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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House of the Arrow, by A. E. W.
+Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The House of the Arrow
+
+Author: A. E. W. Mason
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2022 [eBook #67514]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Al Haines
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _The
+  House of the Arrow_
+
+  _By_
+
+  A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+  _New York
+  George H. Doran Company_
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1924,
+  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+  THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW
+
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+  Books by A. E. W. MASON
+
+  THE WINDING STAIR
+  THE FOUR FEATHERS
+  THE SUMMONS
+  THE BROKEN ROAD
+  MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY
+  CLEMENTINA
+  THE TURNSTILE
+  THE TRUANTS
+  AT THE VILLA ROSE
+  RUNNING WATER
+  THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER
+  THE PHILANDERERS
+  LAWRENCE CLAVERING
+  THE WATCHERS
+  A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE
+  ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER TALES
+  FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+  ONE: _Letters of Mark_
+  TWO: _A Cry for Help_
+  THREE: _Servants of Chance_
+  FOUR: _Betty Harlowe_
+  FIVE: _Betty Harlowe Answers_
+  SIX: _Jim Changes His Lodging_
+  SEVEN: _Exit Waberski_
+  EIGHT: _The Book_
+  NINE: _The Secret_
+  TEN: _The Clock upon the Cabinet_
+  ELEVEN: _A New Suspect_
+  TWELVE: _The Breaking of the Seals_
+  THIRTEEN: _Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room_
+  FOURTEEN: _An Experiment and a Discovery_
+  FIFTEEN: _The Finding of the Arrow_
+  SIXTEEN: _Hanaud Laughs_
+  SEVENTEEN: _At Jean Cladel's_
+  EIGHTEEN: _The White Tablet_
+  NINETEEN: _A Plan Frustrated_
+  TWENTY: _A Map and the Necklace_
+  TWENTY-ONE: _The Secret House_
+  TWENTY-TWO: _The Corona Machine_
+  TWENTY-THREE: _The Truth About the Clock on the Marquetry Cabinet_
+  TWENTY-FOUR: _Ann Upcott's Story_
+  TWENTY-FIVE: _What Happened on the Night of the 27th_
+  TWENTY-SIX: _The Façade of Notre Dame_
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE: _Letters of Mark_
+
+Messrs. Frobisher & Haslitt, the solicitors on the east side of
+Russell Square, counted amongst their clients a great many who had
+undertakings established in France; and the firm was very proud of
+this branch of its business.
+
+"It gives us a place in history," Mr. Jeremy Haslitt used to say.
+"For it dates from the year 1806, when Mr. James Frobisher, then our
+very energetic senior partner, organised the escape of hundreds of
+British subjects who were detained in France by the edict of the
+first Napoleon.  The firm received the thanks of His Majesty's
+Government and has been fortunate enough to retain the connection
+thus made.  I look after that side of our affairs myself."
+
+Mr. Haslitt's daily batch of letters, therefore, contained as a rule
+a fair number bearing the dark-blue stamp of France upon their
+envelopes.  On this morning of early April, however, there was only
+one.  It was addressed in a spidery, uncontrolled hand with which Mr.
+Haslitt was unfamiliar.  But it bore the postmark of Dijon, and Mr.
+Haslitt tore it open rather quickly.  He had a client in Dijon, a
+widow, Mrs. Harlowe, of whose health he had had bad reports.  The
+letter was certainly written from her house, La Maison Crenelle, but
+not by her.  He turned to the signature.
+
+"Waberski?" he said, with a frown.  "Boris Waberski?"  And then, as
+he identified his correspondent, "Oh, yes, yes."
+
+He sat down in his chair and read.  The first part of the letter was
+merely flowers and compliments, but half-way down the second page its
+object was made clear as glass.  It was five hundred pounds.  Old Mr.
+Haslitt smiled and read on, keeping up, whilst he read, a one-sided
+conversation with the writer.
+
+"I have a great necessity of that money," wrote Boris, "and----"
+
+"I am quite sure of that," said Mr. Haslitt.
+
+"My beloved sister, Jeanne-Marie----" the letter continued.
+
+"Sister-in-law," Mr. Haslitt corrected.
+
+"--cannot live for long, in spite of all the care and attention I
+give to her," Boris Waberski went on.  "She has left me, as no doubt
+you know, a large share of her fortune.  Already, then, it is
+mine--yes?  One may say so and be favourably understood.  We must
+look at the facts with the eyes.  Expedite me, then, by the
+recommended post a little of what is mine and agree my distinguished
+salutations."
+
+Haslitt's smile became a broad grin.  He had in one of his tin boxes
+a copy of the will of Jeanne-Marie Harlowe drawn up in due form by
+her French notary at Dijon, by which every farthing she possessed was
+bequeathed without condition to her husband's niece and adopted
+daughter, Betty Harlowe.  Jeremy Haslitt almost destroyed that
+letter.  He folded it; his fingers twitched at it; there was already
+actually a tear at the edges of the sheets when he changed his mind.
+
+"No," he said to himself.  "No!  With the Boris Waberskis one never
+knows," and he locked the letter away on a ledge of his private safe.
+
+He was very glad that he had when three weeks later he read, in the
+obituary column of _The Times_, the announcement of Mrs. Harlowe's
+death, and received a big card with a very deep black border in the
+French style from Betty Harlowe inviting him to the funeral at Dijon.
+The invitation was merely formal.  He could hardly have reached Dijon
+in time for the ceremony had he started off that instant.  He
+contented himself with writing a few lines of sincere condolence to
+the girl, and a letter to the French notary in which he placed the
+services of the firm at Betty's disposal.  Then he waited.
+
+"I shall hear again from little Boris," he said, and he heard within
+the week.  The handwriting was more spidery and uncontrolled than
+ever; hysteria and indignation had played havoc with Waberski's
+English; also he had doubled his demand.
+
+"It is outside belief," he wrote.  "Nothing has she left to her so
+attentive brother.  There is something here I do not much like.  It
+must be one thousand pounds now, by the recommended post.  'You have
+always had the world against you, my poor Boris,' she say with the
+tears all big in her dear eyes.  'But I make all right for you in my
+will.'  And now nothing!  I speak, of course, to my niece--ah, that
+hard one!  She snap her the fingers at me!  Is that a behaviour?  One
+thousand pounds, mister!  Otherwise there will be awkwardnesses!
+Yes!  People do not snap them the fingers at Boris Waberski without
+the payment.  So one thousand pounds by the recommended post or
+awkwardnesses"; and this time Boris Waberski did not invite Mr.
+Haslitt to agree any salutations, distinguished or otherwise, but
+simply signed his name with a straggling pen which shot all over the
+sheet.
+
+Mr. Haslitt did not smile over this letter.  He rubbed the palms of
+his hands softly together.
+
+"Then we shall have to make some awkwardnesses too," he said hastily,
+and he locked this second letter away with the first.  But Mr.
+Haslitt found it a little difficult to settle to his work.  There was
+that girl out there in the big house at Dijon and no one of her race
+near her!  He got up from his chair abruptly and crossed the corridor
+to the offices of his junior partner.
+
+"Jim, you were at Monte Carlo this winter," he said.
+
+"For a week," answered Jim Frobisher.
+
+"I think I asked you to call on a client of ours who has a villa
+there--Mrs. Harlowe."
+
+Jim Frobisher nodded.  "I did.  But Mrs. Harlowe was ill.  There was
+a niece, but she was out."
+
+"You saw no one, then?" Jeremy Haslitt asked.
+
+"No, that's wrong," Jim corrected.  "I saw a strange creature who
+came to the door to make Mrs. Harlowe's excuses--a Russian."
+
+"Boris Waberski," said Mr. Haslitt.
+
+"That's the name."
+
+Mr. Haslitt sat down in a chair.
+
+"Tell me about him, Jim."
+
+Jim Frobisher stared at nothing for a few moments.  He was a young
+man of twenty-six who had only during this last year succeeded to his
+partnership.  Though quick enough when action was imperative, he was
+naturally deliberate in his estimates of other people's characters;
+and a certain awe he had of old Jeremy Haslitt doubled that natural
+deliberation in any matters of the firm's business.  He answered at
+length.
+
+"He is a tall, shambling fellow with a shock of grey hair standing up
+like wires above a narrow forehead and a pair of wild eyes.  He made
+me think of a marionette whose limbs have not been properly strung.
+I should imagine that he was rather extravagant and emotional.  He
+kept twitching at his moustache with very long, tobacco-stained
+fingers.  The sort of man who might go off at the deep end at any
+moment."
+
+Mr. Haslitt smiled.
+
+"That's just what I thought."
+
+"Is he giving you any trouble?" asked Jim.
+
+"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt.  "But Mrs. Harlowe is dead, and I think
+it very likely that he will.  Did he play at the tables?"
+
+"Yes, rather high," said Jim.  "I suppose that he lived on Mrs.
+Harlowe."
+
+"I suppose so," said Mr. Haslitt, and he sat for a little while in
+silence.  Then: "It's a pity you didn't see Betty Harlowe.  I stopped
+at Dijon once on my way to the South of France five years ago when
+Simon Harlowe, the husband, was alive.  Betty was then a long-legged
+slip of a girl in black silk stockings with a pale, clear face and
+dark hair and big eyes--rather beautiful."  Mr. Haslitt moved in his
+chair uncomfortably.  That old house with its great garden of
+chestnuts and sycamores and that girl alone in it with an aggrieved
+and half-crazed man thinking out awkwardnesses for her--Mr. Haslitt
+did not like the picture!
+
+"Jim," he said suddenly, "could you arrange your work so that you
+could get away at short notice, if it becomes advisable?"
+
+Jim looked up in surprise.  Excursions and alarms, as the old stage
+directions have it, were not recognised as a rule by the firm of
+Frobisher & Haslitt.  If its furniture was dingy, its methods were
+stately; clients might be urgent, but haste and hurry were words for
+which the firm had no use No doubt, somewhere round the corner, there
+would be an attorney who understood them.  Yet here was Mr. Haslitt
+himself, with his white hair and his curious round face,
+half-babyish, half-supremely intelligent, actually advocating that
+his junior partner should be prepared to skip to the Continent at a
+word.
+
+"No doubt I could," said Jim, and Mr. Haslitt looked him over with
+approbation.
+
+Jim Frobisher had an unusual quality of which his acquaintances, even
+his friends, knew only the outward signs.  He was a solitary person.
+Very few people up till now had mattered to him at all, and even
+those he could do without.  It was his passion to feel that his life
+and the means of his life did not depend upon the purchased skill of
+other people; and he had spent the spare months of his life in the
+fulfilment of his passion.  A half-decked sailing-boat which one man
+could handle, an ice-axe, a rifle, an inexhaustible volume or two
+like _The Ring and the Book_--these with the stars and his own
+thoughts had been his companions on many lonely expeditions; and in
+consequence he had acquired a queer little look of aloofness which
+made him at once noticeable amongst his fellows.  A misleading look,
+since it encouraged a confidence for which there might not be
+sufficient justification.  It was just this look which persuaded Mr.
+Haslitt now.  "This is the very man to deal with creatures like Boris
+Waberski," he thought, but he did not say so aloud.
+
+What he did say was:
+
+"It may not be necessary after all.  Betty Harlowe has a French
+lawyer.  No doubt he is adequate.  Besides"--and he smiled as he
+recollected a phrase in Waberski's second letter--"Betty seems very
+capable of looking after herself.  We shall see."
+
+He went back to his own office, and for a week he heard no more from
+Dijon.  His anxiety, indeed, was almost forgotten when suddenly
+startling news arrived and by the most unexpected channel.
+
+Jim Frobisher brought it.  He broke into Mr. Haslitt's office at the
+sacred moment when the senior partner was dictating to a clerk the
+answers to his morning letters.
+
+"Sir!" cried Jim, and stopped short at the sight of the clerk.  Mr.
+Haslitt took a quick look at his young partner's face and said:
+
+"We will resume these answers, Godfrey, later on."
+
+The clerk took his shorthand notebook out of the room, and Mr.
+Haslitt turned to Jim Frobisher.
+
+"Now, what's your bad news, Jim?"
+
+Jim blurted it out.
+
+"Waberski accuses Betty Harlowe of murder."
+
+"What!"
+
+Mr. Haslitt sprang to his feet.  Jim Frobisher could not have said
+whether incredulity or anger had the upper hand with the old man, the
+one so creased his forehead, the other so blazed in his eyes.
+
+"Little Betty Harlowe!" he said in a wondering voice.
+
+"Yes.  Waberski has laid a formal charge with the Prefect of Police
+at Dijon.  He accuses Betty of poisoning Mrs. Harlowe on the night of
+April the twenty-seventh."
+
+"But Betty's not arrested?" Mr. Haslitt exclaimed.
+
+"No, but she's under surveillance."
+
+Mr. Haslitt sat heavily down in his arm-chair at his table.
+Extravagant!  Uncontrolled!  These were very mild epithets for Boris
+Waberski.  Here was a devilish malignity at work in the rogue, a
+passion for revenge just as mean as could be imagined.
+
+"How do you know all this, Jim?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"I have had a letter this morning from Dijon."
+
+"You?" exclaimed Mr. Haslitt, and the question caught hold of Jim
+Frobisher and plunged him too among perplexities.  In the first shock
+of the news, the monstrous fact of the accusation had driven
+everything else out of his head.  Now he asked himself why, after
+all, had the news come to him and not to the partner who had the
+Harlowe estate in his charge.
+
+"Yes, it is strange," he replied.  "And here's another queer thing.
+The letter doesn't come from Betty Harlowe, but from a friend, a
+companion of hers, Ann Upcott."
+
+Mr. Haslitt was a little relieved.
+
+"Betty had a friend with her, then?  That's a good thing."  He
+reached out his hand across the table.  "Let me read the letter, Jim."
+
+Frobisher had been carrying it in his hand, and he gave it now to
+Jeremy Haslitt.  It was a letter of many sheets, and Jeremy let the
+edges slip and flicker under the ball of his thumb.
+
+"Have I got to read all this?" he said ruefully, and he set himself
+to his task.  Boris Waberski had first of all accused Betty to her
+face.  Betty had contemptuously refused to answer the charge, and
+Waberski had gone straight off to the Prefect of Police.  He had
+returned in an hour's time, wildly gesticulating and talking aloud to
+himself.  He had actually asked Ann Upcott to back him up.  Then he
+had packed his bags and retired to an hotel in the town.  The story
+was set out in detail, with quotations from Waberski's violent, crazy
+talk; and as the old man read, Jim Frobisher became more and more
+uneasy, more and more troubled.
+
+He was sitting by the tall, broad window which looked out upon the
+square, expecting some explosion of wrath and contempt.  But he saw
+anxiety peep out of Mr. Haslitt's face and stay there as he read.
+More than once he stopped altogether in his reading, like a man
+seeking to remember or perhaps to discover.
+
+"But the whole thing's as clear as daylight," Jim said to himself
+impatiently.  And yet--and yet--Mr. Haslitt had sat in that arm-chair
+during the better part of the day, during the better part of thirty
+years.  How many men and women during those years had crossed the
+roadway below this window and crept into this quiet oblong room with
+their grievances, their calamities, their confessions?  And had
+passed out again, each one contributing his little to complete the
+old man's knowledge and sharpen the edge of his wit?  Then, if Mr.
+Haslitt was troubled, there was something in that letter, or some
+mission from it, which he himself in his novitiate had overlooked.
+He began to read it over again in his mind to the best of his
+recollection, but he had not got far before Mr. Haslitt put the
+letter down.
+
+"Surely, sir," cried Jim, "it's an obvious case of blackmail."
+
+Mr. Haslitt awoke with a little shake of his shoulders.
+
+"Blackmail?  Oh! that of course, Jim."
+
+Mr. Haslitt got up and unlocked his safe.  He took from it the two
+Waberski letters and brought them across the room to Jim.
+
+"Here's the evidence, as damning as any one could wish."
+
+Jim read the letters through and uttered a little cry of delight.
+
+"The rogue has delivered himself over to us."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Haslitt.
+
+But to him, at all events, that was not enough; he was still looking
+through the lines of the letter for something beyond, which he could
+not find.
+
+"Then what's troubling you?" asked Frobisher.
+
+Mr. Haslitt took his stand upon the worn hearthrug with his back
+towards the fire.
+
+"This, Jim," and he began to expound.  "In ninety-five of these cases
+out of a hundred, there is something else, something behind the
+actual charge, which isn't mentioned, but on which the blackmailer is
+really banking.  As a rule it's some shameful little secret, some
+blot on the family honour, which any sort of public trial would bring
+to light.  And there must be something of that kind here.  The more
+preposterous Waberski's accusation is, the more certain it is that he
+knows something to the discredit of the Harlowe name, which any
+Harlowe would wish to keep dark.  Only, I haven't an idea what the
+wretched thing can be!"
+
+"It might be some trifle," Jim suggested, "which a crazy person like
+Waberski would exaggerate."
+
+"Yes," Mr. Haslitt agreed.  "That happens.  A man brooding over
+imagined wrongs, and flighty and extravagant besides--yes, that might
+well be, Jim."
+
+Jeremy Haslitt spoke in a more cheerful voice.
+
+"Let us see exactly what we do know of the family," he said, and he
+pulled up a chair to face Jim Frobisher and the window.  But he had
+not yet sat down in it, when there came a discreet knock upon the
+door, and a clerk entered to announce a visitor.
+
+"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt before the name of the visitor had been
+mentioned.
+
+"Very good, sir," said the clerk, and he retired.  The firm of
+Frobisher & Haslitt conducted its business in that way.  It was the
+real thing as a firm of solicitors, and clients who didn't like its
+methods were very welcome to take their affairs to the attorney round
+the corner.  Just as people who go to the real thing in the line of
+tailors must put up with the particular style in which he cuts their
+clothes.
+
+Mr. Haslitt turned back to Jim.
+
+"Let us see what we know," he said, and he sat down in the chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO: _A Cry for Help_
+
+"Simon Harlow," he began, "was the owner of the famous Clos du Prince
+vineyards on the Côte-d'Or to the east of Dijon.  He had an estate in
+Norfolk, this big house, the Maison Crenelle in Dijon, and a villa at
+Monte Carlo.  But he spent most of his time in Dijon, where at the
+age of forty-five he married a French lady, Jeanne-Marie Raviart.
+There was, I believe, quite a little romance about the affair.
+Jeanne-Marie was married and separated from her husband, and Simon
+Harlowe waited, I think, for ten years until the husband Raviart
+died."
+
+Jim Frobisher moved quickly and Mr. Haslitt, who seemed to be reading
+off this history in the pattern of the carpet, looked up.
+
+"Yes, I see what you mean," he said, replying to Jim's movement.
+"Yes, there might have been some sort of affair between those two
+before they were free to marry.  But nowadays, my dear Jim!  Opinion
+takes a more human view than it did in my youth.  Besides, don't you
+see, this little secret, to be of any value to Boris Waberski, must
+be near enough to Betty Harlowe--I don't say to affect her if
+published, but to make Waberski think that she would hate to have it
+published.  Now Betty Harlowe doesn't come into the picture at all
+until two years after Simon and Jeanne-Marie were married, when it
+became clear that they were not likely to have any children.  No, the
+love-affairs of Simon Harlowe are sufficiently remote for us to leave
+them aside."
+
+Jim Frobisher accepted the demolition of his idea with a flush of
+shame.
+
+"I was a fool to think of it," he said.
+
+"Not a bit," replied Mr. Haslitt cheerfully.  "Let us look at every
+possibility.  That's the only way which will help us to get a glimpse
+of the truth.  I resume, then.  Simon Harlowe was a collector.  Yes,
+he had a passion for collecting and a very catholic one.  His one
+sitting-room at the Maison Crenelle was a perfect treasure-house, not
+only of beautiful things, but of out-of-the-way things too.  He liked
+to live amongst them and do his work amongst them.  His married life
+did not last long.  For he died five years ago at the age of
+fifty-one."
+
+Mr. Haslitt's eyes once more searched for recollections amongst the
+convolutions of the carpet.
+
+"That's really about all I know of him.  He was a pleasant fellow
+enough, but not very sociable.  No, there's nothing to light a candle
+for us there, I am afraid."
+
+Mr. Haslitt turned his thoughts to the widow.
+
+"Jeanne-Marie Harlowe," he said.  "It's extraordinary how little I
+know about her, now I come to count it up.  Natural too, though.  For
+she sold the Norfolk estate and has since passed her whole time
+between Monte Carlo and Dijon and--oh, yes--a little summer-house on
+the Côte-d'Or amongst her vineyards."
+
+"She was left rich, I suppose?" Frobisher asked.
+
+"Very well off, at all events," Mr. Haslitt replied.  "The Clos du
+Prince Burgundy has a fine reputation, but there's not a great deal
+of it."
+
+"Did she come to England ever?"
+
+"Never," said Mr. Haslitt.  "She was content, it seems, with Dijon,
+though to my mind the smaller provincial towns of France are dull
+enough to make one scream.  However, she was used to it, and then her
+heart began to trouble her, and for the last two years she has been
+an invalid.  There's nothing to help us there."  And Mr. Haslitt
+looked across to Jim for confirmation.
+
+"Nothing," said Jim.
+
+"Then we are only left the child Betty Harlowe and--oh, yes, your
+correspondent, your voluminous correspondent, Ann Upcott.  Who is
+she, Jim?  Where did she spring from?  How does she find herself in
+the Maison Crenelle?  Come, confess, young man," and Mr. Haslitt
+archly looked at his junior partner.  "Why should Boris Waberski
+expect her support?"
+
+Jim Frobisher threw his arms wide.
+
+"I haven't an idea," he said.  "I have never seen her.  I have never
+heard of her.  I never knew of her existence until that letter came
+this morning with her name signed at the end of it."
+
+Mr. Haslitt started up.  He crossed the room to his table and, fixing
+his folding glasses on the bridge of his nose, he bent over the
+letter.
+
+"But she writes to you, Jim," he objected.  "'Dear Mr. Frobisher,'
+she writes.  She doesn't address the firm at all"; and he waited,
+looking at Jim, expecting him to withdraw this denial.
+
+Jim, however, only shook his head.
+
+"It's the most bewildering thing," he replied.  "I can't make head or
+tail of it"; and Mr. Haslitt could not doubt now that he spoke the
+truth, so utterly and frankly baffled the young man was.  "Why should
+Ann Upcott write to me?  I have been asking myself that question for
+the last half-hour.  And why didn't Betty Harlowe write to you, who
+have had her affairs in your care?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+That last question helped Mr. Haslitt to an explanation.  His face
+took a livelier expression.
+
+"The answer to that is in Waberski's, the second letter.  Betty--she
+snap her fingers at his awkwardnesses.  She doesn't take the charge
+seriously.  She will have left it to the French notary to dispose of
+it.  Yes--I think that makes Ann Upcott's letter to you intelligible,
+too.  The ceremonies of the Law in a foreign country would frighten a
+stranger, as this girl is apparently, more than they would Betty
+Harlowe, who has lived for four years in the midst of them.  So she
+writes to the first name in the title of the firm, and writes to him
+as a man.  That's it, Jim," and the old man rubbed his hands together
+in his satisfaction.
+
+"A girl in terror wouldn't get any comfort out of writing to an
+abstraction.  She wants to know that she's in touch with a real
+person.  So she writes, 'Dear Mr. Frobisher.'  That's it!  You can
+take my word for it."
+
+Mr. Haslitt walked back to his chair.  But he did not sit down in it;
+he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window
+over Frobisher's head.
+
+"But that doesn't bring us any nearer to finding out what is Boris
+Waberski's strong suit, does it?  We haven't a clue to it," he said
+ruefully.
+
+To both of the men, indeed, Mr. Haslitt's flat, unillumined narrative
+of facts, without a glimpse into the characters of any of the
+participants in the little drama, seemed the most unhelpful thing.
+Yet the whole truth was written there--the truth not only of
+Waberski's move, but of all the strange terrors and mysteries into
+which the younger of the two men was now to be plunged.  Jim
+Frobisher was to recognise that, when, shaken to the soul, he resumed
+his work in the office.  For it was interrupted now.
+
+Mr. Haslitt, looking out of the window over his partner's head, saw a
+telegraph-boy come swinging across the square and hesitate in the
+roadway below.
+
+"I expect that's a telegram for us," he said, with the hopeful
+anticipation people in trouble have that something from outside will
+happen and set them right.
+
+Jim turned round quickly.  The boy was still upon the pavement
+examining the numbers of the houses.
+
+"We ought to have a brass plate upon the door," said Jim with a touch
+of impatience; and Mr. Haslitt's eyebrows rose half the height of his
+forehead towards his thick white hair.  He was really distressed by
+the Waberski incident, but this suggestion, and from a partner in the
+firm, shocked him like a sacrilege.
+
+"My dear boy, what are you thinking of?" he expostulated.  "I hope I
+am not one of those obstinate old fogies who refuse to march with the
+times.  We have had, as you know, a telephone instrument recently
+installed in the junior clerks' office.  I believe that I myself
+proposed it.  But a brass plate upon the door!  My dear Jim!  Let us
+leave that to Harley Street and Southampton Row!  But I see that
+telegram is for us."
+
+The tiny Mercury with the shako and red cord to his uniform made up
+his mind and disappeared into the hall below.  The telegram was
+brought upstairs and Mr. Haslitt tore it open.  He stared at it
+blankly for a few seconds, then without a word, but with a very
+anxious look in his eyes, he handed it to Jim Frobisher.
