must know whether by any chance they have caught our man at
Marseilles." He laid his hand on Wethermill's shoulder. "And you, my
friend, I should counsel you to get some sleep. We may need all our
strength to-morrow. I hope so." He was speaking very bravely. "Yes, I
hope so."

Wethermill nodded.

"I shall try," he said.

"That's better," said Hanaud cheerfully. "You will both stay here this
evening; for if I have news, I can then ring you up."

Both men agreed, and Hanaud went away. He left Mr. Ricardo profoundly
disturbed. "That man will take advice from no one," he declared. "His
vanity is colossal. It is true they are not particular at the Swiss
Frontier. Still the car would have to stop there. At the Custom House
they would know something. Hanaud ought to make inquiries." But neither
Ricardo nor Harry Wethermill heard a word more from Hanaud that night.




CHAPTER X

NEWS FROM GENEVA


The next morning, however, before Mr. Ricardo was out of his bed, M.
Hanaud was announced. He came stepping gaily into the room, more
elephantinely elfish than ever.

"Send your valet away," he said. And as soon as they were alone he
produced a newspaper, which he flourished in Mr. Ricardo's face and
then dropped into his hands.

Ricardo saw staring him in the face a full description of Celia
Harland, of her appearance and her dress, of everything except her
name, coupled with an intimation that a reward of four thousand francs
would be paid to any one who could give information leading to the
discovery of her whereabouts to Mr. Ricardo, the Hotel Majestic,
Aix-les-Bains!

Mr. Ricardo sat up in his bed with a sense of outrage.

"You have done this?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why have you done it?" Mr. Ricardo cried.

Hanaud advanced to the bed mysteriously on the tips of his toes.

"I will tell you," he said, in his most confidential tones. "Only it
must remain a secret between you and me. I did it--because I have a
sense of humour."

"I hate publicity," said Mr. Ricardo acidly.

"On the other hand you have four thousand francs," protested the
detective. "Besides, what else should I do? If I name myself, the very
people we are seeking to catch--who, you may be sure, will be the first
to read this advertisement--will know that I, the great, the
incomparable Hanaud, am after them; and I do not want them to know
that. Besides"--and he spoke now in a gentle and most serious
voice--"why should we make life more difficult for Mlle. Celie by
telling the world that the police want her? It will be time enough for
that when she appears before the Juge d'Instruction."

Mr. Ricardo grumbled inarticulately, and read through the advertisement
again.

"Besides, your description is incomplete," he said. "There is no
mention of the diamond earrings which Celia Harland was wearing when
she went away."

"Ah! so you noticed that!" exclaimed Hanaud. "A little more experience
and I should be looking very closely to my laurels. But as for the
earrings--I will tell you. Mlle. Celie was not wearing them when she
went away from the Villa Rose."

"But--but," stammered Ricardo, "the case upon the dressing-room table
was empty."

"Still, she was not wearing them, I know," said Hanaud decisively.

"How do you know?" cried Ricardo, gazing at Hanaud with awe in his
eyes. "How could you know?"

"Because"--and Hanaud struck a majestic attitude, like a king in a
play--"because I am the captain of the ship."

Upon that Mr. Ricardo suffered a return of his ill-humour.

"I do not like to be trifled with," he remarked, with as much dignity
as his ruffled hair and the bed-clothes allowed him. He looked sternly
at the newspaper, turning it over, and then he uttered a cry of
surprise.

"But this is yesterday's paper!" he said.

"Yesterday evening's paper," Hanaud corrected.

"Printed at Geneva!"

"Printed, and published and sold at Geneva," said Hanaud.

"When did you send the advertisement in, then?"

"I wrote a letter while we were taking our luncheon," Hanaud explained.
"The letter was to Besnard, asking him to telegraph the advertisement
at once."

"But you never said a word about it to us," Ricardo grumbled.

"No. And was I not wise?" said Hanaud, with complacency. "For you would
have forbidden me to use your name."

"Oh, I don't go so far as that," said Ricardo reluctantly. His
indignation was rapidly evaporating. For there was growing up in his
mind a pleasant perception that the advertisement placed him in the
limelight.

He rose from his bed.

"You will make yourself comfortable in the sitting-room while I have my
bath."

"I will, indeed," replied Hanaud cheerily. "I have already ordered my
morning chocolate. I have hopes that you may have a telegram very soon.
This paper was cried last night through the streets of Geneva."

Ricardo dressed for once in a way with some approach to ordinary
celerity, and joined Hanaud.

"Has nothing come?" he asked.

"No. This chocolate is very good; it is better than that which I get in
my hotel."