+
+Jim Frobisher read:
+
+
+    _Please, please, send some one to help me at once.  The Prefect
+    of Police has called in Hanaud, a great detective of the Sûrété
+    in Paris.  They must think me guilty.--Betty Harlowe._
+
+
+The telegram fluttered from Jim's fingers to the floor.  It was like
+a cry for help at night coming from a great distance.
+
+"I must go, sir, by the night boat," he said.
+
+"To be sure!" said Mr. Haslitt a little absently.
+
+Jim, however, had enthusiasm enough for both.  His chivalry was
+fired, as is the way with lonely men, by the picture his imagination
+drew.  The little girl, Betty Harlowe!  What age was she?
+Twenty-one!  Not a day more.  She had been wandering with all the
+proud indifference of her sex and youth, until suddenly she found her
+feet caught in some trap set by a traitor, and looked about her; and
+terror came and with it a wild cry for help.
+
+"Girls never notice danger signals," he said.  "No, they walk blindly
+into the very heart of catastrophe."  Who could tell what links of
+false and cunning evidence Boris Waberski had been hammering away at
+in the dark, to slip swiftly at the right moment over her wrist and
+ankle?  And with that question he was seized with a great
+discouragement.
+
+"We know very little of Criminal Procedure, even in our own country,
+in this office," he said regretfully.
+
+"Happily," said Mr. Haslitt with some tartness.  With him it was the
+Firm first and last.  Messrs. Frobisher & Haslitt never went in to
+the Criminal Courts.  Litigation, indeed, even of the purest kind was
+frowned upon.  It is true there was a small special staff, under the
+leadership of an old managing clerk, tucked away upon an upper floor,
+like an unpresentable relation in a great house, which did a little
+of that kind of work.  But it only did it for hereditary clients, and
+then as a favour.
+
+"However," said Mr. Haslitt as he noticed Jim's discomfort, "I
+haven't a doubt, my boy, that you will be equal to whatever is
+wanted.  But remember, there's something at the back of this which we
+here don't know."
+
+Jim shifted his position rather abruptly.  This cry of the old man
+was becoming parrot-like--a phrase, a formula.  Jim was thinking of
+the girl in Dijon and hearing her piteous cry for help.  She was not
+"snapping her the fingers" now.
+
+"It's a matter of common sense," Mr. Haslitt insisted.  "Take a
+comparison.  Bath, for instance, would never call in Scotland Yard
+over a case of this kind.  There would have to be the certainty of a
+crime first, and then grave doubt as to who was the criminal.  This
+is a case for an autopsy and the doctors.  If they call in this man
+Hanaud"--and he stopped.
+
+He picked the telegram up from the floor and read it through again.
+
+"Yes--Hanaud," he repeated, his face clouding and growing bright and
+clouding again like a man catching at and just missing a very elusive
+recollection.  He gave up the pursuit in the end.  "Well, Jim, you
+had better take the two letters of Waberski, and Ann Upcott's
+three-volume novel, and Betty's telegram"--he gathered the papers
+together and enclosed them in a long envelope--"and I shall expect
+you back again with a smiling face in a very few days.  I should like
+to see our little Boris when he is asked to explain those letters."
+
+Mr. Haslitt gave the envelope to Jim and rang his bell.
+
+"There is some one waiting to see me, I think," he said to the clerk
+who answered it.
+
+The clerk named a great landowner, who had been kicking his heels
+during the last half-hour in an undusted waiting-room with a few
+mouldy old Law books in a battered glass case to keep him company.
+
+"You can show him in now," said Mr. Haslitt as Jim retired to his own
+office; and when the great landowner entered, he merely welcomed him
+with a reproach.
+
+"You didn't make an appointment, did you?" he said.
+
+But all through that interview, though his advice was just the
+precise, clear advice for which the firm was quietly famous, Mr.
+Haslitt's mind was still playing hide-and-seek with a memory,
+catching glimpses of the fringes of its skirt as it gleamed and
+vanished.
+
+"Memory is a woman," he said to himself.  "If I don't run after her
+she will come of her own accord."
+
+But he was in the common case of men with women: he could not but run
+after her.  Towards the end of the interview, however, his shoulders
+and head moved with a little jerk, and he wrote a word down on a slip
+of paper.  As soon as his client had gone, he wrote a note and sent
+it off by a messenger who had orders to wait for an answer.  The
+messenger returned within the hour and Mr. Haslitt hurried to Jim
+Frobisher's office.
+
+Jim had just finished handing over his affairs to various clerks and
+was locking up the drawers of his desk.
+
+"Jim, I have remembered where I have heard the name of this man
+Hanaud before.  You have met Julius Ricardo?  He's one of our
+clients."
+
+"Yes," said Frobisher.  "I remember him--a rather finnicking person
+in Grosvenor Square."
+
+"That's the man.  He's a friend of Hanaud and absurdly proud of the
+friendship.  He and Hanaud were somehow mixed up in a rather
+scandalous crime some time ago--at Aix-les-Bains, I think.  Well,
+Ricardo will give you a letter of introduction to him, and tell you
+something about him, if you will go round to Grosvenor Square at five
+this afternoon."
+
+"Capital!" said Jim Frobisher.
+
+He kept the appointment, and was told how he must expect to be awed
+at one moment, leaped upon unpleasantly at the next, ridiculed at a
+third, and treated with great courtesy and friendship at the fourth.
+Jim discounted Mr. Ricardo's enthusiasm, but he got the letter and
+crossed the Channel that night.  On the journey it occurred to him
+that if Hanaud was a man of such high mark, he would not be free,
+even at an urgent call, to pack his bags and leave for the provinces
+in an instant.  Jim broke his journey, therefore, at Paris, and in
+the course of the morning found his way to the Direction of the
+Sûrété on the Quai d'Horloge just behind the Palais de Justice.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud?" he asked eagerly, and the porter took his card and
+his letter of introduction.  The great man was still in Paris, then,
+he thought with relief.  He was taken to a long dark corridor, lit
+with electric globes even on that bright morning of early summer.
+There he rubbed elbows with malefactors and gendarmes for half an
+hour whilst his confidence in himself ebbed away.  Then a bell rang
+and a policeman in plain clothes went up to him.  One side of the
+corridor was lined with a row of doors.
+
+"It is for you, sir," said the policeman, and he led Frobisher to one
+of the doors and opened it, and stood aside.  Frobisher straightened
+his shoulders and marched in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE: _Servants of Chance_
+
+Frobisher found himself at one end of an oblong room.  Opposite to
+him a couple of windows looked across the shining river to the big
+Théâtre du Chatelet On his left hand was a great table with a few
+neatly arranged piles of papers, at which a big, rather heavily-built
+man was sitting.  Frobisher looked at that man as a novice in a
+duelling field might look at the master swordsman whom he was
+committed to fight; with a little shock of surprise that after all he
+appeared to be just like other men.  Hanaud, on his side, could not
+have been said to have looked at Frobisher at all; yet when he spoke
+it was obvious that somehow he had looked and to very good purpose.
+He rose with a little bow and apologised.
+
+"I have kept you waiting, Mr. Frobisher.  My dear friend Mr. Ricardo
+did not mention your object in his letter.  I had the idea that you
+came with the usual wish to see something of the underworld.  Now
+that I see you, I recognise your wish is more serious."
+
+Hanaud was a man of middle age with a head of thick dark hair, and
+the round face and shaven chin of a comedian.  A pair of remarkably
+light eyes under rather heavy lids alone gave a significance to him,
+at all events when seen for the first time in a mood of good-will.
+He pointed to a chair.
+
+"Will you take a seat?  I will tell you, Mr. Frobisher, I have a very
+soft place in my heart for Mr. Ricardo, and a friend of his----
+These are words, however.  What can I do?"
+
+Jim Frobisher laid down his hat and stick upon a side table and took
+the chair in front of Hanaud's table.
+
+"I am partner in a firm of lawyers which looks after the English
+interests of a family in Dijon," he said, and he saw all life and
+expression smoothed out of Hanaud's face.  A moment ago he had been
+in the company of a genial and friendly companion; now he was looking
+at a Chinaman.
+
+"Yes?" said Hanaud.
+
+"The family has the name of Harlowe," Jim continued.
+
+"Oho!" said Hanaud.
+
+The ejaculation had no surprise in it, and hardly any interest.  Jim,
+however, persisted.
+
+"And the surviving member of it, a girl of twenty, Betty Harlowe, has
+been charged with murder by a Russian who is connected with the
+family by marriage--Boris Waberski."
+
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  "And why do you come to me, Mr. Frobisher?"
+
+Jim stared at the detective.  The reason of his coming was obvious.
+
+And yet--he was no longer sure of his ground.  Hanaud had pulled open
+a drawer in his table and was beginning to put away in it one of his
+files.
+
+"Yes?" he said, as who should say, "I am listening."
+
+"Well, perhaps I am under a mistake," said Jim.  "But my firm has
+been informed that you, Monsieur Hanaud, are in charge of the case,"
+he said, and Hanaud's movements were at once arrested.  He sat with
+the file poised on the palm of his hand as though he was weighing it,
+extraordinarily still; and Jim had a swift impression that he was
+more than disconcerted.  Then Hanaud put the file into the drawer and
+closed the drawer softly.  As softly he spoke, but in a sleek voice
+which to Frobisher's ears had a note in it which was actually
+alarming.
+
+"So you have been informed of that, Mr. Frobisher!  And in London!
+And--yes--this is only Wednesday!  News travels very quickly
+nowadays, to be sure!  Well, your firm has been correctly informed.
+I congratulate you.  The first point is scored by you."
+
+Jim Frobisher was quick to seize upon that word.  He had thought out
+upon his journey in what spirit he might most usefully approach the
+detective.  Hanaud's bitter little remark gave him the very opening
+which he needed.
+
+"But, Monsieur Hanaud, I don't take that point of view at all," he
+argued earnestly.  "I am happy to believe that there is going to be
+no antagonism between us.  For, if there were, I should assuredly get
+the worst of it.  No!  I am certain that the one wish you have in
+this matter is to get at the truth.  Whilst my wish is that you
+should just look upon me as a very second-rate colleague who by good
+fortune can give you a little help."
+
+A smile flickered across Hanaud's face and restored it to some of its
+geniality.
+
+"It has always been a good rule to lay it on with a trowel," he
+observed.  "Now, what kind of help, Mr. Frobisher?"
+
+"This kind of help, Monsieur Hanaud.  Two letters from Boris Waberski
+demanding money, the second one with threats.  Both were received by
+my firm before he brought this charge, and both of course remain
+unanswered."
+
+He took the letters from the long envelope and handed them across the
+table to Hanaud, who read them through slowly, mentally translating
+the phrases into French as he read.  Frobisher watched his face for
+some expression of relief or satisfaction.  But to his utter
+disappointment no such change came; and it was with a deprecating and
+almost regretful air that Hanaud turned to him in the end.
+
+"Yes--no doubt these two letters have a certain importance.  But we
+mustn't exaggerate it.  The case is very difficult."
+
+"Difficult!" cried Jim in exasperation.  He seemed to be hammering
+and hammering in vain against some thick wall of stupidity.  Yet this
+man in front of him wasn't stupid.
+
+"I can't understand it!" he exclaimed.  "Here's the clearest instance
+of blackmail that I can imagine----"
+
+"Blackmail's an ugly word, Mr. Frobisher," Hanaud warned him.
+
+"And blackmail's an ugly thing," said Jim.  "Come, Monsieur Hanaud,
+Boris Waberski lives in France.  You will know something about him.
+You will have a dossier."
+
+Hanaud pounced upon the word with a little whoop of delight, his face
+broke into smiles, he shook a forefinger gleefully at his visitor.
+
+"Ah, ah, ah, ah!  A dossier!  Yes, I was waiting for that word!  The
+great legend of the dossiers!  You have that charming belief too, Mr.
+Frobisher.  France and her dossiers!  Yes.  If her coal-mines fail
+her, she can always keep warm by burning her dossiers!  The moment
+you land for the first time at Calais--bourn!  your dossier begins,
+eh?  You travel to Paris--so!  You dine at the Ritz Hotel--so!
+Afterwards you go where you ought not to go--so-o-o!  And you go back
+late to the hotel very uncomfortable because you are quite sure that
+somewhere in the still night six little officials with black beards
+and green-shaded lamps are writing it all down in your dossier.
+But--wait!"
+
+He suddenly rose from his chair with his finger to his lips, and his
+eyes opened wide.  Never was a man so mysterious, so important in his
+mystery.  He stole on tiptoe, with a lightness of step amazing in so
+bulky a man, to the door.  Noiselessly and very slowly, with an
+alert, bright eye cocked at Frobisher like a bird's, he turned the
+handle.  Then he jerked the door swiftly inwards towards him.  It was
+the classic detection of the eavesdropper, seen in a hundred comedies
+and farces; and carried out with so excellent a mimicry that Jim,
+even in this office of the Sûrété, almost expected to see a flustered
+chambermaid sprawl heavily forward on her knees.  He saw nothing,
+however, but a grimy corridor lit with artificial light in which men
+were patiently waiting.  Hanaud closed the door again, with an air of
+intense relief.
+
+"The Prime Minister has not overheard us.  We are safe," he hissed,
+and he crept back to Frobisher's side.  He stooped and whispered in
+the ear of that bewildered man:
+
+"I can tell you about those dossiers.  They are for nine-tenths the
+gossip of the _concièrge_ translated into the language of a policeman
+who thinks that everybody had better be in prison.  Thus, the
+_concièrge_ says: This Mr. Frobisher--on Tuesday he came home at one
+in the morning and on Thursday at three in fancy dress; and in the
+policeman's report it becomes, 'Mr. Frobisher is of a loose and
+excessive life.'  And that goes into your dossier--yes, my friend,
+just so!  But here in the Sûrété--never breathe a word of it, or you
+ruin me!--here we are like your Miss Betty Harlowe, 'we snap us the
+fingers at those dossiers.'"
+
+Jim Frobisher's mind was of the deliberate order.  To change from one
+mood to another required a progression of ideas.  He hardly knew for
+the moment whether he was upon his head or his heels.  A minute ago
+Hanaud had been the grave agent of Justice; without a hint he had
+leaped to buffoonery, and with a huge enjoyment.  He had become half
+urchin, half clown.  Jim could almost hear the bells of his cap still
+tinkling.  He simply stared, and Hanaud with a rueful smile resumed
+his seat.
+
+"If we work together at Dijon, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with
+whimsical regret, "I shall not enjoy myself as I did with my dear
+little friend Mr. Ricardo at Aix.  No, indeed!  Had I made this
+little pantomime for him, he would have sat with the eyes popping out
+of his head.  He would have whispered, 'The Prime Minister comes in
+the morning to spy outside your door--oh!' and he would have been
+thrilled to the marrow of his bones.  But you--you look at me all
+cold and stony, and you say to yourself, 'This Hanaud, he is a
+comic!'"
+
+"No," said Jim earnestly, and Hanaud interrupted the protest with a
+laugh.
+
+"It does not matter."
+
+"I am glad," said Jim.  "For you just now said something which I am
+very anxious you should not withdraw.  You held me out a hope that we
+should work together."  Hanaud leaned forward with his elbows on his
+desk.
+
+"Listen," he said genially.  "You have been frank and loyal with me.
+So I relieve your mind.  This Waberski affair--the Prefect at Dijon
+does not take it very seriously; neither do I here.  It is, of
+course, a charge of murder, and that has to be examined with care."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And equally, of course, there is some little thing behind it,"
+Hanaud continued, surprising Frobisher with the very words which Mr.
+Haslitt had used the day before, though the one spoke in English and
+the other in French.  "As a lawyer you will know that.  Some little
+unpleasant fact which is best kept to ourselves.  But it is a simple
+affair, and with these two letters you have brought me, simpler than
+ever.  We shall ask Waberski to explain these letters and some other
+things too, if he can.  He is a type, that Boris Waberski!  The body
+of Madame Harlowe will be exhumed to-day and the evidence of the
+doctors taken, and afterwards, no doubt, the case will be dismissed
+and you can deal with Waberski as you please."
+
+"And that little secret?" asked Jim.
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No doubt it will come to light.  But what does that matter if it
+only comes to light in the office of the examining magistrate, and
+does not pass beyond the door?"
+
+"Nothing at all," Jim agreed.
+
+"You will see.  We are not so alarming after all, and your little
+client can put her pretty head upon the pillow without any fear that
+an injustice will be done to her."
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur Hanaud!" Jim Frobisher cried warmly.  He was
+conscious of so great a relief that he himself was surprised by it.
+He had been quite captured by his pity for that unknown girl in the
+big house, set upon by a crazy rascal and with no champion but
+another girl of her own years.  "Yes, this is good news to me."
+
+But he had hardly finished speaking before a doubt crept into his
+mind as to the sincerity of the man sitting opposite to him.  Jim did
+not mean to be played and landed like a silly fish, however
+inexperienced he might be.  He looked at Hanaud and wondered.  Was
+this present geniality of his any less assumed than his other moods?
+Jim was unsettled in his estimate of the detective.  One moment a
+judge, and rather implacable, now an urchin, now a friend!  Which was
+travesty and which truth?  Luckily there was a test question which
+Mr. Haslitt had put only yesterday as he looked out from the window
+across Russell Square.  Jim now repeated it.
+
+"The affair is simple, you say?"
+
+"Of the simplest."
+
+"Then how comes it, Monsieur Hanaud, that the examining judge at
+Dijon still finds it necessary to call in to his assistance one of
+the chiefs of the Sûrété of Paris?"
+
+The question was obviously expected, and no less obviously difficult
+to answer.  Hanaud nodded his head once or twice.
+
+"Yes," he said, and again "Yes," like a man in doubt.  He looked at
+Jim with appraising eyes.  Then with a rush, "I shall tell you
+everything, and when I have told you, you will give me your word that
+you will not betray my confidence to any one in this world.  For this
+is serious."
+
+Jim could not doubt Hanaud's sincerity at this moment, nor his
+friendliness.  They shone in the man like a strong flame.
+
+"I give you my word now," he said, and he reached out his hand across
+the table.  Hanaud shook it.  "I can talk to you freely, then," he
+answered, and he produced a little blue bundle of very black
+cigarettes.  "You shall smoke."
+
+The two men lit their cigarettes and through the blue cloud Hanaud
+explained:
+
+"I go really to Dijon on quite another matter.  This Waberski affair,
+it is a pretence!  The examining judge who calls me in--see, now, you
+have a phrase for him," and Hanaud proudly dropped into English more
+or less.  "He excuse his face!  Yes, that is your expressive idiom.
+He excuse his face, and you will see, my friend, that it needs a lot
+of excusing, that face of his, yes.  Now listen!  I get hot when I
+think of that examining judge."
+
+He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and, setting his sentence
+in order, resumed in French.
+
+"The little towns, my friend, where life is not very gay and people
+have the time to be interested in the affairs of their neighbours,
+have their own crimes, and perhaps the most pernicious of them all is
+the crime of anonymous letters.  Suddenly out of a clear sky they
+will come like a pestilence, full of vile charges difficult to refute
+and--who knows?--sometimes perhaps true.  For a while these
+abominations flow into the letter-boxes and not a word is said.  If
+money is demanded, money is paid.  If it is only sheer wickedness
+which drives that unknown pen, those who are lashed by it none the
+less hold their tongues.  But each one begins to suspect his
+neighbour.  The social life of the town is poisoned.  A great canopy
+of terror hangs over it, until the postman's knock, a thing so
+welcome in the sane life of every day, becomes a thing to shiver at,
+and in the end dreadful things happen."
+
+So grave and quiet was the tone which Hanaud used that Jim himself
+shivered, even in this room whence he could see the sunlight
+sparkling on the river and hear the pleasant murmur of the Paris
+streets.  Above that murmur he heard the sharp knock of the postman
+upon the door.  He saw a white face grow whiter and still eyes grow
+haggard with despair.
+
+"Such a plague has descended upon Dijon," Hanaud continued.  "For
+more than a year it has raged.  The police would not apply to Paris
+for help.  No, they did not need help, they would solve this pretty
+problem for themselves.  Yes, but the letters go on and the citizens
+complain.  The police say, 'Hush!  The examining magistrate, he has a
+clue.  Give him time!'  But the letters still go on.  Then after a
+year comes this godsend of the Waberski affair.  At once the Prefect
+of Police and the magistrate put their heads together.  'We will send
+for Hanaud over this simple affair, and he will find for us the
+author of the anonymous letters.  We will send for him very
+privately, and if any one recognises him in the street and cries
+"There is Hanaud," we can say he is investigating the Waberski
+affair.  Thus the writer of the letters will not be alarmed and
+we--we excuse our faces.'  Yes," concluded Hanaud heatedly, "but they
+should have sent for me a year ago.  They have lost a year."
+
+"And during that year the dreadful things have happened?" asked Jim.
+
+Hanaud nodded angrily.
+
+"An old, lonely man who lunches at the hotel and takes his coffee at
+the Grande Taverne and does no harm to any one, he flings himself in
+front of the Mediterranean express and is cut to pieces.  A pair of
+lovers shoot themselves in the Forêt des Moissonières.  A young girl
+comes home from a ball; she says good night to her friends gaily on
+the doorstep of her house, and in the morning she is found hanging in
+her ball dress from a rivet in the wall of her bedroom, whilst in the
+hearth there are the burnt fragments of one of these letters.  How
+many had she received, that poor girl, before this last one drove her
+to this madness?  Ah, the magistrate.  Did I not tell you?  He has
+need to excuse his face."
+
+Hanaud opened a drawer in his desk and took from it a green cover.
+
+"See, here are two of those precious letters," and removing two
+typewritten sheets from the cover he handed them to Frobisher.
+"Yes," he added, as he saw the disgust on the reader's face, "those
+do not make a nice sauce for your breakfast, do they?"
+
+"They are abominable," said Jim.  "I wouldn't have believed----" he
+broke off with a little cry.  "One moment, Monsieur Hanaud!"  He bent
+his head again over the sheets of paper, comparing them, scrutinising
+each sentence.  No, there were only the two errors which he had
+noticed at once.  But what errors they were!  To any one, at all
+events, with eyes to see and some luck in the matter of experience.
+Why, they limited the area of search at once!
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud, I can give you some more help," he cried
+enthusiastically.  He did not notice the broad grin of delight which
+suddenly transfigured the detective's face.  "Help which may lead you
+very quickly to the writer of these letters."
+
+"You can?" Hanaud exclaimed.  "Give it to me, my young friend.  Do
+not keep me shaking in excitement.  And do not--oh! do not tell me
+that you have discovered that the letters were typed upon a Corona
+machine.  For that we know already."
+
+Jim Frobisher flushed scarlet.  That is just what he had noticed with
+so much pride in his perspicuity.  Where the text of a sentence
+required a capital D, there were instead the two noughts with the
+diagonal line separating them (thus, %), which are the symbol of "per
+cent."; and where there should have been a capital S lower down the
+page, there was the capital S with the transverse lines which stands
+for dollars.  Jim was familiar with the Corona machine himself, and
+he had remembered that if one used by error the stop for figures,
+instead of the stop for capital letters, those two mistakes would
+result.  He realised now, with Hanaud's delighted face in front of
+him--Hanaud was the urchin now--that the Sûrété was certain not to
+have overlooked those two indications even if the magistrate at Dijon
+had; and in a moment he began to laugh too.
+
+"Well, I fairly asked for it, didn't I?" he said as he handed the
+letter back.  "I said a wise thing to you, Monsieur, when I held it
+fortunate that we were not to be on opposite sides."
+
+Hanaud's face lost its urchin look.
+
+"Don't make too much of me, my friend, lest you be disappointed," he
+said in all seriousness.  "We are the servants of Chance, the very
+best of us.  Our skill is to seize quickly the hem of her skirt, when
+it flashes for the fraction of a second before our eyes."
+
+He replaced the two anonymous letters in the green cover and laid it
+again in the drawer.  Then he gathered together the two letters which
+Boris Waberski had written and gave them back to Jim Frobisher.
+
+"You will want these to produce at Dijon.  You will go there to-day?"
+
+"This afternoon."
+
+"Good!" said Hanaud.  "I shall take the night express."
+
+"I can wait for that," said Jim.  But Hanaud shook his head.
+
+"It is better that we should not go together, nor stay at the same
+hotel.  It will very quickly be known in Dijon that you are the
+English lawyer of Miss Harlowe, and those in your company will be
+marked men too.  By the way, how were you informed in London that I,
+Hanaud, had been put in charge of this case?"
+
+"We had a telegram," replied Jim.
+
+"Yes?  And from whom?  I am curious!"
+
+"From Miss Harlowe."
+
+For a moment Hanaud was for the second time in that interview quite
+disconcerted.  Of that Jim Frobisher could have no doubt.  He sat for
+so long a time, his cigarette half-way to his lips, a man turned into
+stone.  Then he laughed rather bitterly, with his eyes alertly turned
+on Jim.
+
+"Do you know what I am doing, Monsieur Frobisher?" he asked.  "I am
+putting to myself a riddle.  Answer it if you can!  What is the
+strongest passion in the world?  Avarice?  Love?  Hatred?  None of
+these things.  It is the passion of one public official to take a
+great big club and hit his brother official on the back of the head.
+It is arranged that I shall go secretly to Dijon so that I may have
+some little chance of success.  Good!  On Saturday it is so arranged,
+and already on Monday my colleagues have so spread the news that Miss
+Harlowe can telegraph it to you on Tuesday morning.  But that is
+kind, eh?  May I please see the telegram?"
+
+Frobisher took it from the long envelope and handed it to Hanaud, who
+received it with a curious eagerness and opened it out on the table
+in front of them.  He read it very slowly, so slowly that Jim
+wondered whether he too heard through the lines of the telegram, as
+through the receiver of a telephone, the same piteous cry for help
+which he himself had heard.  Indeed, when Hanaud raised his face all
+the bitterness had gone from it.
+
+"The poor little girl, she is afraid now, eh?  The slender fingers,
+they do not snap themselves any longer, eh?  Well, in a few days we
+make all right for her."
+
+"Yes," said Jim stoutly.
+
+"Meanwhile I tear this, do I not?" and Hanaud held up the telegraph
+form.  "It mentions my name.  It will be safe with you, no doubt, but
+it serves no purpose.  Everything which is torn up here is burnt in
+the evening.  It is for you to say," and he dangled the telegram
+before Jim Frobisher's eyes.
+
+"By all means," said Jim, and Hanaud tore the telegram across.  Then
+he placed the torn pieces together and tore them through once again
+and dropped them into his waste-paper basket.  "So!  That is done!"
+he said.  "Now tell me!  There is another young English girl in the
+Maison Crenelle."
+
+"Ann Upcott," said Jim with a nod.
+
+"Yes, tell me about her."
+
+Jim made the same reply to Hanaud which he had made to Mr. Haslitt.
+
+"I have never seen her in my life.  I never heard of her until
+yesterday."
+
+But whereas Mr. Haslitt had received the answer with amazement,
+Hanaud accepted it without comment.
+
+"Then we shall both make the acquaintance of that young lady at
+Dijon," he said with a smile, and he rose from his chair.
+
+Jim Frobisher had a feeling that the interview which had begun badly
+and moved on to cordiality was turning back upon itself and ending
+not too well.  He was conscious of a subtle difference in Hanaud's
+manner, not a diminution in his friendliness, but--Jim could find
+nothing but Hanaud's own phrase to define the change.  He seemed to
+have caught the hem of the skirt of Chance as it flickered for a
+second within his range of vision.  But when it had flickered Jim
+could not even conjecture.
+
+He picked up his hat and stick.  Hanaud was already at the door with
+his hand upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye, Monsieur Frobisher, and I thank you sincerely for your
+visit."
+
+"I shall see you in Dijon," said Jim.
+
+"Surely," Hanaud agreed with a smile.  "On many occasions.  In the
+office, perhaps, of the examining magistrate.  No doubt in the Maison
+Crenelle."
+
+But Jim was not satisfied.  It was a real collaboration which Hanaud
+had appeared a few minutes ago not merely to accept, but even to look
+forward to.  Now, on the contrary, he was evading it.
+
+"But if we are to work together?" Jim suggested.
+
+"You might want to reach me quickly," Hanaud continued.  "Yes.  And I
+might want to reach you, if not so quickly, still very secretly.
+Yes."  He turned the question over in his mind.  "You will stay at
+the Maison Crenelle, I suppose?"
+
+"No," said Jim, and he drew a little comfort from Hanaud's little
+start of disappointment.  "There will be no need for that," he
+explained.  "Boris Waberski can attempt nothing more.  Those two
+girls will be safe enough."
+
+"That's true," Hanaud agreed.  "You will go, then, to the big hotel
+in the Place Darcy.  For me I shall stay in one that is more obscure,
+and not under my own name.  Whatever chance of secrecy is still left
+for me, that I shall cling to."
+
+He did not volunteer the name of the obscure hotel or the name under
+which he proposed to masquerade, and Jim was careful not to inquire.
+Hanaud stood with his hand upon the knob of the door and his eyes
+thoughtfully resting upon Frobisher's face.
+
+"I will trust you with a little trick of mine," he said, and a smile
+warmed and lit his face to good humour.  "Do you like the pictures?
+No--yes?  For me, I adore them.  Wherever I go I snatch an hour for
+the cinema.  I behold wonderful things and I behold them in the
+dark--so that while I watch I can talk quietly with a friend, and
+when the lights go up we are both gone, and only our empty bocks are
+left to show where we were sitting.  The cinemas--yes!  With their
+audiences which constantly change and new people coming in who sit
+plump down upon your lap because they cannot see an inch beyond their
+noses, the cinemas are useful, I tell you.  But you will not betray
+my little secret?"
+
+He ended with a laugh.  Jim Frobisher's spirits were quite revived by
+this renewal of Hanaud's confidence.  He felt with a curious elation
+that he had travelled a long way from the sedate dignities of Russell
+Square.  He could not project in his mind any picture of Messrs.
+Frobisher & Haslitt meeting a client in a dark corner of a cinema
+theatre off the Marylebone Road.  Such manoeuvres were not amongst
+the firm's methods, and Jim began to find the change exhilarating.
+Perhaps, after all, Messrs. Frobisher & Haslitt were a little musty,
+he reflected.  They missed--and he coined a phrase, he, Jim
+Frobisher! ... they missed the ozone of police-work.
+
+"Of course I'll keep your secret," he said with a thrill in his
+voice.  "I should never have thought of so capital a meeting-place."
+
+"Good," said Hanaud.  "Then at nine o'clock each night, unless there
+is something serious to prevent me, I shall be sitting in the big
+hall of the Grande Taverne.  The Grande Taverne is at the corner
+across the square from the railway station.  You can't mistake it.  I
+shall be on the left-hand side of the hall and close up to the screen
+and at the edge near the billiard-room.  Don't look for me when the
+lights are raised, and if I am talking to any one else, you will
+avoid me like poison.  Is that understood?"
+
+"Quite," Jim returned.
+
+"And you have now two secrets of mine to keep."  Hanaud's face lost
+its smile.  In some strange way it seemed to sharpen, the
+light-coloured eyes became very still and grave.  "That also is
+understood, Monsieur Frobisher," he said.  "For I begin to think that
+we may both of us see strange things before we leave Dijon again for
+Paris."
+
+The moment of gravity passed.  With a bow he held open the door.  But
+Jim Frobisher, as he passed out into the corridor, was once again
+convinced that at some definite point in the interview Hanaud had at
+all events caught a glimpse of the flickering skirts of Chance, even
+if he had not grasped them in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR: _Betty Harlowe_
+
+Jim Frobisher reached Dijon that night at an hour too late for any
+visit, but at half-past nine on the next morning he turned with a
+thrill of excitement into the little street of Charles-Robert.  This
+street was bordered upon one side, throughout its length, by a high
+garden wall above which great sycamores and chestnut trees rustled
+friendlily in a stir of wind.  Towards the farther mouth of the
+street the wall was broken, first by the end of a house with a florid
+observation-window of the Renaissance period which overhung the
+footway; and again a little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall
+iron gates.  Before these gates Jim came to a standstill.  He gazed
+into the courtyard of the Maison Crenelle, and as he gazed his
+excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of it.  There
+seemed so little cause for excitement.
+
+It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning.  On the left-hand side of the
+court women-servants were busy in front of a row of offices; at the
+end Jim caught glimpses of a chauffeur moving between a couple of
+cars in a garage, and heard him whistling gaily as he moved; on the
+right stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out gaily
+with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow, taking in the sunlight
+through all its open windows.  The hall door under the horizontal
+glass fan stood open.  One of the iron gates, too, was ajar.  Even
+the _sergent-de-ville_ in his white trousers out in the small street
+here seemed to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high
+wall rather than exercising any real vigilance.  It was impossible to
+believe, with all this pleasant evidence of normal life, that any
+threat was on that house or upon any of its inhabitants.
+
+"And indeed there is no threat," Jim reflected.  "I have Hanaud's
+word for it."
+
+He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door.  An old
+serving-man informed him that Mademoiselle Harlowe did not receive,
+but he took Jim's card nevertheless, and knocked upon a door on the
+right of the big square hall.  As he knocked, he opened the door; and
+from his position in the hall Jim looked right through a library to a
+window at the end and saw two figures silhouetted against the window,
+a man and a girl.  The man was protesting, rather extravagantly both
+in word and gesture, to Jim's Britannic mind, the girl laughing--a
+clear, ringing laugh, with just a touch of cruelty, at the man's
+protestations.  Jim even caught a word or two of the protest spoken
+in French, but with a curiously metallic accent.
+
+"I have been your slave too long," the man cried, and the girl became
+aware that the door was open and that the old man stood inside of it
+with a card upon a silver salver.  She came quickly forward and took
+the card.  Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running
+out into the hall.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining.  "I had no right to expect
+you so soon.  Oh, thank you!" and she gave him both her hands.
+
+Jim did not need her words to recognise in her the "little girl" of
+Mr. Haslitt's description.  Little in actual height Betty Harlowe
+certainly was not, but she was such a slender trifle of a girl that
+the epithet seemed in place.  Her hair was dark brown in colour, with
+a hint of copper where the light caught it, parted on one side and
+very neatly dressed about her small head.  The broad forehead and
+oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid the fresh scarlet of
+her lips; and the large pupils of her grey eyes gave to her a look
+which was at once haunting and wistful.  As she held out her hands in
+a warm gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of
+delicate flame and fragile as fair china.  She looked him over with
+one swift comprehensive glance and breathed a little sigh of relief.
+
+"I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now on," she said,
+with a smile.
+
+"To be sure.  That's what I am here for," he answered.  "But don't
+take me for anything very choice and particular."
+
+Betty laughed again and, holding him by the sleeve, drew him into the
+library.
+
+"Monsieur Espinosa," she said, presenting the stranger to Jim.  "He
+is from Cataluna, but he spends so much of his life in Dijon that we
+claim him as a citizen."
+
+The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong white teeth.
+
+"Yes, I have the honour to represent a great Spanish firm of
+wine-growers.  We buy the wines here to mix with our better brands,
+and we sell wine here to mix with their cheaper ones."
+
+"You mustn't give your trade secrets away to me," Jim replied
+shortly.  He disliked Espinosa on sight, as they say, and he was at
+no very great pains to conceal his dislike.  Espinosa was altogether
+too brilliant a personage.  He was a big, broad-shouldered man with
+black shining hair and black shining eyes, a florid complexion, a
+curled moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers.
+
+"Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on quite different
+business," Betty interposed.
+
+"Yes?" said the Catalan a little defiantly, as though he meant to
+hold his ground.
+
+"Yes," replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him.  Espinosa
+raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it.
+
+"I shall see you when you return," said Betty, and she walked to the
+door.
+
+"If I go away," Espinosa replied stubbornly.  "It is not certain,
+Mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go"; and with a ceremonious bow to
+Jim he walked out of the room; but not so quickly but that Betty
+glanced swiftly from one man to the other with keen comparing eyes,
+and Jim detected the glance.  She closed the door and turned back to
+Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put him in a good
+humour.  He was being compared to another man to his advantage, and
+however modest one may be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant
+warmth.
+
+"More trouble, Miss Harlowe," he said with a smile, "but this time
+the sort of trouble which you must expect for a good many years to
+come."
+
+He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two side windows
+which looked out upon the courtyard.  Betty sat down in the
+window-seat.
+
+"I really ought to be grateful to him," she said, "for he made me
+laugh.  And it seems to me ages since I laughed"; she looked out of
+the window and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"Oh! don't, please," cried Jim in a voice of trouble.
+
+The smile trembled once more on Betty's lips deliciously.
+
+"I won't," she replied.
+
+"I was so glad to hear you laugh," he continued, "after your unhappy
+telegram to my partner and before I told you my good news."
+
+Betty looked up at him eagerly.
+
+"Good news?"
+
+Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope the two letters
+which Waberski had sent to his firm and handed them to Betty.
+
+"Read them," he said, "and notice the dates."
+
+Betty glanced at the handwriting.
+
+"From Monsieur Boris," she cried, and she settled down in the
+window-seat to study them.  In her short black frock with her slim
+legs in their black silk stockings extended and her feet crossed, and
+her head and white neck bent over the sheets of Waberski's letters,
+she looked to Jim like a girl fresh from school.  She was quick
+enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.
+
+"Of course I always knew that it was money that Monsieur Boris
+wanted," she said.  "And when my aunt's will was read and I found
+that everything had been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you
+and make some arrangement for him."
+
+"There was no obligation upon you," Jim protested.  "He wasn't really
+a relation at all.  He married Mrs. Harlowe's sister, that's all."
+
+"I know," replied Betty, and she laughed.  "He always objected to me
+because I would call him 'Monsieur Boris' instead of 'uncle.'  But I
+meant to do something nevertheless.  Only he gave me no time.  He
+bullied me first of all, and I do hate being bullied--don't you, Mr.
+Frobisher?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Betty looked at the letters again.
+
+"That's when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose," she
+continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the phrase.
+"Afterwards he brought this horrible charge against me, and to have
+suggested any arrangement would have been to plead guilty."
+
+"You were quite right.  It would indeed," Jim agreed cordially.
+
+Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the back of Jim
+Frobisher's mind that this girl had been a trifle hard in her
+treatment of Boris Waberski.  He was a sponger, a wastrel, with no
+real claim upon her, it was true.  On the other hand, he had no means
+of livelihood, and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune,
+had been content to endure and support him.  Now, however, the
+suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the girl removed and by
+her own frankness.
+
+"Then it is all over," Betty said, handing back the letters to Jim
+with a sigh of relief.  Then she smiled ruefully--"But just for a
+little while I was really frightened," she confessed.  "You see, I
+was sent for and questioned by the examining magistrate.  Oh!  I
+wasn't frightened by the questions, but by him, the man.  I've no
+doubt it's his business to look severe, but I couldn't help thinking
+that if any one looked as terrifically severe as he did, it must be
+because he hadn't any brains and wanted you not to know.  And people
+without brains are always dangerous, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes, that wasn't encouraging," Jim agreed.
+
+"Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he expected me to run
+away.  And to crown everything, when I came away from the Palais de
+Justice, I met some friends outside who gave me a long list of people
+who had been condemned and only found to be innocent when it was too
+late."
+
+Jim stared at her.
+
+"The brutes!" he cried.
+
+"Well, we have all got friends like that," Betty returned
+philosophically.  "Mine, however, were particularly odious.  For they
+actually discussed, as a reason of course, why I should engage the
+very best advocate, whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the
+charge couldn't be made one of matricide.  In which case there could
+be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with a black veil over
+my head and naked feet."  She saw horror and indignation in Jim
+Frobisher's face and she reached out a hand to him.
+
+"Yes.  Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt,
+though"--and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper and
+contemplated it whimsically--"I don't imagine that, given the
+circumstances, I should be bothering my head much as to whether I was
+wearing my best shoes and stockings or none at all."
+
+"I never heard of so abominable a suggestion," cried Jim.
+
+"You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a little rattled,"
+continued Betty, "and why I sent off that silly panicky telegram.  I
+would have recalled it when I rose to the surface again.  But it was
+then too late.  The telegram had----"
+
+She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflexion and a sharp
+indraw of her breath.
+
+"Who is that?" she asked in a changed voice.  She had been speaking
+quietly and slowly, with an almost humorous appreciation of the
+causes of her fear.  Now her question was uttered quickly and anxiety
+was predominant in her voice.  "Yes, who is that?" she repeated.
+
+A big, heavily built man sauntering past the great iron gates had
+suddenly whipped into the courtyard.  A fraction of a second before
+he was an idler strolling along the path, now he was already
+disappearing under the big glass fan of the porch.
+
+"It's Hanaud," Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet as though a
+spring in her had been released, and stood swaying.
+
+"You have nothing to fear from Hanaud," Jim Frobisher reassured her.
+"I have shown him those two letters of Waberski.  From first to last
+he is your friend.  Listen.  This is what he said to me only
+yesterday in Paris."
+
+"Yesterday, in Paris?" Betty asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes, I called upon him at the Sûrété.  These were his words.  I
+remembered them particularly so that I could repeat them to you just
+as they were spoken.  'Your little client can lay her pretty head
+upon her pillow confident that no injustice will be done to her.'"
+
+The bell of the front door shrilled through the house as Jim finished.
+
+"Then why is he in Dijon?  Why is he at the door now?" Betty asked
+stubbornly.
+
+But that was the one question which Jim must not answer.  He had
+received a confidence from Hanaud.  He had pledged his word not to
+betray it.  For a little while longer Betty must believe that
+Waberski's accusation against her was the true reason of Hanaud's
+presence in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.
+
+"Hanaud acts under orders," Jim returned.  "He is here because he was
+bidden to come"; and to his relief the answer sufficed.  In truth,
+Betty's thoughts were diverted to some problem to which he had not
+the key.
+
+"So you called upon Monsieur Hanaud in Paris," she said, with a warm
+smile.  "You have forgotten nothing which could help me."  She laid a
+hand upon the sill of the open window.  "I hope that he felt all the
+flattery of my panic-stricken telegram to London."
+
+"He was simply regretful that you should have been so distressed."
+
+"So you showed him the telegram?"
+
+"And he destroyed it.  It was my excuse for calling upon him with the
+letters."
+
+Betty sat down again on the window-seat and lifted a finger for
+silence.  Outside the door voices were speaking.  Then the door was
+opened and the old man-servant entered.  He carried this time no card
+upon a salver, but he was obviously impressed and a trifle flustered.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he began, and Betty interrupted him.  All trace of
+anxiety had gone from her manner.  She was once more mistress of
+herself.
+
+"I know, Gaston.  Show Monsieur Hanaud in at once."
+
+But Monsieur Hanaud was already in.  He bowed with a pleasant
+ceremony to Betty Harlowe and shook hands cordially with Jim
+Frobisher.
+
+"I was delighted as I came through the court, Mademoiselle, to see
+that my friend here was already with you.  For he will have told you
+that I am not, after all, the ogre of the fairy-books."
+
+"But you never looked up at the windows once," cried Betty in
+perplexity.
+
+Hanaud smiled gaily.
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade never to look up at
+windows and yet to know what is going on behind them.  With your
+permission?"  And he laid his hat and cane upon a big writing-table
+in the middle of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE: _Betty Harlowe Answers_
+
+"But we cannot see even through the widest of windows," Hanaud
+continued, "what happened behind them a fortnight ago.  In those
+cases, Mademoiselle, we have to make ourselves the nuisance and ask
+the questions."
+
+"I am ready to answer you," returned Betty quietly.
+
+"Oh, of that--not a doubt," Hanaud cried genially.  "Is it permitted
+to me to seat myself?  Yes?"
+
+Betty jumped up, the pallor of her face flushed to pink.
+
+"I beg your pardon.  Of course, Monsieur Hanaud."
+
+That little omission in her manners alone showed Jim Frobisher that
+she was nervous.  But for it, he would have credited her with a
+self-command almost unnatural in her years.
+
+"It is nothing," said Hanaud with a smile.  "After all, we are--the
+gentlest of us--disturbing guests."  He took a chair from the side of
+the table and drew it up close so that he faced Betty.  But whatever
+advantage was to be gained from the positions he yielded to her.  For
+the light from the window fell in all its morning strength upon his
+face, whilst hers was turned to the interior of the room.
+
+"So!" he said as he sat down.  "Mademoiselle, I will first give you a
+plan of our simple procedure, as at present I see it.  The body of
+Madame Harlowe was exhumed the night before last in the presence of
+your notary."
+
+Betty moved suddenly with a little shiver of revolt.
+
+"I know," he continued quickly.  "These necessities are distressing.
+But we do Madame Harlowe no hurt, and we have to think of the living
+one, you, Miss Betty Harlowe, and make sure that no suspicion shall
+rest upon you--no, not even amongst your most loyal friends.  Isn't
+that so?  Well, next, I put my questions to you here.  Then we wait
+for the analyst's report.  Then the Examining Magistrate will no
+doubt make you his compliments, and I, Hanaud, will, if I am lucky,
+carry back with me to that dull Paris, a signed portrait of the
+beautiful Miss Harlowe against my heart."
+
+"And that will be all?" cried Betty, clasping her hands together in
+her gratitude.
+
+"For you, Mademoiselle, yes.  But for our little Boris--no!"  Hanaud
+grinned with a mischievous anticipation.  "I look forward to half an
+hour with that broken-kneed one.  I shall talk to him and I shall not
+be dignified--no, not at all.  I shall take care, too, that my good
+friend Monsieur Frobisher is not present.  He would take from me all
+my enjoyment.  He would look at me all prim like my maiden aunt and
+he would say to himself, 'Shocking!  Oh, that comic!  What a fellow!
+He is not proper.'  No, and I shall not be proper.  But, on the other
+hand, I will laugh all the way from Dijon to Paris."
+
+Monsieur Hanaud had indeed begun to laugh already and Betty suddenly
+joined in with him.  Hers was a clear, ringing laugh of enjoyment,
+and Jim fancied himself once more in the hall hearing that laughter
+come pealing through the open door.
+
+"Ah, that is good!" exclaimed Hanaud.  "You can laugh, Mademoiselle,
+even at my foolishnesses.  You must keep Monsieur Frobisher here in
+Dijon and not let him return to London until he too has learnt that
+divinest of the arts."
+
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little nearer, and a most uncomfortable
+image sprang at once into Jim Frobisher's mind.  Just so, with light
+words and little jokes squeezed out to tenuity, did doctors hitch up
+their chairs to the bedsides of patients in a dangerous case.  It
+took quite a few minutes of Hanaud's questions before that image
+entirely vanished from his thoughts.
+
+"Good!" said Hanaud.  "Now let us to business and get the facts all
+clear and ordered!"
+
+"Yes," Jim agreed, and he too hitched his chair a little closer.  It
+was curious, he reflected, how little he did know of the actual facts
+of the case.
+
+"Now tell me, Mademoiselle!  Madame Harlowe died, so far as we know,
+quite peacefully in her bed during the night."
+
+"Yes," replied Betty.
+
+"During the night of April the 27th?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She slept alone in her room that night?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"That was her rule?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I understand Madame Harlowe's heart had given her trouble for some
+time."
+
+"She had been an invalid for three years."
+
+"And there was a trained nurse always in the house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"Now tell me, Mademoiselle, where did this nurse sleep?  Next door to
+Madame?"
+
+"No.  A bedroom had been fitted up for her on the same floor but at
+the end of the passage."
+
+"And how far away was this bedroom?"
+
+"There were two rooms separating it from my aunt's."
+
+"Large rooms?"
+
+"Yes," Betty explained.  "These rooms are on the ground-floor, and
+are what you would call reception-rooms.  But, since Madame's heart
+made the stairs dangerous for her, some of them were fitted up
+especially for her use."
+
+"Yes, I see," said Hanaud.  "Two big reception-rooms between, eh?
+And the walls of the house are thick.  It is not difficult to see
+that it was not built in these days.  I ask you this, Mademoiselle.
+Would a cry from Madame Harlowe at night, when all the house was
+silent, be heard in the nurse's room?"
+
+"I am very sure that it would not," Betty returned.  "But there was a
+bell by Madame's bed which rang in the nurse's room.  She had hardly
+to lift her arm to press the button."
+
+"Ah!" said Hanaud.  "A bell specially fitted up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the button within reach of the fingers.  Yes.  That is all very
+well, if one does not faint, Mademoiselle.  But suppose one does!
+Then the bell is not very useful.  Was there no room nearer which
+could have been set aside for the nurse?"
+
+"There was one next to my aunt's room, Monsieur Hanaud, with a
+communicating door."
+
+Hanaud was puzzled and sat back in his chair.  Jim Frobisher thought
+the time had come for him to interpose.  He had been growing more and
+more restless as the catechism progressed.  He could not see any
+reason why Betty, however readily and easily she answered, should be
+needlessly pestered.
+
+"Surely, Monsieur Hanaud," he said, "it would save a deal of time if
+we paid a visit to these rooms and saw them for ourselves."
+
+Hanaud swung round like a thing on a swivel.  Admiration beamed in
+his eyes.  He gazed at his junior colleague in wonder.
+
+"But what an idea!" he cried enthusiastically.  "What a fine idea!
+How ingenious!  How difficult to conceive!  And it is you, Monsieur
+Frobisher, who have thought of it!  I make you my distinguished
+compliments!"  Then all his enthusiasm declined into lassitude.  "But
+what a pity!"
+
+Hanaud waited intently for Jim to ask for an explanation of that
+sigh, but Jim simply got red in the face and refused to oblige.  He
+had obviously made an asinine suggestion and was being rallied for it
+in front of the beautiful Betty Harlowe, who looked to him for her
+salvation; and on the whole he thought Hanaud to be a rather
+insufferable person as he sat there brightly watching for some second
+inanity.  Hanaud in the end had to explain.
+
+"We should have visited those rooms before now, Monsieur Frobisher.
+But the Commissaire of Police has sealed them up and without his
+presence we must not break the seals."
+
+An almost imperceptible movement was made by Betty Harlowe in the
+window; an almost imperceptible smile flickered for the space of a
+lightning-flash upon her lips; and Jim saw Hanaud stiffen like a
+watch-dog when he hears a sound at night.
+
+"You are amused, Mademoiselle?" he asked sharply.
+
+"On the contrary, Monsieur."
+
+And the smile reappeared upon her face and was seen to be what it
+was, pure wistfulness.  "I had a hope those great seals with their
+linen bands across the doors were all now to be removed.  It is
+fanciful, no doubt, but I have a horror of them.  They seem to me
+like an interdict upon the house."
+
+Hanaud's manner changed in an instant.
+
+"That I can very well understand, Mademoiselle," he said, "and I will
+make it my business to see that those seals are broken.  Indeed,
+there was no great use in affixing them, since they were only affixed
+when the charge was brought and ten days after Madame Harlowe died."
+He turned to Jim.  "But we in France are all tied up in red tape,
+too.  However, the question at which I am driving does not depend
+upon any aspect of the rooms.  It is this, Mademoiselle," and he
+turned back to Betty.
+
+"Madame Harlowe was an invalid with a nurse in constant attendance.