"Good heavens!" cried Ricardo, who was fairly twittering with
excitement. "You sit there talking about chocolate while my cup shakes
in my fingers."

"Again I must remind you that you are the amateur, I the professional,
my friend."

As the morning drew on, however, Hanaud's professional quietude
deserted him. He began to start at the sound of footsteps in the
corridor, to glance every other moment from the window, to eat his
cigarettes rather than to smoke them. At eleven o'clock Ricardo's valet
brought a telegram into the room. Ricardo seized it.

"Calmly, my friend," said Hanaud.

With trembling fingers Ricardo tore it open. He jumped in his chair.
Speechless, he handed the telegram to Hanaud. It had been sent from
Geneva, and it ran thus:

"Expect me soon after three.--MARTHE GOBIN."

Hanaud nodded his head.

"I told you I had hopes." All his levity had gone in an instant from
his manner. He spoke very quietly.

"I had better send for Wethermill?" asked Ricardo.

Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.

"As you like. But why raise hopes in that poor man's breast which an
hour or two may dash for ever to the ground? Consider! Marthe Gobin has
something to tell us. Think over those eight points of evidence which
you drew up yesterday in the Villa des Fleurs, and say whether what she
has to tell us is more likely to prove Mlle. Celie's innocence than her
guilt. Think well, for I will be guided by you, M. Ricardo," said
Hanaud solemnly. "If you think it better that your friend should live
in torture until Marthe Gobin comes, and then perhaps suffer worse
torture from the news she brings, be it so. You shall decide. If, on
the other hand, you think it will be best to leave M. Wethermill in
peace until we know her story, be it so. You shall decide."

Ricardo moved uneasily. The solemnity of Hanaud's manner impressed him.
He had no wish to take the responsibility of the decision upon himself.
But Hanaud sat with his eyes strangely fixed upon Ricardo, waiting for
his answer.

"Well," said Ricardo, at length, "good news will be none the worse for
waiting a few hours. Bad news will be a little the better."

"Yes," said Hanaud; "so I thought you would decide." He took up a
Continental Bradshaw from a bookshelf in the room. "From Geneva she
will come through Culoz. Let us see!" He turned over the pages. "There
is a train from Culoz which reaches Aix at seven minutes past three. It
is by that train she will come. You have a motor-car?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Will you pick me up in it at three at my hotel? We will
drive down to the station and see the arrivals by that train. It may
help us to get some idea of the person with whom we have to deal. That
is always an advantage. Now I will leave you, for I have much to do.
But I will look in upon M. Wethermill as I go down and tell him that
there is as yet no news."

He took up his hat and stick, and stood for a moment staring out of the
window. Then he roused himself from his reverie with a start.

"You look out upon Mont Revard, I see. I think M. Wethermill's view
over the garden and the town is the better one," he said, and went out
of the room.

At three o'clock Ricardo called in his car, which was an open car of
high power, at Hanaud's hotel, and the two men went to the station.
They waited outside the exit while the passengers gave up their
tickets. Amongst them a middle-aged, short woman, of a plethoric
tendency, attracted their notice. She was neatly but shabbily dressed
in black; her gloves were darned, and she was obviously in a hurry. As
she came out she asked a commissionaire:

"How far is it to the Hotel Majestic?"

The man told her the hotel was at the very top of the town, and the way
was steep.

"But madame can go up in the omnibus of the hotel," he suggested.

Madame, however, was in too much of a hurry. The omnibus would have to
wait for luggage. She hailed a closed cab and drove off inside it.

"Now, if we go back in the car, we shall be all ready for her when she
arrives," said Hanaud.

They passed the cab, indeed, a few yards up the steep hill which leads
from the station. The cab was moving at a walk.

"She looks honest," said Hanaud, with a sigh of relief. "She is some
good bourgeoise anxious to earn four thousand francs."

They reached the hotel in a few minutes.

"We may need your car again the moment Marthe Gobin has gone," said
Hanaud.

"It shall wait here," said Ricardo.

"No," said Hanaud; "let it wait in the little street at the back of my
hotel. It will not be so noticeable there. You have petrol for a long
journey?"

Ricardo gave the order quietly to his chauffeur, and followed Hanaud
into the hotel. Through a glass window they could see Wethermill
smoking a cigar over his coffee.

"He looks as if he had not slept," said Ricardo.

Hanaud nodded sympathetically, and beckoned Ricardo past the window.