+How is it that the nurse did not sleep in that suitable room with the
+communicating-door?  Why must she be where she could hear no cry, no
+sudden call?"
+
+Betty nodded her head.  Here was a question which demanded an answer.
+She leaned forward, choosing her words with care.
+
+"Yes, but for that, Monsieur, you must understand something of Madame
+my aunt and put yourself for a moment in her place.  She would have
+it so.  She was, as you say, an invalid.  For three years she had not
+gone beyond the garden except in a private saloon once a year to
+Monte Carlo.  But she would not admit her malady.  No, she was in her
+mind strong and a fighter.  She was going to get well, it was always
+a question of a few weeks with her, and a nurse in her uniform always
+near with the door open, as though she were in the last stages of
+illness--that distressed her."  Betty paused and went on again.  "Of
+course, when she had some critical attack, the nurse was moved.  I
+myself gave the order.  But as soon as the attack subsided, the nurse
+must go.  Madame would not endure it."
+
+Jim understood that speech.  Its very sincerity gave him a glimpse of
+the dead woman, made him appreciate her tough vitality.  She would
+not give in.  She did not want the paraphernalia of malady always
+about her.  No, she would sleep in her own room, and by herself, like
+other women of her age.  Yes, Jim understood that and believed every
+word that Betty spoke.  Only--only--she was keeping something back.
+It was that which troubled him.  What she said was true, but there
+was more to be said.  There had been hesitation in Betty's speech,
+too nice a choice of words and then suddenly a little rush of phrases
+to cover up the hesitations.  He looked at Hanaud, who was sitting
+without a movement and with his eyes fixed upon Betty's face,
+demanding more from her by his very impassivity.  They were both, Jim
+felt sure, upon the edge of that little secret which, according to
+Haslitt as to Hanaud was always at the back of such wild charges as
+Waberski brought--the little shameful family secret which must be
+buried deep from the world's eyes.  And while Jim was pondering upon
+this explanation of Betty's manner, he was suddenly startled out of
+his wits by a passionate cry which broke from her lips.
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?" she cried to Hanaud, her eyes
+suddenly ablaze in her white face and her lips shaking.  Her voice
+rose to a challenge.
+
+"Do you disbelieve me, Monsieur Hanaud?"
+
+Hanaud raised his hands in protest.  He leaned back in his chair.
+The vigilance of his eyes, of his whole attitude, was relaxed.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle," he said with a good deal of
+self-reproach.  "I do not disbelieve you.  I was listening with both
+my ears to what you said, so that I might never again have to trouble
+you with my questions.  But I should have remembered, what I forgot,
+that for a number of days you have been living under a heavy strain.
+My manner was at fault."
+
+The small tornado of passion passed.  Betty sank back in the corner
+of the window-seat, her head resting against the side of the sash and
+her face a little upturned.
+
+"You are really very considerate, Monsieur Hanaud," she returned.
+"It is I who should beg your pardon.  For I was behaving like a
+hysterical schoolgirl.  Will you go on with your questions?"
+
+"Yes," Hanaud replied gently.  "It is better that we finish with them
+now.  Let us come back to the night of the twenty-seventh!"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"Madame was in her usual health that night--neither better nor worse."
+
+"If anything a little better," returned Betty.
+
+"So that you did not hesitate to go on that evening to a dance given
+by some friends of yours?"
+
+Jim started.  So Betty was actually out of the house on that fatal
+night.  Here was a new point in her favour.  "A dance!" he cried, and
+Hanaud lifted his hand.
+
+"If you please, Monsieur Frobisher!" he said.  "Let Mademoiselle
+speak!"
+
+"I did not hesitate," Betty explained.  "The life of the household
+had to go on normally.  It would never have done for me to do unusual
+things.  Madame was quick to notice.  I think that although she would
+not admit that she was dangerously ill, at the bottom of her mind she
+suspected that she was; and one had to be careful not to alarm her."
+
+"By such acts, for instance, as staying away from a dance to which
+she knew that you had meant to go?" said Hanaud.  "Yes, Mademoiselle.
+I quite understand that."
+
+He cocked his head at Jim Frobisher, and added with a smile, "Ah, you
+did not know that, Monsieur Frobisher.  No, nor our friend Boris
+Waberski, I think.  Or he would hardly have rushed to the Prefect of
+Police in such a hurry.  Yes, Mademoiselle was dancing with her
+friends on this night when she is supposed to be committing the most
+monstrous of crimes.  By the way, Mademoiselle, where was Boris
+Waberski on the night of the 27th?"
+
+"He was away," returned Betty.  "He went away on the 25th to fish for
+trout at a village on the River Ouche, and he did not come back until
+the morning of the 28th."
+
+"Exactly," said Hanaud.  "What a type that fellow!  Let us hope he
+had a better landing-net for his trout than the one he prepared so
+hastily for Mademoiselle Harlowe.  Otherwise his three days' sport
+cannot have amounted to much."
+
+His laugh and his words called up a faint smile upon Betty's face and
+then he swept back to his questions.
+
+"So you went to a dance, Mademoiselle.  Where?"
+
+"At the house of Monsieur de Pouillac on the Boulevard Thiers."
+
+"And at what hour did you go?"
+
+"I left this house at five minutes to nine."
+
+"You are sure of the hour?"
+
+"Quite," said Betty.
+
+"Did you see Madame Harlowe before you went?"
+
+"Yes," Betty answered.  "I went to her room just before I left.  She
+took her dinner in bed, as she often did.  I was wearing for the
+dance a new frock which I had bought this winter at Monte Carlo, and
+I went to her room to show her how I looked in it."
+
+"Was Madame alone?"
+
+"No; the nurse was with her."
+
+And upon that Hanaud smiled with a great appearance of cunning.
+
+"I knew that, Mademoiselle," he declared with a friendly grin.  "See,
+I set a little trap for you.  For I have here the evidence of the
+nurse herself, Jeanne Baudin."
+
+He took out from his pocket a sheet of paper upon which a paragraph
+was typed.  "Yes, the examining magistrate sent for her and took her
+statement."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Betty.  "Jeanne left us the day of the
+funeral and went home.  I have not seen her since."
+
+She nodded at Hanaud once or twice with a little smile of
+appreciation.
+
+"I would not like to be a person with a secret to hide from you,
+Monsieur Hanaud," she said admiringly.  "I do not think that I should
+be able to hide it for long."
+
+Hanaud expanded under the flattery like a novice, and, to Jim
+Frobisher's thinking, rather like a very vulgar novice.
+
+"You are wise, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed.  "For, after all, I am
+Hanaud.  There is only one," and he thumped his chest and beamed
+delightedly.  "Heavens, these are politenesses!  Let us get on.  This
+is what the nurse declared," and he read aloud from his sheet of
+paper:
+
+"Mademoiselle came to the bedroom, so that Madame might admire her in
+her new frock of silver tissue and her silver slippers.  Mademoiselle
+arranged the pillows and saw that Madame had her favourite books and
+her drink beside the bed.  Then she wished her good night, and with
+her pretty frock rustling and gleaming, she tripped out of the room.
+As soon as the door was closed, Madame said to me----" and Hanaud
+broke off abruptly.  "But that does not matter," he said in a hurry.
+
+Suddenly and sharply Betty leaned forward.
+
+"Does it not, Monsieur?" she asked, her eyes fixed upon his face, and
+the blood mounting slowly into her pale cheeks.
+
+"No," said Hanaud, and he began to fold the sheet of paper.
+
+"What does the nurse report that Madame said to her about me, as soon
+as the door was closed?" Betty asked, measuring out her words with a
+slow insistence.  "Come, Monsieur!  I have a right to know," and she
+held out her hand for the paper.
+
+"You shall judge for yourself that it was of no importance," said
+Hanaud.  "Listen!" and once more he read.
+
+"Madame said to me, looking at her clock, 'It is well that
+Mademoiselle has gone early.  For Dijon is not Paris, and unless you
+go in time there are no partners for you to dance with.'  It was then
+ten minutes to nine."
+
+With a smile Hanaud gave the paper into Betty's hand; and she bent
+her head over it swiftly, as though she doubted whether what he had
+recited was really written on that sheet, as if she rather trembled
+to think what Mrs. Harlowe had said of her after she had gone from
+the room.  She took only a second or two to glance over the page, but
+when she handed it back to him, her manner was quite changed.
+
+"Thank you," she said with a note of bitterness, and her deep eyes
+gleamed with resentment.  Jim understood the change and sympathised
+with it.  Hanaud had spoken of setting a trap when he had set none.
+For there was no conceivable reason why she should hesitate to admit
+that she had seen Mrs. Harlowe in the presence of the nurse, and
+wished her good night before she went to the party.  But he had set a
+real trap a minute afterwards and into that Betty had straightway
+stumbled.  He had tricked her into admitting a dread that Mrs.
+Harlowe might have spoken of her in disparagement or even in horror
+after she had left the bedroom.
+
+"You must know, Monsieur Hanaud," she explained very coldly, "that
+women are not always very generous to one another, and sometimes have
+not the imagination--how shall I put it?--to visualise the possible
+consequences of things they may say with merely the intention to hurt
+and do a little harm.  Jeanne Baudin and I were, so far as I ever
+knew, good friends, but one is never sure, and when you folded up her
+statement in a hurry I was naturally very anxious to hear the rest of
+it."
+
+"Yes, I agree," Jim intervened.  "It did look as if the nurse might
+have added something malevolent, which could neither be proved nor
+disproved."
+
+"It was a misunderstanding, Mademoiselle," Hanaud replied in a voice
+of apology.  "We will take care that there shall not be any other."
+He looked over the nurse's statement again.
+
+"It is said here that you saw that Madame had her favourite books and
+her drink beside the bed.  That is true."
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"What was that drink?"
+
+"A glass of lemonade."
+
+"It was placed on a table, I suppose, ready for her every night?"
+
+"Every night."
+
+"And there was no narcotic dissolved in it?"
+
+"None," Betty replied.  "If Mrs. Harlowe was restless, the nurse
+would give an opium pill and very occasionally a slight injection of
+morphia."
+
+"But that was not done on this night?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge.  If it was done, it was done after my
+departure."
+
+"Very well," said Hanaud, and he folded the paper and put it away in
+his pocket.  "That is finished with.  We have you now out of the
+house at five minutes to nine in the evening, and Madame in her bed
+with her health no worse than usual."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good!"  Hanaud changed his attitude.  "Now let us go over your
+evening, Mademoiselle!  I take it that you stayed at the house of M.
+de Pouillac until you returned home."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You remember with whom you danced?  If it was necessary, could you
+give me a list of your partners?"
+
+She rose and, crossing to the writing table, sat down in front of it.
+She drew a sheet of paper towards her and took up a pencil.  Pausing
+now and again to jog her memory with the blunt end of the pencil at
+her lips, she wrote down a list of names.
+
+"These are all, I think," she said, handing the list to Hanaud.  He
+put it in his pocket.
+
+"Thank you!"  He was all contentment now.  Although his questions
+followed without hesitation, one upon the other, it seemed to Jim
+that he was receiving just the answers which he expected.  He had the
+air of a man engaged upon an inevitable formality and anxious to get
+it completely accomplished, rather than of one pressing keenly a
+strict investigation.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle, at what hour did you arrive home?"
+
+"At twenty minutes past one."
+
+"You are sure of that exact time?  You looked at your watch?  Or at
+the clock in the hall?  Or what?  How are you sure that you reached
+the Maison Crenelle exactly at twenty minutes past one?"
+
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little more forward, but he had not to
+wait a second for the answer.
+
+"There is no clock in the hall and I had no watch with me," Betty
+replied.  "I don't like those wrist-watches which some girls wear.  I
+hate things round my wrists," and she shook her arm impatiently, as
+though she imagined the constriction of a bracelet.  "And I did not
+put my watch in my hand-bag because I am so liable to leave that
+behind.  So I had nothing to tell me the time when I reached home.  I
+was not sure that I had not kept Georges--the chauffeur--out a little
+later than he cared for.  So I made him my excuse, explaining that I
+didn't really know how late I was."
+
+"I see.  It was Georges who told you the time at the actual moment of
+your arrival?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Georges is no doubt the chauffeur whom I saw at work as I
+crossed the courtyard?"
+
+"Yes.  He told me that he was glad to see me have a little gaiety,
+and he took out his watch and showed it to me with a laugh."
+
+"This happened at the front door, or at those big iron gates,
+Mademoiselle?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"At the front door.  There is no lodge-keeper and the gates are left
+open when any one is out."
+
+"And how did you get into the house?"
+
+"I used my latch-key."
+
+"Good!  All this is very clear."
+
+Betty, however, was not mollified by Hanaud's satisfaction with her
+replies.  Although she answered him without delay, her answers were
+given mutinously.  Jim began to be a little troubled.  She should
+have met Hanaud half-way; she was imprudently petulant.
+
+"She'll make an enemy of this man before she has done," he reflected
+uneasily.  But he glanced at the detective and was relieved.  For
+Hanaud was watching her with a smile which would have disarmed any
+less offended young lady--a smile half friendliness and half
+amusement.  Jim took a turn upon himself.
+
+"After all," he argued, "this very imprudence pleads for her better
+than any calculation.  The guilty don't behave like that."  And he
+waited for the next stage in the examination with an easy mind.
+
+"Now we have got you back home and within the Maison Crenelle before
+half past one in the morning," resumed Hanaud.  "What did you do
+then?"
+
+"I went straight upstairs to my bedroom," said Betty.
+
+"Was your maid waiting up for you, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"No; I had told her that I should be late and that I could undress
+myself."
+
+"You are considerate, Mademoiselle.  No wonder that your servants
+were pleased that you should have a little gaiety."
+
+Even that advance did not appease the offended girl.
+
+"Yes?" she asked with a sort of silky sweetness which was more
+hostile than any acid rejoinder.  But it did not stir Hanaud to any
+resentment.
+
+"When, then, did you first hear of Madame Harlowe's death?" was asked.
+
+"The next morning my maid Francine came running into my room at seven
+o'clock.  The nurse Jeanne had just discovered it.  I slipped on my
+dressing-gown and ran downstairs.  As soon as I saw that it was true,
+I rang up the two doctors who were in the habit of attending here."
+
+"Did you notice the glass of lemonade?"
+
+"Yes.  It was empty."
+
+"Your maid is still with you?"
+
+"Yes--Francine Rollard.  She is at your disposal."
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders and smiled doubtfully.
+
+"That, if it is necessary at all, can come later.  We have the story
+of your movements now from you, Mademoiselle, and that is what is
+important."
+
+He rose from his chair.
+
+"I have been, I am afraid, a very troublesome person, Mademoiselle
+Harlowe," he said with a bow.  "But it is very necessary for your own
+sake that no obscurities should be left for the world's suspicions to
+play with.  And we are very close to the end of this ordeal."
+
+Jim had nursed a hope the moment Hanaud rose that this wearing
+interview had already ended.  Betty, for her part, was indifferent.
+
+"That is for you to say, Monsieur," she said implacably.
+
+"Just two points then, and I think, upon reflection, you will
+understand that I have asked you no question which is unfair."
+
+Betty bowed.
+
+"Your two points, Monsieur."
+
+"First, then.  You inherit, I believe, the whole fortune of Madame?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you expect to inherit it all?  Did you know of her will?"
+
+"No.  I expected that a good deal of the money would be left to
+Monsieur Boris.  But I don't remember that she ever told me so.  I
+expected it, because Monsieur Boris so continually repeated that it
+was so."
+
+"No doubt," said Hanaud lightly.  "As to yourself, was Madame
+generous to you during her life."
+
+The hard look disappeared from Betty's face.  It softened to sorrow
+and regret.
+
+"Very," she answered in a low voice.  "I had one thousand pounds a
+year as a regular allowance, and a thousand pounds goes a long way in
+Dijon.  Besides, if I wanted more, I had only to ask for it."
+
+Betty's voice broke in a sob suddenly and Hanaud turned away with a
+delicacy for which Jim was not prepared.  He began to look at the
+books upon the shelves, that she might have time to control her
+sorrow, taking down one here, one there, and speaking of them in a
+casual tone.
+
+"It is easy to see that this was the library of Monsieur Simon
+Harlowe," he said, and was suddenly brought to a stop.  For the door
+was thrown open and a girl broke into the room.
+
+"Betty," she began, and stood staring from one to another of Betty's
+visitors.
+
+"Ann, this is Monsieur Hanaud," said Betty with a careless wave of
+her hand, and Ann went white as a sheet.
+
+Ann!  Then this girl was Ann Upcott, thought Jim Frobisher, the girl
+who had written to him, the girl, all acquaintanceship with whom he
+had twice denied, and he had sat side by side with her, he had even
+spoken to her.  She swept across the room to him.
+
+"So you have come!" she cried.  "But I knew that you would!"
+
+Jim was conscious of a mist of shining yellow hair, a pair of
+sapphire eyes, and of a face impertinently lovely and most delicate
+in its colour.
+
+"Of course I have come," he said feebly, and Hanaud looked on with a
+smile.  He had an eye on Betty Harlowe, and the smile said as clearly
+as words could say, "That young man is going to have a deal of
+trouble before he gets out of Dijon."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX: _Jim Changes His Lodging_
+
+The library was a big oblong room with two tall windows looking into
+the court, and the observation window thrown out at the end over the
+footway of the street.  A door in the inner wall close to this window
+led to a room behind, and a big open fire-place faced the windows on
+the court.  For the rest, the walls were lined with high book-shelves
+filled with books, except for a vacant space here and there where a
+volume had been removed.  Hanaud put back in its place the book which
+he had been holding in his hand.
+
+"One can easily see that this is the library of Simon Harlowe, the
+collector," he said.  "I have always thought that if one only had the
+time to study and compare the books which a man buys and reads, one
+would more surely get the truth of him than in any other way.  But
+alas! one never has the time."  He turned towards Jim Frobisher
+regretfully.  "Come and stand with me, Monsieur Frobisher.  For even
+a glance at the backs of them tells one something."
+
+Jim took his place by Hanaud's side.
+
+"Look, here is a book on Old English Gold Plate, and
+another--pronounce that title for me, if you please."
+
+Jim read the title of the book on which Hanaud's finger was placed.
+
+"Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain."
+
+Hanaud repeated the inscription and moved along.  From a shelf at the
+level of his breast and just to the left of the window in which Betty
+was sitting, he took a large, thinnish volume in a paper cover, and
+turned over the plates.  It was a brochure upon Battersea Enamel.
+
+"There should be a second volume," said Jim Frobisher with a glance
+at the bookshelf.  It was the idlest of remarks.  He was not paying
+any attention to the paper-covered book upon Battersea Enamel.  For
+he was really engaged in speculating why Hanaud had called him to his
+side.  Was it on the chance that he might detect some swift look of
+understanding as it was exchanged by the two girls, some sign that
+they were in a collusion?  If so, he was to be disappointed.  For
+though Betty and Ann were now free from Hanaud's vigilant eye,
+neither of them moved, neither of them signalled to the other.
+Hanaud, however, seemed entirely interested in his book.  He answered
+Jim's suggestion.
+
+"Yes, one would suppose that there were a second volume.  But this is
+complete," he said, and he put back the book in its place.  There was
+room next to it for another quarto book, so long as it was no
+thicker, and Hanaud rested his finger in the vacant place on the
+shelf, with his thoughts clearly far away.
+
+Betty recalled him to his surroundings.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she said in her quiet voice from her seat in the
+window, "there was a second point, you said, on which you would like
+to ask me a question."
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, I had not forgotten it."
+
+He turned with a curiously swift movement and stood so that he had
+both girls in front of him, Betty on his left in the window, Ann
+Upcott standing a little apart upon his right, gazing at him with a
+look of awe.
+
+"Have you, Mademoiselle," he asked, "been pestered, since Boris
+Waberski brought his accusation, with any of these anonymous letters
+which seem to be flying about Dijon?"
+
+"I have received one," answered Betty, and Ann Upcott raised her
+eyebrows in surprise.  "It came on Sunday morning.  It was very
+slanderous, of course, and I should have taken no notice of it but
+for one thing.  It told me that you, Monsieur Hanaud, were coming
+from Paris to take up the case."
+
+"Oho!" said Hanaud softly.  "And you received this letter on the
+Sunday morning?  Can you show it to me, Mademoiselle?"
+
+Betty shook her head.
+
+"No, Monsieur."
+
+Hanaud smiled.
+
+"Of course not.  You destroyed it, as such letter should be
+destroyed."
+
+"No, I didn't," Betty answered.  "I kept it.  I put it away in a
+drawer of my writing-table in my own sitting-room.  But that room is
+sealed up, Monsieur Hanaud.  The letter is in the drawer still."
+
+Hanaud received the statement with a frank satisfaction.
+
+"It cannot run away, then, Mademoiselle," he said contentedly.  But
+the contentment passed.  "So the Commissaire of Police actually
+sealed up your private sitting-room.  That, to be sure, was going a
+little far."
+
+Betty shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It was mine, you see, where I keep my private things.  And after all
+I was accused!" she said bitterly; but Ann Upcott was not satisfied
+to leave the matter there.  She drew a step nearer to Betty and then
+looked at Hanaud.
+
+"But that is not all the truth," she said.  "Betty's room belongs to
+that suite of rooms in which Madame Harlowe's bedroom was arranged.
+It is the last room of the suite opening on to the hall, and for that
+reason, as the Commissaire said with an apology, it was necessary to
+seal it up with the others."
+
+"I thank you, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud with a smile.  "Yes, that of
+course softens his action."  He looked whimsically at Betty in the
+window-seat.  "It has been my misfortune, I am afraid, to offend
+Mademoiselle Harlowe.  Will you help me to get all these troublesome
+dates now clear?  Madame Harlowe was buried, I understand, on the
+Saturday morning twelve days ago!"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," said Ann Upcott.
+
+"And after the funeral, on your return to this house, the notary
+opened and read the will?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"And in Boris Waberski's presence?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then exactly a week later, on Saturday, the seventh of May, he goes
+off quickly to the Prefecture of Police?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And on Sunday morning by the post comes the anonymous letter?"
+
+Hanaud turned away to Betty, who bowed her head in answer.
+
+"And a little later on the same morning comes the Commissaire, who
+seals the doors."
+
+"At eleven o'clock, to be exact," replied Ann Upcott.
+
+Hanaud bowed low.
+
+"You are both wonderful young ladies.  You notice the precise hour at
+which things happen.  It is a rare gift, and very useful to people
+like myself."
+
+Ann Upcott had been growing easier and easier in her manner with each
+answer that she gave.  Now she could laugh outright.
+
+"I do, at all events, Monsieur Hanaud," she said.  "But alas!  I was
+born to be an old maid.  A chair out of place, a book disarranged, a
+clock not keeping time, or even a pin on the carpet--I cannot bear
+these things.  I notice them at once and I must put them straight.
+Yes, it was precisely eleven o'clock when the Commissaire of Police
+rang the bell."
+
+"Did he search the rooms before he sealed them?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"No.  We both of us thought his negligence strange," Ann replied,
+"until he informed us that the Examining Magistrate wanted everything
+left just as it was."
+
+Hanaud laughed genially.
+
+"That was on my account," he explained.  "Who could tell what
+wonderful things Hanaud might not discover with his magnifying glass
+when he arrived from Paris?  What fatal fingerprints!  Oh!  Ho! ho!
+What scraps of burnt letter!  Ah!  Ha! ha!  But I tell you,
+Mademoiselle, that if a crime has been committed in this house, even
+Hanaud would not expect to make any startling discoveries in rooms
+which had been open to the whole household for a fortnight since the
+crime.  However," and he moved towards the door, "since I am here
+now----"
+
+Betty was upon her feet like a flash of lightning.  Hanaud stopped
+and swung round upon her, swiftly, with his eyes very challenging and
+hard.
+
+"You are going to break those seals now?" she asked with a curious
+breathlessness.  "Then may I come with you--please, please!  It is I
+who am accused.  I have a right to be present," and her voice rose
+into an earnest cry.
+
+"Calm yourself, Mademoiselle," Hanaud returned gently.  "No advantage
+will be taken of you.  I am going to break no seals.  That, as I have
+told you, is the right of the Commissaire, who is a magistrate, and
+he will not move until the medical analysis is ready.  No, what I was
+going to propose was that Mademoiselle here," and he pointed to Ann,
+"should show me the outside of those reception-rooms and the rest of
+the house."
+
+"Of course," said Betty, and she sat down again in the window-seat.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud.  He turned back to Ann Upcott.  "Shall we
+go?  And as we go, will you tell me what you think of Boris Waberski?"
+
+"He has some nerve.  I can tell you that, Monsieur Hanaud," Ann
+cried.  "He actually came back to this house after he had lodged his
+charge, and asked me to support him"; and she passed out of the room
+in front of Hanaud.
+
+Jim Frobisher followed the couple to the door and closed it behind
+them.  The last few minutes had set his mind altogether at rest.  The
+author of the anonymous letters was the detective's real quarry.  His
+manner had quite changed when putting his questions about them.  The
+flamboyancies and the indifference, even his amusement at Betty's
+ill-humour had quite disappeared.  He had got to business watchfully,
+quietly.  Jim came back into the room.  He took his cigarette-case
+from his pocket and opened it.
+
+"May I smoke?" he asked.  As he turned to Betty for permission, a
+fresh shock brought his thoughts and words alike to a standstill.
+She was staring at him with panic naked in her eyes and her face set
+like a tragic mask.
+
+"He believes me guilty," she whispered.
+
+"No," said Jim, and he went to her side.  But she would not listen.
+
+"He does.  I am sure of it.  Don't you see that he was bound to?  He
+was sent from Paris.  He has his reputation to think of.  He must
+have his victim before he returns."