"But we are nearing the end. These two days have been for him days of
great trouble; one can see that very clearly. And he has done nothing
to embarrass us. Men in distress are apt to be a nuisance. I am
grateful to M. Wethermill. But we are nearing the end. Who knows?
Within an hour or two we may have news for him."

He spoke with great feeling, and the two men ascended the stairs to
Ricardo's rooms. For the second time that day Hanaud's professional
calm deserted him. The window overlooked the main entrance to the
hotel. Hanaud arranged the room, and, even while he arranged it, ran
every other second and leaned from the window to watch for the coming
of the cab.

"Put the bank-notes upon the table," he said hurriedly. "They will
persuade her to tell us all that she has to tell. Yes, that will do.
She is not in sight yet? No."

"She could not be. It is a long way from the station," said Ricardo,
"and the whole distance is uphill."

"Yes, that is true," Hanaud replied. "We will not embarrass her by
sitting round the table like a tribunal. You will sit in that
arm-chair."

Ricardo took his seat, crossed his knees, and joined the tips of his
fingers.

"So! not too judicial!" said Hanaud; "I will sit here at the table.
Whatever you do, do not frighten her." Hanaud sat down in the chair
which he had placed for himself. "Marthe Gobin shall sit opposite, with
the light upon her face. So!" And, springing up, he arranged a chair
for her. "Whatever you do, do not frighten her," he repeated. "I am
nervous. So much depends upon this interview." And in a second he was
back at the window.

Ricardo did not move. He arranged in his mind the interrogatory which
was to take place. He was to conduct it. He was the master of the
situation. All the limelight was to be his. Startling facts would come
to light elicited by his deft questions. Hanaud need not fear. He would
not frighten her. He would be gentle, he would be cunning. Softly and
delicately he would turn this good woman inside out, like a glove.
Every artistic fibre in his body vibrated to the dramatic situation.

Suddenly Hanaud leaned out of the window.

"It comes! it comes!" he said in a quick, feverish whisper. "I can see
the cab between the shrubs of the drive."

"Let it come!" said Mr. Ricardo superbly.

Even as he sat he could hear the grating of wheels upon the drive. He
saw Hanaud lean farther from the window and stamp impatiently upon the
floor.

"There it is at the door," he said; and for a few seconds he spoke no
more. He stood looking downwards, craning his head, with his back
towards Ricardo.

Then, with a wild and startled cry, he staggered back into the room.
His face was white as wax, his eyes full of horror, his mouth open.

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Ricardo, springing to his feet.

"They are lifting her out! She doesn't move! They are lifting her out!"

For a moment he stared into Ricardo's face--paralysed by fear. Then he
sprang down the stairs. Ricardo followed him.

There was confusion in the corridor. Men were running, voices were
crying questions. As they passed the window they saw Wethermill start
up, aroused from his lethargy. They knew the truth before they reached
the entrance of the hotel. A cab had driven up to the door from the
station; in the cab was an unknown woman stabbed to the heart.

"She should have come by the omnibus," Hanaud repeated and repeated
stupidly. For the moment he was off his balance.




CHAPTER XI

THE UNOPENED LETTER


The hall of the hotel had been cleared of people. At the entrance from
the corridor a porter barred the way.

"No one can pass," said he.

"I think that I can," said Hanaud, and he produced his card. "From the
Surete at Paris."

He was allowed to enter, with Ricardo at his heels. On the ground lay
Marthe Gobin; the manager of the hotel stood at her side; a doctor was
on his knees. Hanaud gave his card to the manager.

"You have sent word to the police?"

"Yes," said the manager.

"And the wound?" asked Hanaud, kneeling on the ground beside the
doctor. It was a very small wound, round and neat and clean, and there
was very little blood. "It was made by a bullet," said Hanaud--"some
tiny bullet from an air-pistol."

"No," answered the doctor.

"No knife made it," Hanaud asserted.

"That is true," said the doctor. "Look!" and he took up from the floor
by his knee the weapon which had caused Marthe Gobin's death. It was
nothing but an ordinary skewer with a ring at one end and a sharp point
at the other, and a piece of common white firewood for a handle. The
wood had been split, the ring inserted and spliced in position with
strong twine. It was a rough enough weapon, but an effective one. The
proof of its effectiveness lay stretched upon the floor beside them.

Hanaud gave it to the manager of the hotel.

"You must be very careful of this, and give it as it is to the police."

Then he bent once more over Marthe Gobin.

"Did she suffer?" he asked in a low voice.

"No; death must have been instantaneous," said the doctor.

"I am glad of that," said Hanaud, as he rose again to his feet.

In the doorway the driver of the cab was standing.

"What has he to say?" Hanaud asked.