+
+Jim was sorely tempted to break his word.  He had only to tell the
+real cause which had fetched Hanaud out of Paris and Betty's distress
+was gone.  But he could not.  Every tradition of his life strove to
+keep him silent.  He dared not even tell her that this charge against
+her was only an excuse.  She must live in anxiety for a little while
+longer.  He laid his hand gently upon her shoulder.
+
+"Betty, don't believe that!" he said, with a consciousness of how
+weak that phrase was compared with the statement he could have made.
+"I was watching Hanaud, listening to him.  I am sure that he already
+knew the answers to the questions he was asking you.  Why, he even
+knew that Simon Harlowe had a passion for collecting, though not a
+word had been said of it.  He was asking questions to see how you
+would answer them, setting now and then a little trap, as he
+admitted----"
+
+"Yes," said Betty in trembling voice, "all the time he was setting
+traps."
+
+"And every answer that you gave, even your manner in giving them,"
+Jim continued stoutly, "more and more made clear your innocence."
+
+"To him?" asked Betty.
+
+"Yes, to him.  I am sure of it."
+
+Betty Harlowe caught at his arm and held it in both her hands.  She
+leaned her head against it.  Through the sleeve of his coat he felt
+the velvet of her cheek.
+
+"Thank you," she whispered.  "Thank you, Jim," and as she pronounced
+the name she smiled.  She was thanking him not so much for the stout
+confidence of his words, as for the comfort which the touch of him
+gave to her.
+
+"Very likely I am making too much of little things," she went on.
+"Very likely I am ungenerous, too, to Monsieur Hanaud.  But he lives
+amidst crimes and criminals.  He must be so used to seeing people
+condemned and passing out of sight into blackness and horrors, that
+one more or less, whether innocent or guilty, going that way,
+wouldn't seem to matter very much."
+
+"Yes, Betty, I think that is a little unjust," Jim Frobisher remarked
+gently.
+
+"Very well, I take it back," she said, and she let his arm go.  "All
+the same, Jim, I am looking to you, not to him," and she laughed with
+an appealing tremor in the laugh which took his heart by storm.
+
+"Luckily," said he, "you don't have to look to any one," and he had
+hardly finished the sentence before Ann Upcott came back alone into
+the room.  She was about Betty's height and Betty's age and had the
+same sort of boyish slenderness and carriage which marks the girls of
+this generation.  But in other respects, even to the colour of her
+clothes, she was as dissimilar as one girl can be from another.  She
+was dressed in white from her coat to her shoes, and she wore a big
+gold hat so that one was almost at a loss to know where her hat ended
+and her hair began.
+
+"And Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty asked.
+
+"He is prowling about by himself," she replied.  "I showed him all
+the rooms and who used them, and he said that he would have a look at
+them and sent me back to you."
+
+"Did he break the seals on the reception-rooms?" Betty Harlowe asked.
+
+"Oh, no," said Ann.  "Why, he told us that he couldn't do that
+without the Commissaire."
+
+"Yes, he told us that," Betty remarked dryly.  "But I was wondering
+whether he meant what he told us."
+
+"Oh, I don't think Monsieur Hanaud's alarming," said Ann.  She gave
+Jim Frobisher the impression that at any moment she might call him a
+dear old thing.  She had quite got over the first little shock which
+the announcement of his presence had caused her.  "Besides," and she
+sat down by the side of Betty in the window-seat and looked with the
+frankest confidence at Jim--"besides, we can feel safe now, anyway."
+
+Jim Frobisher threw up his hands in despair.  That queer look of
+aloofness had played him false with Ann Upcott now, as it had already
+done with Betty.  If these two girls had called on him for help when
+a sudden squall found them in an open sailing-boat with the sheet of
+the sail made fast, or on the ice-slope of a mountain, or with a
+rhinoceros lumbering towards them out of some forest of the Nile, he
+would not have shrunk from their trust.  But this was quite a
+different matter.  They were calmly pitting him against Hanaud.
+
+"You were safe before," he exclaimed.  "Hanaud is not your enemy, and
+as for me, I have neither experience nor natural gifts for this sort
+of work"--and he broke off with a groan.  For both the girls were
+watching him with a smile of complete disbelief.
+
+"Good heavens, they think that I am being astute," he reflected, "and
+the more I confess my incapacity the astuter they'll take me to be."
+He gave up all arguments.  "Of course I am absolutely at your
+service," he said.
+
+"Thank you," said Betty.  "You will bring your luggage from your
+hotel and stay here, won't you?"
+
+Jim was tempted to accept that invitation.  But, on the one hand, he
+might wish to see Hanaud at the Grande Taverne; or Hanaud might wish
+to see him, and secrecy was to be the condition of such meetings.  It
+was better that he should keep his freedom of movement complete.
+
+"I won't put you to so much trouble, Betty," he replied.  "There's no
+reason in the world that I should.  A call over the telephone and in
+five minutes I am at your side."
+
+Betty Harlowe seemed in doubt to press her invitation or not.
+
+"It looks a little inhospitable in me," she began, and the door
+opened, and Hanaud entered the room.
+
+"I left my hat and stick here," he said.  He picked them up and bowed
+to the girls.
+
+"You have seen everything, Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty asked.
+
+"Everything, Mademoiselle.  I shall not trouble you again until the
+report of the analysis is in my hands.  I wish you a good morning."
+
+Betty slipped off the window-seat and accompanied him out into the
+hall.  It appeared to Jim Frobisher that she was seeking to make some
+amends for her ill-humour; and when he heard her voice he thought to
+detect in it some note of apology.
+
+"I shall be very glad if you will let me know the sense of that
+report as soon as possible," she pleaded.  "You, better than any one,
+will understand that this is a difficult hour for me."
+
+"I understand very well, Mademoiselle," Hanaud answered gravely.  "I
+will see to it that the hour is not prolonged."
+
+Jim, watching them through the doorway, as they stood together in the
+sunlit hall, felt ever so slight a touch upon his arm.  He wheeled
+about quickly.  Ann Upcott was at his side with all the liveliness
+and even the delicate colour gone from her face, and a wild and
+desperate appeal in her eyes.
+
+"You will come and stay here?  Oh, please!" she whispered.
+
+"I have just refused," he answered.  "You heard me."
+
+"I know," she went on, the words stumbling over one another from her
+lips.  "But take back your refusal.  Do!  Oh, I am frightened out of
+my wits.  I don't understand anything.  I am terrified!"  And she
+clasped her hands together in supplication.  Jim had never seen fear
+so stark, no, not even in Betty's eyes a few minutes ago.  It robbed
+her exquisite face of all its beauty, and made it in a second,
+haggard and old.  But before he could answer, a stick clattered
+loudly upon the pavement of the hall and startled them both like the
+crack of a pistol.
+
+Jim looked through the doorway.  Hanaud was stooping to pick up his
+cane.  Betty made a dive for it, but Hanaud already had it in his
+hands.
+
+"I thank you, Mademoiselle, but I can still touch my toes.  Every
+morning I do it five times in my pyjamas," and with a laugh he ran
+down the couple of steps into the courtyard and with that curiously
+quick saunter of his was out into the street of Charles-Robert in a
+moment.  When Jim turned again to Ann Upcott, the fear had gone from
+her face so completely that he could hardly believe his eyes.
+
+"Betty, he is going to stay," she cried gaily.
+
+"So I inferred," replied Betty with a curious smile as she came back
+into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN: _Exit Woberski_
+
+Jim Frobisher neither saw nor heard any more of Hanaud that day.  He
+fetched his luggage away from the hotel and spent the evening with
+Betty Harlowe and Ann Upcott at the Maison Crenelle.  They took their
+coffee after dinner in the garden behind the house, descending to it
+by a short flight of stone steps from a great door at the back of the
+hall.  And by some sort of unspoken compact they avoided all mention
+of Waberski's charge.  They had nothing to do but to wait now for the
+analyst's report.  But the long line of high, shuttered windows just
+above their heads, the windows of the reception-rooms, forbade them
+to forget the subject, and their conversation perpetually dwindled
+down into long silences.  It was cool out here in the dark garden,
+cool and very still; so that the bustle of a bird amongst the leaves
+of the sycamores startled them and the rare footsteps of a passer-by
+in the little street of Charles-Robert rang out as though they would
+wake a dreaming city.  Jim noticed that once or twice Ann Upcott
+leaned swiftly forward and stared across the dark lawns and
+glimmering paths to the great screen of tall trees, as if her eyes
+had detected a movement amongst their stems.  But on each occasion
+she said nothing and with an almost inaudible sigh sank back in her
+chair.
+
+"Is there a door into the garden from the street?" Frobisher asked,
+and Betty answered him.
+
+"No.  There is a passage at the end of the house under the
+reception-rooms from the courtyard which the gardeners use.  The only
+other entrance is through the hall behind us.  This old house was
+built in days when your house really was your castle and the fewer
+the entrances, the more safely you slept."
+
+The clocks of that city of Clocks clashed out the hour of eleven,
+throwing the sounds of their strokes backwards and forwards above the
+pinnacles and roof-tops in a sort of rivalry.  Betty rose to her feet.
+
+"There's a day gone, at all events," she said, and Ann Upcott agreed
+with a breath of relief.  To Jim it seemed a pitiful thing that these
+two girls, to whom each day should be a succession of sparkling hours
+all too short, must be rejoicing quietly, almost gratefully, that
+another of them had passed.
+
+"It should be the last of the bad days," he said, and Betty turned
+swiftly towards him, her great eyes shining in the darkness.
+
+"Good night, Jim," she said, her voice ever so slightly lingering
+like a caress upon his name and she held out her hand.  "It's
+terribly dull for you, but we are not unselfish enough to let you go.
+You see, we are shunned just now--oh, it's natural!  To have you with
+us means a great deal.  For one thing," and there came a little lilt
+in her voice, "I shall sleep to-night."  She ran up the steps and
+stood for a moment against the light from the hall.  "A long-legged
+slip of a girl, in black silk stockings"--thus Mr. Haslitt had spoken
+of her as she was five years ago, and the description fitted her
+still.
+
+"Good night, Betty," said Jim, and Ann Upcott ran past him up the
+steps and waved her hand.
+
+"Good night," said Jim, and with a little twist of her shoulders Ann
+followed Betty.  She came back, however.  She was wearing a little
+white frock of _crêpe de Chine_ with white stockings and satin shoes,
+and she gleamed at the head of the steps like a slender thing of
+silver.
+
+"You'll bolt the door when you come in, won't you?" She pleaded with
+a curious anxiety considering the height of the strong walls about
+the garden.
+
+"I will," said Jim, and he wondered why in all this business Ann
+Upcott stood out as a note of fear.  It was high time indeed, that
+the long line of windows was thrown open and the interdict raised
+from the house and its inmates.  Jim Frobisher paced the quiet garden
+in the darkness with a prayer at his heart that that time would come
+to-morrow.  In Betty's room above the reception-rooms the light was
+still burning behind the latticed shutters of the windows, in spite
+of her confidence that she would sleep--yes, and in Ann Upcott's room
+too, at the end of the house towards the street.  A fury against
+Boris Waberski flamed up in him.
+
+It was late before he himself went into the house and barred the
+door, later still before he fell asleep.  But once asleep, he slept
+soundly, and when he waked, it was to find his shutters thrown wide
+to the sunlight, his coffee cold by his bedside, and Gaston, the old
+servant, in the room.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud asked me to tell you he was in the library," he said.
+
+Jim was out of bed in an instant.
+
+"Already?  What is the time, Gaston?"
+
+"Nine o'clock.  I have prepared Monsieur's bath."  He removed the
+tray from the table by the bed.  "I will bring some fresh coffee."
+
+"Thank you!  And will you please tell Monsieur Hanaud that I will not
+be long."
+
+"Certainly, Monsieur."
+
+Jim took his coffee while he dressed and hurried down to the library,
+where he found Hanaud seated at the big writing-table in the middle
+of the room, with a newspaper spread out over the blotting-pad and
+placidly reading the news.  He spoke quickly enough, however, the
+moment Jim appeared.
+
+"So you left your hotel in the Place Darcy, after all, eh, my friend?
+The exquisite Miss Upcott!  She had but to sigh out a little prayer
+and clasp her hands together, and it was done.  Yes, I saw it all
+from the hall.  What it is to be young!  You have those two letters
+which Waberski wrote your firm?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim.  He did not think it necessary to explain that
+though the prayer was Ann Upcott's, it was the thought of Betty which
+had brought him to the Maison Grenelle.
+
+"Good!  I have sent for him," said Hanaud.
+
+"To come to this house?"
+
+"I am expecting him now."
+
+"That's capital," cried Jim.  "I shall meet him, then!  The damned
+rogue!  I shouldn't wonder if I thumped him," and he clenched his
+fist and shook it in a joyous anticipation.
+
+"I doubt if that would be so helpful as you think.  No, I beg of you
+to place yourself in my hands this morning, Monsieur Frobisher,"
+Hanaud interposed soberly.  "If you confront Waberski at once with
+those two letters, at once his accusation breaks down.  He will
+withdraw it.  He will excuse himself.  He will burst into a torrent
+of complaints and reproaches.  And I shall get nothing out of him.
+That I do not want."
+
+"But what is there to be got?" Jim asked impatiently.
+
+"Something perhaps.  Perhaps nothing," the detective returned with a
+shrug of the shoulders.  "I have a second mission in Dijon, as I told
+you in Paris."
+
+"The anonymous letters?"
+
+"Yes.  You were present yesterday when Mademoiselle Harlowe told me
+how she learned that I was summoned from Paris upon this case.  It
+was not, after all, any of my colleagues here who spread the news.
+It is even now unknown that I am here.  No, it was the writer of the
+letters.  And in so difficult a matter I can afford to neglect no
+clue.  Did Waberski know that I was going to be sent for?  Did he
+hear that at the Prefecture when he lodged his charge on the Saturday
+or from the examining magistrate on the same day?  And if he did, to
+whom did he talk between the time when he saw the magistrate and the
+time when letters must be posted if they are to be delivered on the
+Sunday morning?  These are questions I must have the answer to, and
+if we at once administer the knock-out with your letters, I shall not
+get them.  I must lead him on with friendliness.  You see that."
+
+Jim very reluctantly did.  He had longed to see Hanaud dealing with
+Waberski in the most outrageous of his moods, pouncing and tearing
+and trampling with the gibes of a schoolboy and the improprieties of
+the gutter.  Hanaud indeed had promised him as much.  But he found
+him now all for restraint and sobriety and more concerned apparently
+with the authorship of the anonymous letters than with the righting
+of Betty Harlowe.  Jim felt that he had been defrauded.
+
+"But I am to meet this man," he said.  "That must not be forgotten."
+
+"And it shall not be," Hanaud assured him.  He led him over to the
+door in the inner wall close to the observation window and opened it.
+
+"See!  If you will please to wait in here," and as the disappointment
+deepened on Jim's face, he added, "Oh, I do not ask you to shut the
+door.  No.  Bring up a chair to it--so!  And keep the door ajar so!
+Then you will see and hear and yet not be seen.  You are content?
+Not very.  You would prefer to be on the stage the whole time like an
+actor.  Yes, we all do.  But, at all events, you do not throw up your
+part," and with a friendly grin he turned back to the table.
+
+A shuffling step which merged into the next step with a curiously
+slovenly sound rose from the courtyard.
+
+"It was time we made our little arrangements," said Hanaud in an
+undertone.  "For here comes our hero from the Steppes."
+
+Jim popped his head through the doorway.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud!" he whispered excitedly.  "Monsieur Hanaud!  It
+cannot be wise to leave those windows open on the courtyard.  For if
+we can hear a footstep so loudly in this room, anything said in this
+room will be easily overheard in the court."
+
+"But how true that is!" Hanaud replied in the same voice and struck
+his forehead with his fist in anger at his folly.  "But what are we
+to do?  The day is so hot.  This room will be an oven.  The ladies
+and Waberski will all faint.  Besides, I have an officer in plain
+clothes already stationed in the court to see that it is kept empty.
+Yes, we will risk it."
+
+Jim drew back.
+
+"That man doesn't welcome advice from any one," he said indignantly,
+but he said it only to himself; and almost before he had finished,
+the bell rang.  A few seconds afterwards Gaston entered.
+
+"Monsieur Boris," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud with a nod.  "And will you tell the ladies that we
+are ready?"
+
+Boris Waberski, a long, round-shouldered man with bent knees and
+clumsy feet, dressed in black and holding a soft black felt hat in
+his hand, shambled quickly into the room and stopped dead at the
+sight of Hanaud.  Hanaud bowed and Waberski returned the bow; and
+then the two men stood looking at one another--Hanaud all geniality
+and smiles, Waberski a rather grotesque figure of uneasiness like one
+of those many grim caricatures carved by the imagination of the
+Middle Ages on the columns of the churches of Dijon.  He blinked in
+perplexity at the detective and with his long, tobacco-stained
+fingers tortured his grey moustache.
+
+"Will you be seated?" said Hanaud politely.  "I think that the ladies
+will not keep us waiting."
+
+He pointed towards a chair in front of the writing-table but on his
+left hand and opposite to the door.
+
+"I don't understand," said Waberski doubtfully.  "I received a
+message.  I understood that the Examining Magistrate had sent for me."
+
+"I am his agent," said Hanaud.  "I am----" and he stopped.  "Yes?"
+
+Boris Waberski stared.
+
+"I said nothing."
+
+"I beg your pardon.  I am--Hanaud."
+
+He shot the name out quickly, but he was answered by no start, nor by
+any sign of recognition.
+
+"Hanaud?"  Waberski shook his head.  "That no doubt should be
+sufficient to enlighten me," he said with a smile, "but it is better
+to be frank--it doesn't."
+
+"Hanaud of the Sûrété of Paris."
+
+And upon Waberski's face there came slowly a look of utter
+consternation.
+
+"Oh!" he said, and again "Oh!" with a lamentable look towards the
+door as if he was in two minds whether to make a bolt of it.  Hanaud
+pointed again to the chair, and Waberski murmured, "Yes--to be sure,"
+and made a little run to it and sank down.
+
+Jim Frobisher, watching from his secret place, was certain of one
+thing.  Boris Waberski had not written the anonymous letter to Betty
+nor had he contributed the information about Hanaud to the writer.
+He might well have been thought to have been acting ignorance of
+Hanaud's name, up to the moment when Hanaud explained who Hanaud was.
+But no longer.  His consternation then was too genuine.
+
+"You will understand, of course, that an accusation so serious as the
+one you have brought against Mademoiselle Harlowe demands the closest
+inquiry," Hanaud continued without any trace of irony, "and the
+Examining Magistrate in charge of the case honoured us in Paris with
+a request for help."
+
+"Yes, it is very difficult," replied Boris Waberski, twisting about
+as if he was a martyr on red-hot plates.
+
+But the difficulty was Waberski's, as Jim, with that distressed man
+in full view, was now able to appreciate.  Waberski had rushed to the
+Prefecture when no answer came from Messrs. Frobisher & Haslitt to
+his letter of threats, and had brought his charge in a spirit of
+disappointment and rancour, with a hope no doubt that some offer of
+cash would be made to him and that he could withdraw it.  Now he
+found the trained detective service of France upon his heels, asking
+for his proofs and evidence.  This was more than he had bargained for.
+
+"I thought," Hanaud continued easily, "that a little informal
+conversation between you and me and the two young ladies, without
+shorthand writers or secretaries, might be helpful."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Waberski hopefully.
+
+"As a preliminary of course," Hanaud added dryly, "a preliminary to
+the more serious and now inevitable procedure."
+
+Waberski's gleam of hopefulness was extinguished.
+
+"To be sure," he murmured, plucking at his lean throat nervously.
+"Cases must proceed."
+
+"That is what they are there for," said Hanaud sententiously; and the
+door of the library was pushed open.  Betty came into the room with
+Ann Upcott immediately behind her.
+
+"You sent for me," she began to Hanaud, and then she saw Boris
+Waberski.  Her little head went up with a jerk, her eyes smouldered.
+"Monsieur Boris," she said, and again she spoke to Hanaud.  "Come to
+take possession, I suppose?"  Then she looked round the room for Jim
+Frobisher, and exclaimed in a sudden dismay:
+
+"But I understood that----" and Hanaud was just in time to stop her
+from mentioning any name.
+
+"All in good time, Mademoiselle," he said quickly.  "Let us take
+things in their order."
+
+Betty took her old place in the window-seat.  Ann Upcott shut the
+door and sat down in a chair a little apart from the others.  Hanaud
+folded up his newspaper and laid it aside.  On the big blotting-pad
+which was now revealed lay one of those green files which Jim
+Frobisher had noticed in the office of the Sûrété.  Hanaud opened it
+and took up the top paper.  He turned briskly to Waberski.
+
+"Monsieur, you state that on the night of the 27th of April, this
+girl here, Betty Harlowe, did wilfully give to her adoptive mother
+and benefactress, Jeanne-Marie Harlowe, an overdose of a narcotic by
+which her death was brought about."
+
+"Yes," said Waberski with an air of boldness, "I declare that."
+
+"You do not specify the narcotic?"
+
+"It was probably morphine, but I cannot be sure."
+
+"And administered, according to you, if this summary which I hold
+here is correct, in the glass of lemonade which Madame Harlowe had
+always at her bedside."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hanaud laid the sheet of foolscap down again.
+
+"You do not charge the nurse, Jeanne Baudin, with complicity in this
+crime?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no!" Waberski exclaimed with a sort of horror, with his eyes
+open wide and his eyebrows running up his forehead towards his hedge
+of wiry hair.  "I have not a suspicion of Jeanne Baudin.  I pray you,
+Monsieur Hanaud, to be clear upon that point.  There must be no
+injustice!  No!  Oh, it is well that I came here to-day!  Jeanne
+Baudin!  Listen!  I would engage her to nurse me to-morrow, were my
+health to fail."
+
+"One cannot say more than that," replied Hanaud with a grave
+sympathy.  "I only asked you the question because undoubtedly Jeanne
+Baudin was in Madame's bedroom when Mademoiselle entered it to wish
+Madame good night and show off her new dancing-frock."
+
+"Yes, I understand," said Waberski.  He was growing more and more
+confident, so suave and friendly was this Monsieur Hanaud of the
+Sûrété.  "But the fatal drug was slipped into that glass without a
+doubt when Jeanne Baudin was not looking.  I do not accuse her.  No!
+It is that hard one," and his voice began to shake and his mouth to
+work, "who slipped it in and then hurried off to dance till morning,
+whilst her victim died.  It is terrible that!  Yes, Monsieur Hanaud,
+it is terrible.  My poor sister!"
+
+"Sister-in-law."
+
+The correction came with an acid calm from an armchair near the door
+in which Ann Upcott was reclining.
+
+"Sister to me!" replied Waberski mournfully and he turned to Hanaud.
+"Monsieur, I shall never cease to reproach myself.  I was away
+fishing in the forest.  If I had stayed at home!  Think of it!  I ask
+you to----" and his voice broke.
+
+"Yes, but you did come back, Monsieur Waberski," Hanaud said, "and
+this is where I am perplexed.  You loved your sister.  That is clear,
+since you cannot even think of her without tears."
+
+"Yes, yes," Waberski shaded his eyes with his hand.
+
+"Then why did you, loving her so dearly, wait for so long before you
+took any action to avenge her death?  There will be some good reason
+not a doubt, but I have not got it."  Hanaud continued, spreading out
+his hands.  "Listen to the dates.  Your dear sister dies on the night
+of the 27th of April.  You return home on the 28th; and you do
+nothing, you bring no charge, you sit all quiet.  She is buried on
+the 30th, and after that you still do nothing, you sit all quiet.  It
+is not until one week after that you launch your accusation against
+Mademoiselle.  Why?  I beg you, Monsieur Waberski, not to look at me
+between the fingers, for the answer is not written on my face, and to
+explain this difficulty to me."
+
+The request was made in the same pleasant, friendly voice which
+Hanaud had used so far and without any change of intonation.  But
+Waberski snatched his hand away from his forehead and sat up with a
+flush on his face.
+
+"I answer you at once," he exclaimed.  "From the first I knew it
+here," and he thumped his heart with his fist, "that murder had been
+committed.  But as yet I did not know it here," and he patted his
+forehead, "in my head.  So I think and I think and I think.  I see
+reasons and motives.  They build themselves up.  A young girl of
+beauty and style, but of a strange and secret character, thirsting in
+her heart for colour and laughter and enjoyment and the power which
+her beauty offers her if she will but grasp it, and yet while
+thirsting, very able to conceal all sign of thirst.  That is the
+picture I give you of that hard one, Betty Harlowe."
+
+For the first time since the interview had commenced, Betty herself
+showed some interest in it.  Up till now she had sat without a
+movement, a figure of disdain in an ice-house of pride.  Now she
+flashed into life.  She leaned forward, her elbow on her crossed
+knee, her chin propped in her hand, her eyes on Waberski, and a smile
+of amusement at this analysis of herself giving life to her face.
+Jim Frobisher, on the other hand, behind his door felt that he was
+listening to blasphemies.  Why did Hanaud endure it?  There was
+information, he had said, which he wanted to get from Boris Waberski.
+The point on which he wanted information was settled long ago, at the
+very beginning of this informal session.  It was as clear as daylight
+that Waberski had nothing to do with Betty's anonymous letter.  Why,
+then, should Hanaud give this mountebank of a fellow a free
+opportunity to slander Betty Harlowe?  Why should he question and
+question as if there were solid weight in the accusation?  Why, in a
+word, didn't he fling open this door, allow Frobisher to produce the
+blackmailing letters to Mr. Haslitt, and then stand aside while Boris
+Waberski was put into that condition in which he would call upon the
+services of Jeanne Baudin?  Jim indeed was furiously annoyed with
+Monsieur Hanaud.  He explained to himself that he was disappointed.
+
+Meanwhile, Boris Waberski, after a little nervous check when Betty
+had leaned forward, continued his description.
+
+"For such a one Dijon would be tiresome.  It is true there was each
+year a month or so at Monte Carlo, just enough to give one a hint of
+what might be, like a cigarette to a man who wants to smoke.  And
+then back to Dijon!  Ah, Monsieur, not the Dijon of the Dukes of
+Burgundy, not even the Dijon of the Parliament of the States, but the
+Dijon of to-day, an ordinary, dull, provincial town of France which
+keeps nothing of its former gaieties and glory but some old rare
+buildings and a little spirit of mockery.  Imagine, then, Monsieur,
+this hard one with a fortune and freedom within her grasp if only she
+has the boldness on some night when Monsieur Boris is out of the way
+to seize them!  Nor is that all.  For there is an invalid in the
+house to whom attentions are owed--yes, and must be given."
+Waberski, in a flight of excitement checked himself and half closed
+his eyes, with a little cunning nod.  "For the invalid was not so
+easy.  No, even that dear one had her failings.  Oh, yes, and we will
+not forget them when the moment comes for the extenuating pleas.  No,
+indeed," and he flung his arm out nobly.  "I myself will be the first
+to urge them to the judge of the Assizes when the verdict is given."
+
+Betty Harlowe leaned back once more indifferent From an arm-chair
+near the door, a little gurgle of laughter broke from the lips of Ann
+Upcott.  Even Hanaud smiled.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said; "but we have not got quite as far as the Court
+of Assizes, Monsieur Waberski.  We are still at the point where you
+know it in your heart but not in your head."
+
+"That is so," Waberski returned briskly.  "On the seventh of May, a
+Saturday, I bring my accusation to the Prefecture.  Why?  For, on the
+morning of that day I am certain.  I know it at last here too," and
+up went his hand to his forehead, and he hitched himself forward on
+to the edge of his chair.
+
+"I am in the street of Gambetta, one of the small popular new
+streets, a street with some little shops and a reputation not of the
+best.  At ten o'clock I am passing quickly through that street when
+from a little shop a few yards in front of me out pops that hard one,
+my niece."
+
+Suddenly the whole character of that session had changed.  Jim
+Frobisher, though he sat apart from it, felt the new tension, and was
+aware of the new expectancy.  A moment ago Boris Waberski as he sat
+talking and gesticulating had been a thing for ridicule, almost for
+outright laughter.  Now, though his voice still jumped hysterically
+from high notes to low notes and his body jerked like a marionette's,
+he held the eyes of every one--every one, that is, except Betty
+Harlowe.  He was no longer vague.  He was speaking of a definite hour
+and a place and of a definite incident which happened there.
+
+"Yes, in that bad little street I see her.  I do not believe my
+senses.  I step into a little narrow alley and I peep round the
+corner.  I peep with my eyes," and Waberski pointed to them with two
+of his fingers as though there was something peculiarly convincing in
+the fact that he peeped with them and not with his elbows, "and I am
+sure.  Then I wait until she is out of sight, and I creep forward to
+see what shop it is she visited in that little street of squalor.
+Once more I do not believe my eyes.  For over the door I read the
+name, Jean Cladel, Herbalist."
+
+He pronounced the name in a voice of triumph and sat back in his
+chair, nodding his head violently at intervals of a second.  There
+was not a sound in the room until Hanaud's voice broke the silence.
+
+"I don't understand," he said softly.  "Who is this Jean Cladel, and
+why should a young lady not visit his shop?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," Waberski replied.  "You are not of Dijon.  No!
+or you would not have asked that question.  Jean Cladel has no better
+name than the street he very suitably lives in.  Ask a Dijonnais
+about Jean Cladel, and you will see how he becomes silent and shrugs
+his shoulders as if here was a topic on which it was becoming to be
+silent.  Better still, Monsieur Hanaud, ask at the Prefecture.  Jean
+Cladel!  Twice he has been tried for selling prohibited drugs."
+
+Hanaud was stung at last out of his calm.
+
+"What is that?" he cried in a sharp voice.
+
+"Yes, twice, Monsieur.  Each time he has scraped through, that is
+true.  He has powerful friends, and witnesses have been spirited
+away.  But he is known!  Jean Cladel!  Yes, Jean Cladel!"
+
+"Jean Cladel, Herbalist of the street Gambetta," Hanaud repeated
+slowly.  "But"--and he leaned back in an easier attitude--"you will
+see my difficulty, Monsieur Waberski.  Ten o'clock is a public hour.
+It is not a likely hour for any one to choose for so imprudent a
+visit, even if that one were stupid."
+
+"Yes, and so I reasoned too," Waberski interposed quickly.  "As I
+told you, I could not believe my eyes.  But I made sure--oh, there
+was no doubt, Monsieur Hanaud.  And I thought to myself this.  Crimes
+are discovered because criminals, even the acutest, do sooner or
+later some foolish thing.  Isn't it so?  Sometimes they are too
+careful; they make their proofs too perfect for an imperfect world.
+Sometimes they are too careless or are driven by necessity to a rash
+thing.  But somehow a mistake is made and justice wins the game."
+
+Hanaud smiled.
+
+"Aha! a student of crime, Monsieur!"  He turned to Betty, and it
+struck upon Jim Frobisher with a curious discomfort that this was the
+first time Hanaud had looked directly at Betty since the interview
+had begun.
+
+"And what do you say to this story, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"It is a lie," she answered quietly.
+
+"You did not visit Jean Cladel in the street of Gambetta at ten
+o'clock on the morning of the 7th of May?"
+
+"I did not, Monsieur."
+
+Waberski smiled and twisted his moustache.
+
+"Of course!  Of course!  We could not expect Mademoiselle to admit
+it.  One fights for one's skin, eh?"
+
+"But, after all," Hanaud interrupted, with enough savagery in his
+voice to check all Waberski's complacency, "let us not forget that on
+the 7th of May, Madame Harlowe had been dead for ten days.  Why
+should Mademoiselle still be going to the shop of Jean Cladel?"
+
+"To pay," said Waberski.  "Oh, no doubt Jean Cladel's wares are
+expensive and have to be paid for more than once, Monsieur."
+
+"By wares you mean poison," said Hanaud.  "Let us be explicit."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Poison which was used to murder Madame Harlowe."
+
+"I say so," Waberski declared, folding his arms across his breast.
+
+"Very well," said Hanaud.  He took from his green file a second paper
+written over in a fine hand and emphasised by an official stamp.
+"Then what will you say, Monsieur, if I tell you that the body of
+Madame Harlowe has been exhumed?" Hanaud continued, and Waberski's
+face lost what little colour it had.  He stared at Hanaud, his jaw
+working up and down nervously, and he did not say a word.
+
+"And what will you say if I tell you," Hanaud continued, "that no
+more morphia was discovered in it than one sleeping-dose would
+explain and no trace at all of any other poison?"
+
+In a complete silence Waberski took his handkerchief from his pocket
+and dabbed his forehead.  The game was up.  He had hoped to make his
+terms, but his bluff was called.  He had not one atom of faith in his
+own accusation.  There was but one course for him to take, and that
+was to withdraw his charge and plead that his affection for his
+sister-in-law had led him into a gross mistake.  But Boris Waberski
+was never the man for that.  He had that extra share of cunning which
+shipwrecks always the minor rogue.  He was unwise enough to imagine
+that Hanaud might be bluffing too.
+
+He drew his chair a little nearer to the table.  He tittered and
+nodded at Hanaud confidentially.
+
+"You say 'if I tell you,'" he said smoothly.  "Yes, but you do not
+tell me, Monsieur Hanaud--no, not at all.  On the contrary, what you
+say is this: 'My friend Waberski, here is a difficult matter which,
+if exposed, means a great scandal, and of which the issue is
+doubtful.  There is no good in stirring the mud.'"
+
+"Oh, I say that?" Hanaud asked, smiling pleasantly.
+
+Waberski felt sure of his ground now.
+
+"Yes, and more than that.  You say, 'You have been badly treated, my
+friend Waberski, and if you will now have a little talk with that
+hard one your niece----'"
+
+And his chair slid back against the bookcase and he sat gaping
+stupidly like a man who has been shot.
+
+Hanaud had sprung to his feet, he stood towering above the table, his
+face suddenly dark with passion.
+
+"Oh, I say all that, do I?" he thundered.  "I came all the way from
+Paris to Dijon to preside over a little bargain in a murder case!
+I--Hanaud!  Oh! ho! ho!  I'll teach you a lesson for that!  Read
+this!" and bending forward he thrust out the paper with the official
+seal.  "It is the report of the analysts.  Take it, I tell you, and
+read it!"
+
+Waberski reached out a trembling arm, afraid to venture nearer.  Even
+when he had the paper in his hands, they shook so he could not read
+it.  But since he had never believed in his charge that did not
+matter.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, "no doubt I have made a mistake."
+
+Hanaud caught the word up.
+
+"Mistake!  Ah, there's a fine word!  I'll show you what sort of a
+mistake you have made.  Draw up your chair to this table in front of
+me!  So!  And take a pen--so!  And a sheet of paper--so! and now you
+write for me a letter."
+
+"Yes, yes," Waberski agreed.  All the bravado had gone from his
+bearing, all the insinuating slyness.  He was in a quiver from head
+to foot.  "I will write that I am sorry."
+
+"That is not necessary," roared Hanaud.  "I will see to it that you
+are sorry.  No!  You write for me what I dictate to you and in
+English.  You are ready?  Yes?  Then you begin.  'Dear Sirs.'  You
+have that?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Waberski, scribbling hurriedly.  His head was in a
+whirl.  He flinched as he wrote under the towering bulk of the
+detective.  He had as yet no comprehension of the goal to which he
+was being led.
+
+"Good!  'Dear Sirs,'" Hanaud repeated.  "But we want a date for that
+letter.  April 30th, eh?  That will do.  The day Madame Harlowe's
+will was read and you found you were left no money.  April 30th--put
+it in.  So!  Now we go on.  'Dear Sirs, Send me at once one thousand
+pounds by the recommended post, or I make some awkwardnesses----'"
+
+Waberski dropped his pen and sprang back out of his chair.
+
+"I don't understand--I can't write that....  There is an error--I
+never meant..." he stammered, his hands raised as if to ward off an
+attack.
+
+"Ah, you never meant the blackmail!" Hanaud cried savagely.  "Ah!
+Ha!  Ha!  It is good for you that I now know that!  For when, as you
+put it so delicately to Mademoiselle, the moment comes for the
+extenuating pleas, I can rise up in the Court and urge it.  Yes!  I
+will say: 'Mr. the President, though he did the blackmail, poor
+fellow, he never meant it.  So please to give him five years more,'"
+and with that Hanaud swept across the room like a tornado and flung
+open the door behind which Frobisher was waiting.
+
+"Come!" he said, and he led Jim into the room.  "You produce the two
+letters he wrote to your firm, Monsieur Frobisher.  Good!"
+
+But it was not necessary to produce them.  Boris Waberski had dropped
+into a chair and burst into tears.  There was a little movement of
+discomfort made by every one in that room except Hanaud; and even his
+anger dropped.  He looked at Waberski in silence.
+
+"You make us all ashamed.  You can go back to your hotel," he said
+shortly.  "But you will not leave Dijon, Monsieur Waberski, until it
+is decided what steps we shall take with you."
+
+Waberski rose to his feet and stumbled blindly to the door.
+
+"I make my apologies," he stammered.  "It is all a mistake.  I am
+very poor ... I meant no harm," and without looking at any one he got
+himself out of the room.
+
+"That type!  He at all events cannot any more think that Dijon is
+dull," said Hanaud, and once more he adventured on the dangerous seas
+of the English language.  "Do you know what my friend Mister Ricardo
+would have said?  No?  I tell you.  He would have said, 'That fellow!
+My God!  What a sauce!'"
+
+Those left in the room, Betty, Ann Upcott, and Jim Frobisher, were in
+a mood to welcome any excuse for laughter.  The interdict upon the
+house was raised, the charge against Betty proved of no account, the
+whole bad affair was at an end.  Or so it seemed.  But Hanaud went
+quickly to the door and closed it, and when he turned back there was
+no laughter at all upon his face.
+
+"Now that that man has gone," he said gravely, "I have something to
+tell you three which is very serious.  I believe that, though
+Waberski does not know it, Madame Harlowe was murdered by poison in
+this house on the night of April the twenty-seventh."
+
+The statement was received in a dreadful silence.  Jim Frobisher
+stood like a man whom some calamity has stunned.  Betty leaned
+forward in her seat with a face of horror and incredulity; and then
+from the arm-chair by the door where Ann Upcott was sitting there
+burst a loud, wild cry.
+
+"There was some one in the house that night," she cried.
+
+Hanaud swung round to her, his eyes blazing.
+
+"And it is you who tell me that, Mademoiselle?" he asked in a
+curious, steady voice.
+
+"Yes.  It's the truth," she cried with a sort of relief in her voice,
+that at last a secret was out which had grown past endurance.  "I am
+sure now.  There was a stranger in the house."  And though her face
+was white as paper, her eyes met Hanaud's without fear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT: _The Book_
+
+The two startling declarations, one treading upon the heels of the
+other, set Jim Frobisher's brain whirling.  Consternation and
+bewilderment were all jumbled together.  He had no time to ask "how,"
+for he was already asking "What next?"  His first clear thought was
+for Betty, and as he looked at her, a sharp anger against both Hanaud
+and Ann Upcott seized and shook him.  Why hadn't they both spoken
+before?  Why must they speak now?  Why couldn't they leave well alone?
+
+For Betty had fallen back in the window-seat, her hands idle at her
+sides and her face utterly weary and distressed.  Jim thought of some
+stricken patient who wakes in the morning to believe for a few
+moments that the malady was a bad dream; and then comes the stab and
+the cloud of pain settles down for another day.  A moment ago Betty's
+ordeal seemed over.  Now it was beginning a new phase.
+
+"I am sorry," he said to her.
+
+The report of the analysts was lying on the writing-table just
+beneath his eyes.  He took it up idly.  It was a trick, of course,
+with its seals and its signatures, a trick of Hanaud's to force
+Waberski to a retraction.  He glanced at it, and with an exclamation
+began carefully to read it through from the beginning to the end.
+When he had finished, he raised his head and stared at Hanaud.
+
+"But this report is genuine," he cried.  "Here are the details of the
+tests applied and the result.  There was no trace discovered of any
+poison."
+
+"No trace at all," Hanaud replied.  He was not in the least disturbed
+by the question.
+
+"Then I don't understand why you bring the accusation or whom you
+accuse," Frobisher exclaimed.
+
+"I have accused no one," said Hanaud steadily.  "Let us be clear
+about that!  As to your other question--look!"
+
+He took Frobisher by the elbow and led him to that bookshelf by the
+window before which they had stood together yesterday.
+
+"There was an empty space here yesterday.  You yourself drew my
+attention to it.  You see that the space is filled to-day."
+
+"Yes," said Jim.
+
+Hanaud took down the volume which occupied the space.  It was of
+quarto size, fairly thick and bound in a paper cover.
+
+"Look at that," he said; and Jim Frobisher as he took it noticed with
+a queer little start that although Hanaud's eyes were on his face
+they were blank of all expression.  They did not see him.  Hanaud's
+senses were concentrated on the two girls at neither of whom he so
+much as glanced.  He was alert to them, to any movement they might
+make of surprise or terror.  Jim threw up his head in a sudden
+revolt.  He was being used for another trick, as some conjurer may
+use a fool of a fellow whom he has persuaded out of his audience on
+to his platform.  Jim looked at the cover of the book, and cried with
+enough violence to recall Hanaud's attention:
+
+"I see nothing here to the point.  It is a treatise printed by some
+learned society in Edinburgh."
+
+"It is.  And if you will look again, you will see that it was written
+by a Professor of Medicine in that University.  And if you will look
+a third time you will see from a small inscription in ink that the
+copy was presented with the Professor's compliments to Mr. Simon
+Harlowe."
+
+Hanaud, whilst he was speaking, went to the second of the two windows
+which looked upon the court and putting his head out, spoke for a
+little while in a low voice.
+
+"We shall not need our sentry here any more," he said as he turned
+back into the room.  "I have sent him upon an errand."
+
+He went back to Jim Frobisher, who was turning over a page of the
+treatise here and there and was never a scrap the wiser.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"Strophanthus Hispidus," Jim read aloud the title of the treatise.
+"I can't make head or tail of it."
+
+"Let me try!" said Hanaud, and he took the book out of Frobisher's
+hands.  "I will show you all how I spent the half-hour whilst I was
+waiting for you this morning."
+
+He sat down at the writing-table, placed the treatise on the
+blotting-pad in front of him and laid it open at a coloured plate.
+
+"This is the fruit of the plant Strophanthus Hispidus, when it is
+ripening," he said.
+
+The plate showed two long, tapering follicles joined together at
+their stems and then separating like a pair of compasses set at an
+acute angle.  The backs of these follicles were rounded, dark in
+colour and speckled; the inner surfaces, however, were flat, and the
+curious feature of them was that, from longitudinal crevices, a
+number of silky white feathers protruded.
+
+"Each of these feathers," Hanaud continued, and he looked up to find
+that Ann Upcott had drawn close to the table and that Betty Harlowe
+herself was leaning forward with a look of curiosity upon her
+face--"each of these feathers is attached by a fine stalk to an
+elliptical pod, which is the seed, and when the fruit is quite ripe
+and these follicles have opened so that they make a straight line,
+the feathers are released and the wind spreads the seed.  It is
+wonderful, eh?  See!"
+
+Hanaud turned the pages until he came to another plate.  Here a
+feather was represented in complete detachment from the follicle.  It
+was outspread like a fan and was extraordinarily pretty and delicate
+in its texture; and from it by a stem as fine as a hair the seed hung
+like a jewel.
+
+"What would you say of it, Mademoiselle?" Hanaud asked, looking up
+into the face of Ann Upcott with a smile.  "An ornament wrought for a
+fine lady, by a dainty artist, eh?" and he turned the book round so
+that she on the opposite side of the table might the better admire
+the engraving.
+
+Betty Harlowe, it seemed, was now mastered by her curiosity.  Jim
+Frobisher, gazing down over Hanaud's shoulder at the plate and
+wondering uneasily whither he was being led, saw a shadow fall across
+the book.  And there was Betty, standing by the side of her friend
+with the palms of her hands upon the edge of the table and her face
+bent over the book.
+
+"One could wish it was an ornament, this seed of the Strophanthus
+Hispidus," Hanaud continued with a shake of the head.  "But, alas! it
+is not so harmless."
+
+He turned the book around again to himself and once more turned the
+pages.  The smile had disappeared altogether from his face.  He
+stopped at a third plate; and this third plate showed a row of
+crudely fashioned arrows with barbed heads.
+
+Hanaud glanced up over his shoulder at Jim.
+
+"Do you understand now the importance of this book, Monsieur
+Frobisher?" he asked.  "No?  The seeds of this plant make the famous
+arrow-poison of Africa.  The deadliest of all the poisons since there
+is no antidote for it."  His voice grew sombre.  "The wickedest of
+all the poisons, since it leaves no trace."
+
+Jim Frobisher was startled.  "Is that true?" he cried.
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud; and Betty suddenly leaned forward and pointed to
+the bottom of the plate.
+
+"There is a mark there below the hilt of that arrow," she said
+curiously.  "Yes, and a tiny note in ink."
+
+For a moment a little gift of vision was vouchsafed to Jim Frobisher,
+born, no doubt, of his perplexities and trouble.  A curtain was rung
+up in his brain.  He saw no more than what was before him--the pretty
+group about the table in the gold of the May morning, but it was all
+made grim and terrible and the gold had withered to a light that was
+grey and deathly and cold as the grave.  There were the two girls in
+the grace of their beauty and their youth, daintily tended,
+fastidiously dressed, bending their shining curls over that plate of
+the poison arrows like pupils at a lecture.  And the man delivering
+the lecture, so close to them, with speech so gentle, was implacably
+on the trail of murder, and maybe even now looked upon one of these
+two girls as his quarry; was even now perhaps planning to set her in
+the dock of an Assize Court and send her out afterwards, carried
+screaming and sobbing with terror in the first grey of the morning to
+the hideous red engine erected during the night before the prison
+gates.  Jim saw Hanaud the genial and friendly, as in some flawed
+mirror, twisted into a sinister and terrifying figure.  How could he
+sit so close with them at the table, talk to them, point them out
+this and that diagram in the plates, he being human and knowing what
+he purposed.  Jim broke in upon the lecture with a cry of
+exasperation.
+
+"But this isn't a poison!  This is a book about a poison.  The book
+can't kill!"
+
+At once Hanaud replied to him:
+
+"Can't it?" he cried sharply.  "Listen to what Mademoiselle said a
+minute ago.  Below the hilt of this arrow marked 'Figure F,' the
+Professor has written a tiny note."
+
+This particular arrow was a little different from the others in the
+shape of its shaft.  Just below the triangular iron head the shaft
+expanded.  It was as though the head had been fitted into a bulb; as
+one sees sometimes wooden penholders fine enough and tapering at the
+upper end, and quite thick just above the nib.
+
+"'See page 37,'" said Hanaud, reading the Professor's note, and he
+turned back the pages.
+
+"Page 37.  Here we are!"
+
+Hanaud ran a finger half-way down the page and stopped at a word in
+capitals.
+
+"Figure F."
+
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little closer to the table; Ann Upcott
+moved round the end of the table that she might see the better; even
+Jim Frobisher found himself stooping above Hanaud's shoulder.  They
+were all conscious of a queer tension; they were expectant like
+explorers on the brink of a discovery.  Whilst Hanaud read the
+paragraph aloud, it seemed that no one breathed; and this is what he
+read:
+
+"'Figure F is the representation of a poison arrow which was lent to
+me by Simon Harlowe, Esq., of Blackman's, Norfolk, and the Maison
+Crenelle at Dijon.  It was given to him by a Mr. John Carlisle, a
+trader on the Shire River in the Kombe country, and is the most
+perfect example of a poison arrow which I have seen.  The
+Strophanthus seed has been pounded up in water and mixed with the
+reddish clay used by the Kombe natives, and the compound is thickly
+smeared over the head of the arrow shaft and over the actual iron
+dart except at the point and the edges.  The arrow is quite new and
+the compound fresh.'"
+
+Hanaud leaned back in his chair when he had come to the end of this
+paragraph.
+
+"You see, Monsieur Frobisher, the question we have to answer.  Where
+is to-day Simon Harlowe's arrow?"
+
+Betty looked up into Hanaud's face.
+
+"If it is anywhere in this house, Monsieur, it should be in the
+locked cabinet in my sitting-room."
+
+"Your sitting-room?" Hanaud exclaimed sharply.
+
+"Yes.  It is what we call the Treasure Room--half museum, half
+living-room.  My uncle Simon used it, Madame too.  It was their
+favourite room, full of curios and beautiful things.  But after Simon
+Harlowe died Madame would never enter it.  She locked the door which
+communicated with her dressing-room, so that she might never even in
+a moment of forgetfulness enter it.  The room has a door into the
+hall.  She gave the room to me."
+
+Hanaud's forehead cleared of its wrinkles.
+
+"I understand," he said.  "And that room is sealed."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you ever seen the arrow, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Not that I remember.  I only looked into the cabinet once.  There
+are some horrible things hidden away there"; and Betty shivered and
+shook the recollection of them from her shoulders.
+
+"The chances are that it's not in the house at all, that it never
+came back to the house," Frobisher argued stubbornly.  "The Professor
+in all probability would have kept it."
+
+"If he could," Hanaud rejoined.  "But it's out of all probability
+that a collector of rare things would have allowed him to keep it.
+No!" and he sat for a little time in a muse.  "Do you know what I am
+wondering?" he asked at length, and then answered his own question.
+"I am wondering whether after all Boris Waberski was not in the
+street of Gambetta on the seventh of May and close, very close, to
+the shop of Jean Cladel the herbalist."
+
+"Boris!  Boris Waberski," cried Jim.  Was he in Hanaud's eyes the
+criminal?  After all, why not?  After all, who more likely if
+criminal there was, since Boris Waberski thought himself an inheritor
+under Mrs. Harlowe's will?
+
+"I am wondering whether he was not doing that very thing which he
+attributed to you, Mademoiselle Betty," Hanaud continued.
+
+"Paying?" Betty cried.
+
+"Paying--or making excuses for not paying, which is more probable, or
+recovering the poison arrow now clean of its poison, which is most
+probable of all."
+
+At last Hanaud had made an end of his secrecies and reticence.  His
+suspicion, winged like the arrow in the plate, was flying straight to
+this evident mark.  Jim drew a breath like a man waking from a
+nightmare; in all of that small company a relaxation was visible; Ann
+Upcott drew away from the table; Betty said softly as though speaking
+to herself, "Monsieur Boris!  Monsieur Boris!  Oh, I never thought of
+that!" and, to Jim's admiration there was actually a note of regret
+in her voice.
+
+It was audible, too, to Hanaud, since he answered with a smile:
+
+"But you must bring yourself to think of it, Mademoiselle.  After
+all, he was not so gentle with you that you need show him so much
+good will."
+
+A slight rush of colour tinged Betty's cheeks.  Jim was not quite
+sure that a tiny accent of irony had not pointed Hanaud's words.