The man stepped forward instantly. He was an old, red-faced, stout man,
with a shiny white tall hat, like a thousand drivers of cabs.

"What have I to say, monsieur?" he grumbled in a husky voice. "I take
up the poor woman at the station and I drive her where she bids me, and
I find her dead, and my day is lost. Who will pay my fare, monsieur?"

"I will," said Hanaud. "There it is," and he handed the man a
five-franc piece. "Now, answer me! Do you tell me that this woman was
murdered in your cab and that you knew nothing about it?"

"But what should I know? I take her up at the station, and all the way
up the hill her head is every moment out of the window, crying,
'Faster, faster!' Oh, the good woman was in a hurry! But for me I take
no notice. The more she shouts, the less I hear; I bury my head between
my shoulders, and I look ahead of me and I take no notice. One cannot
expect cab-horses to run up these hills; it is not reasonable."

"So you went at a walk," said Hanaud. He beckoned to Ricardo, and
said to the manager: "M. Besnard will, no doubt, be here in a few
minutes, and he will send for the Juge d'Instruction. There is
nothing that we can do."

He went back to Ricardo's sitting-room and flung himself into a chair.
He had been calm enough downstairs in the presence of the doctor and
the body of the victim. Now, with only Ricardo for a witness, he gave
way to distress.

"It is terrible," he said. "The poor woman! It was I who brought her to
Aix. It was through my carelessness. But who would have thought--?" He
snatched his hands from his face and stood up. "I should have thought,"
he said solemnly. "Extraordinary daring--that was one of the qualities
of my criminal. I knew it, and I disregarded it. Now we have a second
crime."

"The skewer may lead you to the criminal," said Mr. Ricardo.

"The skewer!" cried Hanaud. "How will that help us? A knife,
yes--perhaps. But a skewer!"

"At the shops--there will not be so many in Aix at which you can buy
skewers--they may remember to whom they sold one within the last day or
so."

"How do we know it was bought in the last day or so?" cried Hanaud
scornfully. "We have not to do with a man who walks into a shop and
buys a single skewer to commit a murder with, and so hands himself over
to the police. How often must I say it!"

The violence of his contempt nettled Ricardo.

"If the murderer did not buy it, how did he obtain it?" he asked
obstinately.

"Oh, my friend, could he not have stolen it? From this or from any
hotel in Aix? Would the loss of a skewer be noticed, do you think? How
many people in Aix to-day have had rognons a la brochette for their
luncheon! Besides, it is not merely the death of this poor woman which
troubles me. We have lost the evidence which she was going to bring to
us. She had something to tell us about Celie Harland which now we shall
never hear. We have to begin all over again, and I tell you we have not
the time to begin all over again. No, we have not the time. Time will
be lost, and we have no time to lose." He buried his face again in his
hands and groaned aloud. His grief was so violent and so sincere that
Ricardo, shocked as he was by the murder of Marthe Gobin, set himself
to console him.

"But you could not have foreseen that at three o'clock in the afternoon
at Aix--"

Hanaud brushed the excuse aside.

"It is no extenuation. I OUGHT to have foreseen. Oh, but I will have no
pity now," he cried, and as he ended the words abruptly his face
changed. He lifted a trembling forefinger and pointed. There came a
sudden look of life into his dull and despairing eyes.

He was pointing to a side-table on which were piled Mr. Ricardo's
letters.

"You have not opened them this morning?" he asked.

"No. You came while I was still in bed. I have not thought of them till
now."

Hanaud crossed to the table, and, looking down at the letters, uttered
a cry.

"There's one, the big envelope," he said, his voice shaking like his
hand. "It has a Swiss stamp."

He swallowed to moisten his throat. Ricardo sprang across the room and
tore open the envelope. There was a long letter enclosed in a
handwriting unknown to him. He read aloud the first lines of the letter:

"I write what I saw and post it to-night, so that no one may be before
me with the news. I will come over to-morrow for the money."

A low exclamation from Hanaud interrupted the words.

"The signature! Quick!"

Ricardo turned to the end of the letter.

"Marthe Gobin."

"She speaks, then! After all she speaks!" Hanaud whispered in a voice
of awe. He ran to the door of the room, opened it suddenly, and,
shutting it again, locked it. "Quick! We cannot bring that poor woman
back to life; but we may still--" He did not finish his sentence. He
took the letter unceremoniously from Ricardo's hand and seated himself
at the table. Over his shoulder Mr. Ricardo, too, read Marthe Gobin's
letter.