+
+"I saw him sitting here," she replied quickly, "half an hour
+ago--abject--in tears--a man!"  She shrugged her shoulders with a
+gesture of distaste.  "I wish him nothing worse.  I was satisfied."
+
+Hanaud smiled again with a curious amusement, an appreciation which
+Frobisher was quite at a loss to understand.  But he had from time to
+time received an uneasy impression that a queer little secret duel
+was all this while being fought by Betty Harlowe and Hanaud
+underneath the smooth surface of questions and answers--a duel in
+which now one, now the other of the combatants got some trifling
+scratch.  This time it seemed Betty was hurt.
+
+"You are satisfied, Mademoiselle, but the Law is not," Hanaud
+returned.  "Boris Waberski expected a legacy.  Boris Waberski needed
+money immediately, as the first of the two letters which he wrote to
+Monsieur Frobisher's firm clearly shows.  Boris Waberski had a
+motive."  He looked from one to the other of his audience with a nod
+to drive the point home.  "Motives, no doubt, are signposts rather
+difficult to read, and if one reads them amiss, they lead one very
+wide astray.  Granted!  But you must look for your signposts all the
+same and try to read them aright.  Listen again to the Professor of
+Medicine in the University of Edinburgh!  He is as precise as a man
+can be."
+
+Hanaud's eyes fell again upon the description of Figure F in the
+treatise still open upon the table in front of him.
+
+"The arrow was the best specimen of a poison arrow which he had ever
+come across.  The poison paste was thickly and smoothly spread over
+the arrow head and some inches of the shaft.  The arrow was unused
+and the poison fresh, and these poisons retain their energy for many,
+many years.  I tell you that if this book and this arrow were handed
+over to Jean Cladel, Herbalist, Jean Cladel could with ease make a
+solution in alcohol which injected from a hypodermic needle, would
+cause death within fifteen minutes and leave not one trace."
+
+"Within fifteen minutes?" Betty asked incredulously, and from the
+arm-chair against the wall, where Ann Upcott had once more seated
+herself, there broke a startled exclamation.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, but no one took any notice of her at all.  Both Jim
+and Betty had their eyes fixed upon Hanaud, and he was altogether
+occupied in driving his argument home.
+
+"Within fifteen minutes?  How do you know?" cried Jim.
+
+"It is written here, in the book."
+
+"And where would Jean Cladel have learnt to handle the paste with
+safety, how to prepare the solution?" Jim went on.
+
+"Here!  Here!  Here!" answered Hanaud, tapping with his knuckles upon
+the treatise.  "It is all written out here--experiment after
+experiment made upon living animals and the action of the poison
+measured and registered by minutes.  Oh, given a man with a working
+knowledge of chemicals such as Jean Cladel must possess, and the
+result is certain."
+
+Betty Harlowe leaned forward again over the book and Hanaud turned it
+half round between them, so that both, by craning their heads, could
+read.  He turned the pages back to the beginning and passed them
+quickly in review.
+
+"See, Mademoiselle, the time tables.  Strophanthus constricts the
+muscles of the heart like digitalis, only much more violently, much
+more swiftly.  See the contractions of the heart noted down minute
+after minute, until the moment of death and all--here is the
+irony!--so that by means of these experiments, the poison may be
+transformed into a medicine and the weapon of death become an agent
+of life--as in good hands, it has happened."  Hanaud leaned back and
+contemplated Betty Harlowe between his half-closed eyes.  "That is
+wonderful, Mademoiselle.  What do you think?"
+
+Betty slowly closed the book.
+
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud," she said, "it is no less wonderful that
+you should have studied this book so thoroughly during the half-hour
+you waited for us here this morning."
+
+It was Hanaud's turn to change colour.  The blood mounted into his
+face.  He was for a second or two quite disconcerted.  Jim once more
+had a glimpse of the secret duel and rejoiced that this time it was
+Hanaud, the great Hanaud, who was scratched.
+
+"The study of poisons is particularly my work," he answered shortly.
+"Even at the Sûrété we have to specialise nowadays," and he turned
+rather quickly towards Frobisher.  "You are thoughtful, Monsieur?"
+
+Jim was following out his own train of thought.
+
+"Yes," he answered.  Then he spoke to Betty.
+
+"Boris Waberski had a latch-key, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"He took it away with him?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"When are the iron gates locked?"
+
+"It is the last thing Gaston does before he goes to bed."
+
+Jim's satisfaction increased with every answer he received.
+
+"You see, Monsieur Hanaud," he cried, "all this while we have been
+leaving out a question of importance.  Who put this book back upon
+its shelf?  And when?  Yesterday at noon the space was empty.  This
+morning it is filled.  Who filled it?  Last night we sat in the
+garden after dinner behind the house.  What could have been easier
+than for Waberski to slip in with his latch-key at some moment when
+the court was empty, replace the book and slip out again unnoticed?
+Why----"
+
+A gesture of Betty's brought him to a halt.
+
+"Unnoticed?  Impossible!" she said bitterly.  "The police have a
+_sergent-de-ville_ at our gates, night and day."
+
+Hanaud shook his head.
+
+"He is there no longer.  After you were good enough to answer me so
+frankly yesterday morning the questions it was my duty to put to you,
+I had him removed at once."
+
+"Why, that's true," Jim exclaimed joyfully.  He remembered now that
+when he had driven up with his luggage from the hotel in the
+afternoon, the street of Charles-Robert had been quite empty.  Betty
+Harlowe stood taken aback by her surprise.  Then a smile made her
+face friendly; her eyes danced to the smile, and she dipped to the
+detective a little mock curtsy.  But her voice was warm with
+gratitude.
+
+"I thank you, Monsieur.  I did not notice yesterday that the man had
+been removed, or I should have thanked you before.  Indeed I was not
+looking for so much consideration at your hands.  As I told my friend
+Jim, I believed that you went away thinking me guilty."
+
+Hanaud raised a hand in protest.  To Jim it was the flourish of the
+sword with which the duellist saluted at the end of the bout.  The
+little secret combat between these two was over.  Hanaud, by removing
+the sergeant from before the gates, had given a sign surely not only
+to Betty but to all Dijon that he found nothing to justify any
+surveillance of her goings out and comings in, or any limitations
+upon her freedom.
+
+"Then you see," Jim insisted.  He was still worrying at his solution
+of the case like a dog with a bone.  "You see Waberski had the road
+clear for him last night."
+
+Betty, however, would not have it.  She shook her head vigorously.
+
+"I won't believe that Monsieur Boris is guilty of so horrible a
+murder.  More," and she turned her great eyes pleadingly upon Hanaud,
+"I don't believe that any murder was committed here at all.  I don't
+want to believe it," and for a moment her voice faltered.
+
+"After all, Monsieur Hanaud, what are you building this dreadful
+theory upon?  That a book of my Uncle Simon was not in his library
+yesterday and is there to-day.  We know nothing more.  We don't know
+even whether Jean Cladel exists at all."
+
+"We shall know that, Mademoiselle, very soon," said Hanaud, staring
+down at the book upon the table.
+
+"We don't know whether the arrow is in the house, whether it ever
+was."
+
+"We must make sure, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud stubbornly.
+
+"And even if you had it now, here with the poison clinging in shreds
+to the shaft, you still couldn't be sure that the rest of it had been
+used.  Here is a report, Monsieur, from the doctors.  Because it says
+that no trace of the poison can be discovered, you can't infer that a
+poison was administered which leaves no trace.  You never can prove
+it.  You have nothing to go upon.  It's all guesswork, and guesswork
+which will keep us living in a nightmare.  Oh, if I thought for a
+moment that murder had been committed, I'd say, 'Go on, go on'!  But
+it hasn't.  Oh, it hasn't!"
+
+Betty's voice rang with so evident a sincerity, there was so strong a
+passion of appeal, for peace, for an end of suspicion, for a right to
+forget and be forgotten, that Jim fancied no man could resist it.
+Indeed, Hanaud sat for a long while with his eyes bent upon the table
+before he answered her.  But when at last he did, gently though his
+voice began, Jim knew at once that she had lost.
+
+"You argue and plead very well, Mademoiselle Betty," he said.  "But
+we have each of us our little creeds by which we live for better or
+for worse.  Here is mine, a very humble one.  I can discover
+extenuations in most crimes: even crimes of violence.  Passion,
+anger, even greed!  What are they but good qualities developed beyond
+the bounds?  Things at the beginning good and since grown monstrous!
+So, too, in the execution.  This or that habit of life makes natural
+this or that weapon which to us is hideous and abnormal and its mere
+use a sign of a dreadful depravity.  Yes, I recognise these
+palliations.  But there is one crime I never will forgive--murder by
+poison.  And one criminal in whose pursuit I will never tire nor
+slacken, the Poisoner."  Through the words there ran a real thrill of
+hatred, and though Hanaud's voice was low, and he never once raised
+his eyes from the table, he held the three who listened to him in a
+dreadful spell.
+
+"Cowardly and secret, the poisoner has his little world at his mercy,
+and a fine sort of mercy he shows to be sure," he continued bitterly.
+"His hideous work is so easy.  It just becomes a vice like drink, no
+more than that to the poisoner, but with a thousand times the
+pleasure drink can give.  Like the practice of some abominable art.
+I tell you the truth now!  Show me one victim to-day and the poisoner
+scot-free, and I'll show you another victim before the year's out.
+Make no mistake!  Make no mistake!"
+
+His voice rang out and died away.  But the words seemed still to
+vibrate in the air of that room, to strike the walls and rebound from
+them and still be audible.  Jim Frobisher, for all his slow
+imagination, felt that had a poisoner been present and heard them,
+some cry of guilt must have rent the silence and betrayed him.  His
+heart stopped in its beats listening for a cry, though his reason
+told him there was no mouth in that room from which the cry could
+come.
+
+Hanaud looked up at Betty when he had finished.  He begged her pardon
+with a little flutter of his hands and a regretful smile.  "You must
+take me, therefore, as God made me, Mademoiselle, and not blame me
+more than you can help for the distress I still must cause you.
+There was never a case more difficult.  Therefore never one about
+which one way or the other I must be more sure."
+
+Before Betty could reply there came a knock upon the door.
+
+"Come in," Hanaud cried out, and a small, dark, alert man in plain
+clothes entered the room.
+
+"This is Nicolas Moreau, who was keeping watch in the courtyard.  I
+sent him some while ago upon an errand," he explained and turned
+again to Moreau.
+
+"Well, Nicolas?"
+
+Nicolas stood at attention, with his hands at the seams of his
+trousers, in spite of his plain clothes, and he recited rather than
+spoke in a perfectly expressionless official voice.
+
+"In accordance with instructions I went to the shop of Jean Cladel.
+It is number seven.  From the Rue Gambetta I went to the Prefecture.
+I verified your statement.  Jean Cladel has twice appeared before the
+Police Correctionelle for selling forbidden drugs and has twice been
+acquitted owing to the absence of necessary witnesses."
+
+"Thank you, Nicolas."
+
+Moreau saluted, turned on his heel, and went out of the room.  There
+followed a moment of silence, of discouragement.  Hanaud looked
+ruefully at Betty.
+
+"You see!  I must go on.  We must search in that locked cabinet of
+Simon Harlowe's for the poison arrow, if by chance it should be
+there."
+
+"The room is sealed," Frobisher reminded him.
+
+"We must have those seals removed," he replied, and he took his watch
+from his pocket and screwed up his face in grimace.
+
+"We need Monsieur the Commissary, and Monsieur the Commissary will
+not be in a good humour if we disturb him now.  For it is twelve
+o'clock, the sacred hour of luncheon.  You will have observed upon
+the stage that Commissaries of Police are never in a good humour.  It
+is because----"  But Hanaud's audience was never to hear his
+explanation of this well-known fact.  For he stopped with a queer
+jerk of his voice, his watch still dangling from his fingers upon its
+chain.  Both Jim and Betty looked at once where he was looking.  They
+saw Ann Upcott standing up against the wall with her hand upon the
+top rail of a chair to prevent herself from falling.  Her eyes were
+closed, her whole face a mask of misery.  Hanaud was at her side in a
+moment.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he asked with a breathless sort of eagerness, "what
+is it you have to tell me?"
+
+"It is true, then?" she whispered.  "Jean Cladel exists?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the poison arrow could have been used?" she faltered, and the
+next words would not be spoken, but were spoken at the last.  "And
+death would have followed in fifteen minutes?"
+
+"Upon my oath it is true," Hanaud insisted.  "What is it you have to
+tell me?"
+
+"That I could have hindered it all.  I shall never forgive myself.  I
+could have hindered the murder."
+
+Hanaud's eyes narrowed as he watched the girl.  Was he disappointed,
+Frobisher wondered?  Did he expect quite another reply?  A swift
+movement by Betty distracted him from these questions.  He saw Betty
+looking across the room at them with the strangest glittering eyes he
+had ever seen.  And then Ann Upcott drew herself away from Hanaud and
+stood up against the wall at her full height with her arms
+outstretched.  She seemed to be setting herself apart as a pariah;
+her whole attitude and posture cried, "Stone me!  I am waiting."
+
+Hanaud put his watch into his pocket.
+
+"Mademoiselle, we will let the Commissary eat his luncheon in peace,
+and we will hear your story first.  But not here.  In the garden
+under the shade of the trees."  He took his handkerchief and wiped
+his forehead.  "Indeed I too feel the heat.  This room is as hot as
+an oven."
+
+When Jim Frobisher looked back in after time upon the incidents of
+that morning, nothing stood out so vividly in his memories, no, not
+even the book of arrows and its plates, not Hanaud's statement of his
+creed, as the picture of him twirling his watch at the end of his
+chain, whilst it sparkled in the sunlight and he wondered whether he
+should break in now upon the Commissaire of Police or let him eat his
+luncheon in quiet.  So much that was then unsuspected by them all,
+hung upon the exact sequence of events.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE: _The Secret_
+
+The garden chairs were already set out upon a lawn towards the
+farther end of the garden in the shadow of the great trees.  Hanaud
+led the way towards them.
+
+"We shall be in the cool here and with no one to overhear us but the
+birds," he said, and he patted and arranged the cushions in a deep
+arm-chair of basket work for Ann Upcott.  Jim Frobisher was reminded
+again of the solicitude of a doctor with an invalid and again the
+parallel jarred upon him.  But he was getting a clearer insight into
+the character of this implacable being.  The little courtesies and
+attentions were not assumed.  They were natural, but they would not
+hinder him for a moment in his pursuit.  He would arrange the
+cushions with the swift deft hands of a nurse--yes, but he would slip
+the handcuffs on the wrists of his invalid, a moment afterwards, no
+less deftly and swiftly, if thus his duty prompted him.
+
+"There!" he said.  "Now, Mademoiselle, you are comfortable.  For me,
+if I am permitted, I shall smoke."
+
+He turned round to ask for permission of Betty, who with Jim had
+followed into the garden behind him.
+
+"Of course," she answered; and coming forward, she sat down in
+another of the chairs.
+
+Hanaud pulled out of a pocket a bright blue bundle of thin black
+cigarettes and lit one.  Then he sat in a chair close to the two
+girls.  Jim Frobisher stood behind Hanaud.  The lawn was dappled with
+sunlight and cool shadows.  The blackbird and the thrush were calling
+from bough and bush, the garden was riotous with roses and the air
+sweet with their perfume.  It was a strange setting for the eerie
+story which Ann Upcott had to tell of her adventures in the darkness
+and silence of a night; but the very contrast seemed to make the
+story still more vivid.
+
+"I did not go to Monsieur de Pouillac's Ball on the night of April
+the 27th," she began, and Jim started, so that Hanaud raised his hand
+to prevent him interrupting.  He had not given a thought to where Ann
+Upcott had been upon that night.  To Hanaud, however, the statement
+brought no surprise.
+
+"You were not well?" he asked.
+
+"It wasn't that," Ann replied.  "But Betty and I had--I won't say a
+rule, but a sort of working arrangement which I think had been in
+practice ever since I came to the Maison Crenelle.  We didn't
+encroach upon each other's independence."
+
+The two girls had recognised from their first coming together that
+privacy was the very salt of companionship.  Each had a sanctuary in
+her own sitting-room.
+
+"I don't think Betty has ever been in mine, I only once or twice in
+hers," said Ann.  "We had each our own friends.  We didn't pester
+each other with questions as to where we had been and with whom.  In
+a word, we weren't all the time shadows upon each other's heels."
+
+"A wise rule, Mademoiselle," Hanaud agreed cordially.  "A good many
+households are split from roof to cellar by the absence of just such
+a rule.  The de Pouillacs then were Mademoiselle Betty's friends."
+
+"Yes.  As soon as Betty had gone," Ann resumed, "I told Gaston that
+he might turn off the lights and go to bed whenever he liked; and I
+went upstairs to my own sitting-room, which is next to my bedroom.
+You can see the windows from here.  There!"
+
+They were in a group facing the back of the long house across the
+garden.  To the right of the hall stretched the line of shuttered
+windows, with Betty's bedroom just above.  Ann pointed to the wing on
+the left of the hall and towards the road.
+
+"I see.  You are above the library, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud.
+
+"Yes.  I had a letter to write," Ann continued, and suddenly
+faltered.  She had come upon some obstacle in the telling of her
+story which she had forgotten when she had uttered her cry in the
+library.  She gasped.  "Oh!" she murmured, and again "Oh!" in a low
+voice.  She glanced anxiously at Betty, but she got no help from her
+at all.  Betty was leaning forward with her elbows upon her knees and
+her eyes on the grass at her feet and apparently miles away in
+thought.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud asked smoothly.
+
+"It was an important letter," Ann went on again, choosing her words
+warily, much as yesterday at one moment in her interrogatory Betty
+herself had done--concealing something, too, just as Betty had done.
+"I had promised faithfully to write it.  But the address was
+downstairs in Betty's room.  It was the address of a doctor," and
+having said that, it seemed that she had cleared her obstacle, for
+she went on in a more easy and natural tone.
+
+"You know what it is, Monsieur Hanaud.  I had been playing tennis all
+the afternoon.  I was pleasantly tired.  There was a letter to be
+written with a good deal of care and the address was all the way
+downstairs.  I said to myself that I would think out the terms of my
+letter first."
+
+And here Jim Frobisher, who had been shifting impatiently from one
+foot to the other, broke in upon the narrative.
+
+"But what was this letter about and to what doctor?" he asked.
+
+Hanaud swung round almost angrily.
+
+"Oh, please!" he cried.  "These things will all come to light of
+themselves in their due order, if we leave them alone and keep them
+in our memories.  Let Mademoiselle tell her story in her own way,"
+and he was back at Ann Upcott again in a flash.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle.  You determined to think out the tenor of your
+letter."
+
+A hint of a smile glimmered upon the girl's face for a second.  "But
+it was an excuse really, an excuse to sit down in my big arm-chair,
+stretch out my legs and do nothing at all.  You can guess what
+happened."
+
+Hanaud smiled and nodded.
+
+"You fell fast asleep.  Conscience does not keep young people, who
+are healthy and tired, awake," he said.
+
+"No, but it wakes up with them," Ann returned, "and upbraids at once
+bitterly.  I woke up rather chilly, as people do who have gone to
+sleep in their chairs.  I was wearing a little thin frock of pale
+blue tulle--oh, a feather-weight of a frock!  Yes, I was cold and my
+conscience was saying, 'Oh, big lazy one!  And your letter?  Where is
+it?'
+
+"In a moment I was standing up and the next I was out of the room on
+the landing, and I was still half dazed with sleep.  I closed my door
+behind me.  It was just chance that I did it.  The lights were all
+out on the staircase and in the hall below.  The curtains were drawn
+across the windows.  There was no moon that night.  I was in a
+darkness so complete that I could not see the glimmer of my hand when
+I raised it close before my face."
+
+Hanaud let the end of his cigarette drop at his feet.  Betty had
+raised her face and was staring at Ann with her mouth parted.  For
+all of them the garden had disappeared with its sunlight and its
+roses and its singing birds.  They were upon that staircase with Ann
+Upcott in the black night.  The swift changes of colour in her cheeks
+and of expression in her eyes--the nervous vividness of her compelled
+them to follow with her.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle?" said Hanaud quietly.
+
+"The darkness didn't matter to me," she went on, with an amazement at
+her own fearlessness, now that she knew the after-history of that
+evening.  "I am afraid now.  I wasn't then," and Jim remembered how
+the night before in the garden her eyes had shifted from this dark
+spot to that in search of an intruder.  Certainly she was afraid now!
+Her hands were clenched tight upon the arms of her chair, her lips
+shook.
+
+"I knew every tread of the stairs.  My hand was on the balustrade.
+There was no sound.  It never occurred to me that any one was awake
+except myself.  I did not even turn on the light in the hall by the
+switch at the bottom of the stairs.  I knew that there was a switch
+just inside the door of Betty's room, and that was enough.  I think,
+too, that I didn't want to rouse anybody.  At the foot of the stairs
+I turned right like a soldier.  Exactly opposite to me across the
+hall was the door of Betty's room.  I crossed the hall with my hands
+out in front of me," and Betty, as though she herself were crossing
+the hall, suddenly thrust both her hands out in front of her.
+
+"Yes, one would have to do that," she said slowly.  "In the
+dark--with nothing but space in front of one----  Yes!" and then she
+smiled as she saw that Hanaud's eyes were watching her curiously.
+"Don't you think so, Monsieur Hanaud?"
+
+"No doubt," said he.  "But let us not interrupt Mademoiselle."
+
+"I touched the wall first," Ann resumed, "just at the angle of the
+corridor and the hall."
+
+"The corridor with the windows on to the courtyard on the one side
+and the doors of the receptions on the other?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Were the curtains drawn across all those windows too, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes.  There was not a glimmer of light anywhere.  I felt my way
+along the wall to my right--that is, in the hall, of course, not the
+corridor--until my hands slipped off the surface and touched nothing.
+I had reached the embrasure of the doorway.  I felt for the
+door-knob, turned it and entered the room.  The light switch was in
+the wall at the side of the door, close to my left hand.  I snapped
+it down.  I think that I was still half asleep when I turned the
+light on in the treasure-room, as we called it.  But the next moment
+I was wide awake--oh, I have never been more wide awake in my life.
+My fingers indeed were hardly off the switch after turning the light
+on, before they were back again turning the light off.  But this time
+I eased the switch up very carefully, so that there should be no
+snap--no, not the tiniest sound to betray me.  There was so short an
+interval between the two movements of my hand that I had just time to
+notice the clock on the top of the marquetry cabinet in the middle of
+the wall opposite to me, and then once more I stood in darkness, but
+stock still and holding my breath--a little frightened--yes, no doubt
+a little frightened, but more astonished than frightened.  For in the
+inner wall of the room, at the other end, close by the window,
+there,"--and Ann pointed to the second of those shuttered windows
+which stared so blankly on the garden--"the door which was always
+locked since Simon Harlowe's death stood open and a bright light
+burned beyond."
+
+Betty Harlowe uttered a little cry.
+
+"That door?" she exclaimed, now at last really troubled.  "It stood
+open?  How can that have been?"
+
+Hanaud shifted his position in his chair, and asked her a question.
+
+"On which side of the door was the key, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"On Madame's, if the key was in the lock at all."
+
+"Oh!  You don't remember whether it was?"
+
+"No," said Betty.  "Of course both Ann and I were in and out of
+Madame's bedroom when she was ill, but there was a dressing-room
+between the bedroom and the communicating door of my room, so that we
+should not have noticed."
+
+"To be sure," Hanaud agreed.  "The dressing-room in which the nurse
+might have slept and did when Madame had a seizure.  Do you remember
+whether the communicating door was still open or unlocked on the next
+morning?"
+
+Betty frowned and reflected, and shook her head.
+
+"I cannot remember.  We were all in great trouble.  There was so much
+to do.  I did not notice."
+
+"No.  Indeed why should you?" said Hanaud.  He turned back to Ann.
+"Before you go on with this curious story, Mademoiselle, tell me
+this!  Was the light beyond the open door, a light in the
+dressing-room or in the room beyond the dressing-room, Madame
+Harlowe's bedroom, or didn't you notice?"
+
+"In the far room, I think," Ann answered confidently.  "There would
+have been more light in the treasure-room otherwise.  The
+treasure-room is long no doubt, but where I stood I was completely in
+darkness.  There was only this panel of yellow light in the open
+doorway.  It lay in a band straight across the carpet and it lit up
+the sedan chair opposite the doorway until it all glistened like
+silver."
+
+"Oho, there is a sedan chair in that museum?" said Hanaud lightly.
+"It will be interesting to see.  So the light, Mademoiselle, came
+from the far room?"
+
+"The light and--and the voices," said Ann with a quaver in her throat.
+
+"Voices!" cried Hanaud.  He sat up straight in his chair, whilst
+Betty Harlowe went as white as a ghost.  "Voices!  What is this?  Did
+you recognise those voices?"
+
+"One, Madame's.  There was no mistaking it.  It was loud and violent
+for a moment.  Then it went off into a mumble of groans.  The other
+voice only spoke once and very few words and very clearly.  But it
+spoke in a whisper.  There was too a sound of--movements."
+
+"Movements!" said Hanaud sharply; and with his voice his face seemed
+to sharpen too.  "Here's a word which does not help us much.  A
+procession moves.  So does the chair if I push it.  So does my hand
+if I cover a mouth and stop a cry.  Is it that sort of movement you
+mean, Mademoiselle?"
+
+Under the stern insistence of his questions Ann Upcott suddenly
+weakened.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid so," she said with a loud cry, and she clapped her
+hands to her face.  "I never understood until this morning when you
+spoke of how the arrow might be used.  Oh, I shall never forgive
+myself.  I stood in the darkness, a few yards away--no more--I stood
+quite still and listened and just beyond the lighted doorway Madame
+was being killed!"  She drew her hands from her face and beat upon
+her knees with her clenched fists in a frenzy.