It was just the sort of letter, which in Ricardo's view, Marthe Gobin
would have written--a long, straggling letter which never kept to the
point, which exasperated them one moment by its folly and fired them to
excitement the next.

It was dated from a small suburb of Geneva, on the western side of the
lake, and it ran as follows:

"The suburb is but a street close to the lake-side, and a tram runs
into the city. It is quite respectable, you understand, monsieur, with
a hotel at the end of it, and really some very good houses. But I do
not wish to deceive you about the social position of myself or my
husband. Our house is on the wrong side of the street--definitely--yes.
It is a small house, and we do not see the water from any of the
windows because of the better houses opposite. M. Gobin, my husband,
who was a clerk in one of the great banks in Geneva, broke down in
health in the spring, and for the last three months has been compelled
to keep indoors. Of course, money has not been plentiful, and I could
not afford a nurse. Consequently I myself have been compelled to nurse
him. Monsieur, if you were a woman, you would know what men are when
they are ill--how fretful, how difficult. There is not much distraction
for the woman who nurses them. So, as I am in the house most of the
day, I find what amusement I can in watching the doings of my
neighbours. You will not blame me.

"A month ago the house almost directly opposite to us was taken
furnished for the summer by a Mme. Rossignol. She is a widow, but
during the last fortnight a young gentleman has come several times in
the afternoon to see her, and it is said in the street that he is going
to marry her. But I cannot believe it myself. Monsieur is a young man
of perhaps thirty, with smooth, black hair. He wears a moustache, a
little black moustache, and is altogether captivating. Mme. Rossignol
is five or six years older, I should think--a tall woman, with red hair
and a bold sort of coarse beauty. I was not attracted by her. She
seemed not quite of the same world as that charming monsieur who was
said to be going to marry her. No; I was not attracted by Adele
Rossignol."

And when he had come to that point Hanaud looked up with a start.

"So the name was Adele," he whispered.

"Yes," said Ricardo. "Helene Vauquier spoke the truth."

Hanaud nodded with a queer smile upon his lips.

"Yes, there she spoke the truth. I thought she did."

"But she said Adele's hair was black," interposed Mr. Ricardo.

"Yes, there she didn't," said Hanaud drily, and his eyes dropped again
to the paper.

"I knew her name was Adele, for often I have heard her servant calling
her so, and without any 'Madame' in front of the name. That is strange,
is it not, to hear an elderly servant-woman calling after her mistress,
'Adele,' just simple 'Adele'? It was that which made me think monsieur
and madame were not of the same world. But I do not believe that they
are going to be married. I have an instinct about it. Of course, one
never knows with what extraordinary women the nicest men will fall in
love. So that after all these two may get married. But if they do, I do
not think they will be happy.

"Besides the old woman there was another servant, a man, Hippolyte, who
served in the house and drove the carriage when it was wanted--a
respectable man. He always touched his hat when Mme. Rossignol came out
of the house. He slept in the house at night, although the stable was
at the end of the street. I thought he was probably the son of Jeanne,
the servant-woman. He was young, and his hair was plastered down upon
his forehead, and he was altogether satisfied with himself and a great
favorite amongst the servants in the street. The carriage and the horse
were hired from Geneva. That is the household of Mme. Rossignol."

So far, Mr. Ricardo read in silence. Then he broke out again.

"But we have them! The red-haired woman called Adele; the man with the
little black moustache. It was he who drove the motor-car!"

Hanaud held up his hand to check the flow of words, and both read on
again:

"At three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon madame was driven away in the
carriage, and I did not see it return all that evening. Of course, it
may have returned to the stables by another road. But it was not
unusual for the carriage to take her into Geneva and wait a long time.
I went to bed at eleven, but in the night M. Gobin was restless, and I
rose to get him some medicine. We slept in the front of the house,
monsieur, and while I was searching for the matches upon the table in
the middle of the room I heard the sound of carriage wheels in the
silent street. I went to the window, and, raising a corner of the
curtains, looked out. M. Gobin called to me fretfully from the bed to
know why I did not light the candle and get him what he wanted. I have
already told you how fretful sick men can be, always complaining if
just for a minute one distracts oneself by looking out of the window.
But there! One can do nothing to please them. Yet how right I was to
raise the blind and look out of the window! For if I had obeyed my
husband I might have lost four thousand francs. And four thousand
francs are not to be sneezed at by a poor woman whose husband lies in
bed.

"I saw the carriage stop at Mme. Rossignol's house. Almost at once the
house door was opened by the old servant, although the hall of the
house and all the windows in the front were dark. That was the first
thing that surprised me. For when madame came home late and the house
w

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