+
+"'Yes, I believe that now!' Madame cried in the hoarse, harsh voice
+we knew: 'Stripped, eh?  Stripped to the skin!' and she laughed
+wildly; and then came the sound, as though--yes, it might have been
+that!--as though she were forced down and held, and Madame's voice
+died to a mumble and then silence--and then the other voice in a low
+clear whisper, 'That will do now.'  And all the while I stood in the
+darkness--oh!"
+
+"What did you do after that clear whisper reached your ears?" Hanaud
+commanded.  "Take your hands from your face, if you please, and let
+me hear."
+
+Ann Upcott obeyed him.  She flung her head back with the tears
+streaming down her face.
+
+"I turned," she whispered.  "I went out of the room.  I closed the
+door behind me--oh, ever so gently.  I fled."
+
+"Fled?  Fled?  Where to?"
+
+"Up the stairs!  To my room."
+
+"And you rang no bell?  You roused no one?  You fled to your room!
+You hid your head under the bed-clothes like a child!  Come, come,
+Mademoiselle!"
+
+Hanaud broke off his savage irony to ask,
+
+"And whose voice did you think it was that whispered so clearly,
+'That will do now?'  The stranger's you spoke of in the library this
+morning?"
+
+"No, Monsieur," Ann replied.  "I could not tell.  With a whisper one
+voice is like another."
+
+"But you must have given that voice an owner.  To run away and
+hide--no one would do that."
+
+"I thought it was Jeanne Baudin's."
+
+And Hanaud sat back in his chair again, gazing at the girl with a
+look in which there was as much horror as incredulity.  Jim Frobisher
+stood behind him ashamed of his very race.  Could there be a more
+transparent subterfuge?  If she thought that the nurse Jeanne Baudin
+was in the bedroom, why did she turn and fly?
+
+"Come, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud.  His voice had suddenly become
+gentle, almost pleading.  "You will not make me believe that."
+
+Ann Upcott turned with a helpless gesture towards Betty.
+
+"You see!" she said.
+
+"Yes," Betty answered.  She sat in doubt for a second or two and then
+sprang to her feet.
+
+"Wait!" she said, and before any one could have stopped her she was
+skimming half-way across the garden to the house.  Jim Frobisher
+wondered whether Hanaud had meant to stop her and then had given up
+the idea as quite out of the question.  Certainly he had made some
+small quick movement; and even now, he watched Betty's flight across
+the broad lawn between the roses with an inscrutable queer look.
+
+"To run like that!" he said to Frobisher, "with a boy's nimbleness
+and a girl's grace!  It is pretty, eh?  The long slim legs that
+twinkle, the body that floats!" and Betty ran up the stone steps into
+the house.
+
+There was a tension in Hanaud's attitude with which his light words
+did not agree, and he watched the blank windows of the house with
+expectancy.  Betty, however, was hardly a minute upon her errand.
+She reappeared upon the steps with a largish envelope in her hand and
+quickly rejoined the group.
+
+"Monsieur, we have tried to keep this back from you," she said,
+without bitterness but with a deep regret.  "I yesterday, Ann to-day,
+just as we have tried for many years to keep it from all Dijon.  But
+there is no help for it now."
+
+She opened the envelope and, taking out a cabinet photograph, handed
+it to Hanaud.
+
+"This is the portrait of Madame, my aunt, at the time of her marriage
+with my uncle."
+
+It was the three-quarter length portrait of a woman, slender with the
+straight carriage of youth, in whose face a look of character had
+replaced youth's prettiness.  It was a face made spiritual by
+suffering, the eyes shadowed and wistful, the mouth tender, and
+conveying even in the hard medium of a photograph some whimsical
+sense of humour.  It made Jim Frobisher, gazing over Hanaud's
+shoulder, exclaim not "She was beautiful," but "I would like to have
+known her."
+
+"Yes!  A companion," Hanaud added.
+
+Betty took a second photograph from the envelope.
+
+"But this, Monsieur, is the same lady a year ago."
+
+The second photograph had been taken at Monte Carlo, and it was
+difficult to believe that it was of the same woman, so tragic a
+change had taken place within those ten years.  Hanaud held the
+portraits side by side.  The grace, the suggestion of humour had all
+gone; the figure had grown broad, the features coarse and heavy; the
+cheeks had fattened, the lips were pendulous; and there was nothing
+but violence in the eyes.  It was a dreadful picture of collapse.
+
+"It is best to be precise, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud gently, "though
+these photographs tell their unhappy story clearly enough.  Madame
+Harlowe, during the last years of her life, drank?"
+
+"Since my uncle's death," Betty explained.  "Her life, as very likely
+you know already, had been rather miserable and lonely before she
+married him.  But she had a dream then on which to live.  After Simon
+Harlowe died, however----" and she ended her explanation with a
+gesture.
+
+"Yes," Hanaud replied, "of course, Mademoiselle, we have known,
+Monsieur Frobisher and I, ever since we came into this affair that
+there was some secret.  We knew it before your reticence of yesterday
+or Mademoiselle Upcott's of to-day.  Waberski must have known of
+something which you would not care to have exposed before he
+threatened your lawyers in London, or brought his charges against
+you."
+
+"Yes, he knew and the doctors and the servants of course who were
+very loyal.  We did our best to keep our secret but we could never be
+sure that we had succeeded."
+
+A friendly smile broadened Hanaud's face.
+
+"Well, we can make sure now and here," he said, and both the girls
+and Jim stared at him.
+
+"How?" they exclaimed in an incredulous voice.
+
+Hanaud beamed.  He held them in suspense.  He spread out his hands.
+The artist as he would have said, the mountebank as Jim Frobisher
+would have expressed it, had got the upper hand in him, and prepared
+his effect.
+
+"By answering me one simple question," he said.  "Have either of you
+two ladies received an anonymous letter upon the subject?"
+
+The test took them all by surprise; yet each one of them recognised
+immediately that they could hardly have a better.  All the secrets of
+the town had been exploited at one time or another by this unknown
+person or group of persons--all the secrets that is, except this one
+of Mrs. Harlowe's degradation.  For Betty answered,
+
+"No!  I never received one."
+
+"Nor I," added Ann.
+
+"Then your secret is your secret still," said Hanaud.
+
+"For how long now?" Betty asked quickly, and Hanaud did not answer a
+word.  He could make no promise without being false to what he had
+called his creed.
+
+"It is a pity," said Betty wistfully.  "We have striven so hard, Ann
+and I," and she gave to the two men a glimpse of the life the two
+girls had led in the Maison Crenelle.  "We could do very little.  We
+had neither of us any authority.  We were both of us dependent upon
+Madame's generosity, and though no one could have been kinder
+when--when Madame was herself, she was not easy when she had--the
+attacks.  There was too much difference in age between us and her for
+us really to do anything but keep guard.
+
+"She would not brook interference; she drank alone in her bedroom;
+she grew violent and threatening if any one interfered.  She would
+turn them all into the street.  If she needed any help she could ring
+for the nurse, as indeed she sometimes, though rarely, did."  It was
+a dreadful and wearing life as Betty Harlowe described it for the two
+young sentinels.
+
+"We were utterly in despair," Betty continued.  "For Madame, of
+course, was really ill with her heart, and we always feared some
+tragedy would happen.  This letter which Ann was to write when I was
+at Monsieur de Pouillac's ball seemed our one chance.  It was to a
+doctor in England--he called himself a doctor at all events--who
+advertised that he had a certain remedy which could be given without
+the patient's knowledge in her food and drink.  Oh, I had no faith in
+it, but we had got to try it."
+
+Hanaud looked round at Frobisher triumphantly.
+
+"What did I say to you, Monsieur Frobisher, when you wanted to ask a
+question about this letter?  You see!  These things disclose
+themselves in their due order if you leave them alone."
+
+The triumph went out of his voice.  He rose to his feet and, bowing
+to Betty with an unaffected stateliness and respect, he handed her
+back the photographs.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I am very sorry," he said.  "It is clear that you and
+your friend have lived amongst difficulties which we did not suspect.
+And, for the secret, I shall do what I can."
+
+Jim quite forgave him the snub which had been administered to him for
+the excellence of his manner towards Betty.  He had a hope even that
+now he would forswear his creed, so that the secret might still be
+kept and the young sentinels receive their reward for their close
+watch.  But Hanaud sat down again in his chair, and once more turned
+towards Ann Upcott.  He meant to go on then.  He would not leave well
+alone.  Jim was all the more disappointed, because he could not but
+realise that the case was more and more clearly building itself from
+something unsubstantial into something solid, from a conjecture to an
+argument--this case against some one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN: _The Clock upon the Cabinet_
+
+Ann Upcott's story was in the light of this new disclosure
+intelligible enough.  Standing in the darkness, she had heard, as she
+thought, Mrs. Harlowe in one of her violent outbreaks.  Then with a
+sense of relief she had understood that Jeanne Baudin the nurse was
+with Mrs. Harlowe, controlling and restraining her and finally
+administering some sedative.  She had heard the outcries diminish and
+cease and a final whisper from the nurse to her patient or even
+perhaps to herself, "That will do now."  Then she had turned and
+fled, taking care to attract no attention to herself.  Real cowardice
+had nothing to do with her flight.  The crisis was over.  Her
+intervention, which before would only have been a provocation to a
+wilder outburst on the part of Mrs. Harlowe, was now altogether
+without excuse.  It would once more have aroused the invalid, and
+next day would have added to the discomfort and awkwardness of life
+in the Maison Crenelle.  For Mrs. Harlowe sober would have known that
+Ann had been a witness of one more of her dreadful exhibitions.  The
+best thing which Ann could do, she did, given that her interpretation
+of the scene was the true one.  She ran noiselessly back in the
+darkness to her room.
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud.  "But you believe now that your interpretation
+was not correct.  You believe now that whilst you stood in the
+darkness with the door open and the light beyond, Madame Harlowe was
+being murdered, coldly and cruelly murdered a few feet away from you."
+
+Ann Upcott shivered from head to foot.
+
+"I don't want to believe it," she cried.  "It's too horrible."
+
+"You believe now that the one who whispered 'That will do now,' was
+not Jeanne Baudin," Hanaud insisted, "but some unknown person, and
+that the whisper was uttered after murder had been done to a third
+person in that room."
+
+Ann twisted her body from this side to that; she wrung her hands.
+
+"I am afraid of it!" she moaned.
+
+"And what is torturing you now, Mademoiselle, is remorse that you did
+not step silently forward and from the darkness of the treasure-room
+look through that lighted doorway."  He spoke with a great
+consideration and his insight into her distress was in its way a
+solace to her.
+
+"Yes," she exclaimed eagerly.  "I told you this morning I could have
+hindered it.  I didn't understand until this morning.  You see, that
+night something else happened"; and now indeed stark fear drew the
+colour from her cheeks and shone in her eyes.
+
+"Something else?" Betty asked with a quick indraw of her breath, and
+she shifted her chair a little so that she might face Ann.  She was
+wearing a black coat over a white silk shirt open at the throat, and
+she took her handkerchief from a side pocket of the coat and drew it
+across her forehead.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud explained.  "It is clear that something
+else happened that night to your friend, something which, taken
+together with our talk this morning over the book of arrows, had made
+her believe that murder was done."  He looked at Ann.  "You went then
+to your room?"
+
+Ann resumed her story.
+
+"I went to bed.  I was very--what shall I say?--disturbed by Madame's
+outburst, as I thought it.  One never knew what was going to happen
+in this house.  It was on my nerves.  For a time I tumbled from side
+to side in my bed.  I was in a fever.  Then suddenly I was asleep,
+sound asleep.  But only for a time.  I woke up and it was still pitch
+dark in my room.  There was not a thread of light from the shutters.
+I turned over from my side on to my back and I stretched out my arms
+above my head.  As God is my Judge I touched a face----" and even
+after all these days the terror of that moment was so vivid and fresh
+to her that she shuddered and a little sob broke from her lips.  "A
+face quite close to me bending over me, in silence.  I drew my hands
+away with a gasp.  My heart was in my throat.  I lay just for a
+second or two dumb, paralysed.  Then my voice came back to me and I
+screamed."
+
+It was the look of the girl as she told her story perhaps more than
+the words she used; but something of her terror spread like a
+contagion amongst her hearers.  Jim Frobisher's shoulders worked
+uneasily.  Betty with her big eyes wide open, her breath suspended,
+hung upon Ann's narrative.  Hanaud himself said:
+
+"You screamed?  I do not wonder."
+
+"I knew that no one could hear me and that lying down I was
+helpless," Ann continued.  "I sprang out of bed in a panic, and now I
+touched no one.  I was so scared out of my wits that I had lost all
+sense of direction.  I couldn't find the switch of the electric
+light.  I stumbled along a wall feeling with my hands.  I heard
+myself sobbing as though I was a stranger.  At last I knocked against
+a chest of drawers and came a little to myself.  I found my way then
+to the switch and turned on the light.  The room was empty.  I tried
+to tell myself that I had been dreaming, but I knew that the tale
+wasn't true.  Some one had been stealthily bending down close, oh, so
+close over me in the darkness.  My hand that had touched the face
+seemed to tingle.  I asked myself with a shiver, what would have
+happened to me if just at that moment I had not waked up?  I stood
+and listened, but the beating of my heart filled the whole room with
+noise.  I stole to the door and laid my ear against the panel.  Oh, I
+could easily have believed that one after another an army was
+creeping on tiptoe past my door.  At last I made up my mind.  I flung
+the door open wide.  For a moment I stood back from it, but once the
+door was open I heard nothing.  I stole out to the head of the great
+staircase.  Below me the hall was as silent as an empty church.  I
+think that I should have heard a spider stir.  I suddenly realised
+that the light was streaming from my room and that some of it must
+reach me.  I cried at once, 'Who's there?'  And then I ran back to my
+room and locked myself in.  I knew that I should sleep no more that
+night.  I ran to the windows and threw open the shutters.  The night
+had cleared, the stars were bright in a clean black sky and there was
+a freshness of morning in the air.  I had been, I should think, about
+five minutes at the window when--you know perhaps, Monsieur, how the
+clocks in Dijon clash out and take up the hour from one another and
+pass it on to the hills--all of them struck three.  I stayed by the
+window until the morning came."
+
+After she had finished no one spoke for a little while.  Then Hanaud
+slowly lit another cigarette, looking now upon the ground, now into
+the air, anywhere except at the faces of his companions.
+
+"So this alarming thing happened just before three o'clock in the
+morning?" he asked gravely.  "You are very sure of that, I suppose?
+For, you see, it may be of the utmost importance."
+
+"I am quite sure, Monsieur," she said.
+
+"And you have told this story to no one until this moment?"
+
+"To no one in the world," replied Ann.  "The next morning Madame
+Harlowe was found dead.  There were the arrangements for the funeral.
+Then came Monsieur Boris's accusation.  There were troubles enough in
+the house without my adding to them.  Besides, no one would have
+believed my story of the face in the darkness; and I didn't of course
+associate it then with the death of Mrs. Harlowe."
+
+"No," Hanaud agreed.  "For you believed that death to have been
+natural."
+
+"Yes, and I am not sure that it wasn't natural now," Ann protested.
+"But to-day I had to tell you this story, Monsieur Hanaud"; and she
+leaned forward in her chair and claimed his attention with her eyes,
+her face, every tense muscle of her body.  "Because if you are right
+and murder was done in this house on the twenty-seventh, I know the
+exact hour when it was done."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Hanaud nodded his head once or twice slowly.  He gathered up his feet
+beneath him.  His eyes glittered very brightly as he looked at Ann.
+He gave Frobisher the queer impression of an animal crouching to
+spring.
+
+"The clock upon the marquetry cabinet," he said, "against the middle
+of the wall in the treasure-room.  The white face of it and the hour
+which leapt at you during that fraction of a second when your fingers
+were on the switch."
+
+"Yes," said Ann with a slow and quiet emphasis.  "The hour was
+half-past ten."
+
+With that statement the tension was relaxed.  Betty's
+tightly-clenched hand opened and her trifle of a handkerchief
+fluttered down on the grass.  Hanaud changed from that queer attitude
+of a crouching animal.  Jim Frobisher drew a great breath of relief.
+
+"Yes, that is very important," said Hanaud.
+
+"Important.  I should think it was!" cried Jim.
+
+For this was clear and proven to him.  If murder had been done on the
+night of the 27th of April, there was just one person belonging to
+the household of the Maison Crenelle who could have no share in it;
+and that one person was his client, Betty Harlowe.
+
+Betty was stooping to pick up her handkerchief when Hanaud spoke to
+her; and she drew herself erect again with a little jerk.
+
+"Does that clock on the marquetry cabinet keep good time,
+Mademoiselle?" he asked.
+
+"Very good," she answered.  "Monsieur Sabin the watch-maker in the
+Rue de la Liberté has had it more than once to clean.  It is an
+eight-day clock.  It will be going when the seals are broken this
+afternoon.  You will see for yourself."
+
+Hanaud, however, accepted her declaration on the spot.  He rose to
+his feet and bowed to her with a certain formality but with a smile
+which redeemed it.
+
+"At half-past ten Mademoiselle Harlowe was dancing at the house of M.
+de Pouillac on the Boulevard Thiers," he said.  "Of that there is no
+doubt.  Inquiries have been made.  Mademoiselle did not leave that
+house until after one in the morning.  There is evidence enough of
+that to convince her worst enemy, from her chauffeur and her dancing
+partners to M. de Pouillac's coachman, who stood at the bottom of the
+steps with a lantern during that evening and remembers to have held
+open for Mademoiselle the door of her car when she went away."
+
+"So that's that," said Jim to himself.  Betty at all events was out
+of the net for good.  And with that certainty there came a revolution
+in his thoughts.  Why shouldn't Hanaud's search go on?  It was
+interesting to watch the building up of this case against an unknown
+criminal--a case so difficult to bring to its proper conclusion in
+the Court of Assize, a case of poison where there was no trace of
+poison, a case where out of a mass of conjectures, here and there and
+more and more definite facts were coming into view; just as more and
+more masts of ships stand up out of a tumbled sea, the nearer one
+approaches land.  Yes, now he wanted Hanaud to go on, delving
+astutely, letting, in his own phrase, things disclose themselves in
+their due sequence.  But there was one point which Hanaud had missed,
+which should be brought to his notice.  The mouse once more, he
+thought with all a man's vanity in his modesty, would come to the
+help of the netted lion.  He cleared his throat.
+
+"Miss Ann, there is one little question I would like to ask you," he
+began, and Hanaud turned upon him, to his surprise, with a face of
+thunder.
+
+"You wish to ask a question?" he said.  "Well, Monsieur, ask it if
+you wish.  It is your right."
+
+His manner added, what his voice left unsaid, "and your
+responsibility."  Jim hesitated.  He could see no harm in the
+question he proposed to ask.  It was of vital importance.  Yet Hanaud
+stood in front of him with a lowering face, daring him to put it.
+Jim did not doubt any longer that Hanaud was quite aware of his point
+and yet for some unknown reason objected to its disclosure.  Jim
+yielded, but not with a very good grace.
+
+"It is nothing," he said surlily, and Hanaud at once was all
+cheerfulness again.
+
+"Then we will adjourn," he said, looking at his watch.  "It is nearly
+one o'clock.  Shall we say three for the Commissary of Police?  Yes?
+Then I shall inform him and we will meet in the library at three
+and"--with a little bow to Betty--"the interdict shall be raised."
+
+"At three, then," she said gaily.  She sprang up from her chair,
+stooped, picked up her handkerchief with a swift and supple movement,
+twirled upon her heel and cried, "Come along, Ann!"
+
+The four people moved off towards the house.  Betty looked back.
+
+"You have left your gloves behind you on your chair," she said
+suddenly to Hanaud.  Hanaud looked back.
+
+"So I have," he said, and then in a voice of protest, "Oh,
+Mademoiselle!"
+
+For Betty had already darted back and now returned dangling the
+gloves in her hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle, how shall I thank you?" he asked as he took them from
+her.  Then he cocked his head at Frobisher, who was looking a little
+stiff.
+
+"Ha! ha! my young friend," he said with a grin.  "You do not like
+that so much kindness should be shown me.  No!  You are looking very
+proper.  You have the poker in the back.  But ask yourself this:
+'What are youth and good looks compared with Hanaud?'"
+
+No, Jim Frobisher did not like Hanaud at all when the urchin got the
+upper hand in him.  And the worst of it was that he had no rejoinder.
+He flushed very red, but he really had no rejoinder.  They walked in
+silence to the house, and Hanaud, picking up his hat and stick, took
+his leave by the courtyard and the big gates.  Ann drifted into the
+library.  Jim felt a touch upon his arm.  Betty was standing beside
+him with a smile of amusement upon her face.
+
+"You didn't really mind my going back for his gloves, did you?" she
+asked.  "Say you didn't, Jim!" and the amusement softened into
+tenderness.  "I wouldn't have done it for worlds if I had thought
+you'd have minded."
+
+Jim's ill-humour vanished like mist on a summer morning.
+
+"Mind?" he cried.  "You shall pin a rose in his button-hole if it
+pleases you, and all I'll say will be, 'You might do the same for
+me'!"
+
+Betty laughed and gave his arm a friendly squeeze.
+
+"We are friends again, then," she said, and the next moment she was
+out on the steps under the glass face of the porch.  "Lunch at two,
+Ann!" she cried.  "I must walk all the grime of this morning out of
+my brain."
+
+She was too quick and elusive for Jim Frobisher.  She had something
+of Ariel in her conception--a delicate creature of fire and spirit
+and air.  She was across the courtyard and out of sight in the street
+of Charles-Robert before he had quite realised that she was going.
+He turned doubtfully towards the library, where Ann Upcott stood in
+the doorway.
+
+"I had better follow her," he said, reaching for his hat
+
+Ann smiled and shook her head wisely.
+
+"I shouldn't.  I know Betty.  She wants to be alone."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I am sure."
+
+Jim twiddled his hat in his hands, not half as sure upon the point as
+she was.  Ann watched him with a rather rueful smile for a little
+while.  Then she shrugged her shoulders in a sudden exasperation.
+
+"There is something you ought to do," she said.  "You ought to let
+Monsieur Bex, Betty's notary here, know that the seals are to be
+broken this afternoon.  He ought to be here.  He was here when they
+were affixed.  Besides, he has all the keys of Mrs. Harlowe's drawers
+and cupboards."
+
+"That's true," Jim exclaimed.  "I'll go at once."
+
+Ann gave him Monsieur Bex's address in the Place Etienne Dolet, and
+from the window of the library watched him go upon his errand.  She
+stood at the window for a long while after he had disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN: _A New Suspect_
+
+Monsieur Bex the notary came out into the hall of his house when
+Frobisher sent his card in to him.  He was a small, brisk man with a
+neat pointed beard, his hair cut _en brosse_ and the corner of his
+napkin tucked into his neck between the flaps of his collar.
+
+Jim explained that the seals were to be removed from the rooms of the
+Maison Grenelle, but said nothing at all of the new developments
+which had begun with the discovery of the book of the arrows.
+
+"I have had communications with Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt," the
+little man exclaimed.  "Everything has been as correct as it could
+possibly be.  I am happy to meet a partner of so distinguished a
+firm.  Yes.  I will certainly present myself at three with my keys
+and see the end of this miserable scandal.  It has been a disgrace.
+That young lady so delicious and so correct!  And that animal of a
+Waberski!  But we can deal with him.  We have laws in France."
+
+He gave Jim the impression that there were in his opinion no laws
+anywhere else, and he bowed his visitor into the street.
+
+Jim returned by the Rue des Godrans and the main thoroughfare of the
+town, the street of Liberty.  As he crossed the semicircle of the
+Place d'Armes in front of the Hôtel de Ville, he almost ran into
+Hanaud smoking a cigar.
+
+"You have lunched already?" he cried.
+
+"An affair of a quarter of an hour," said Hanaud with a wave of the
+hand.  "And you?"
+
+"Not until two.  Miss Harlowe wanted a walk."
+
+Hanaud smiled.
+
+"How I understand that!  The first walk after an ordeal!  The first
+walk of a convalescent after an operation!  The first walk of a
+defendant found innocent of a grave charge!  It must be worth taking,
+that walk.  But console yourself, my friend, for the postponement of
+your luncheon.  You have met me!" and he struck something of an
+attitude.
+
+Now Jim had the gravest objection to anything theatrical, especially
+when displayed in public places, and he answered stiffly, "That is a
+pleasure, to be sure."
+
+Hanaud grinned.  To make Jim look "proper" was becoming to him an
+unfailing entertainment.
+
+"Now I reward you," he said, though for what Jim could not imagine.
+"You shall come with me.  At this hour, on the top of old Philippe le
+Bon's Terrace Tower, we shall have the world to ourselves."
+
+He led the way into the great courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville.
+Behind the long wing which faced them, a square, solid tower rose a
+hundred and fifty feet high above the ground.  With Frobisher at his
+heels, Hanaud climbed the three hundred and sixteen steps and emerged
+upon the roof into the blue and gold of a cloudless May in France.
+They looked eastwards, and the beauty of the scene took Frobisher's
+breath away.  Just in front, the slender apse of Notre Dame, fine as
+a lady's ornament, set him wondering how in the world through all
+these centuries it had endured; and beyond, rich and green and
+wonderful, stretched the level plain with its shining streams and
+nestling villages.
+
+Hanaud sat down upon a stone bench and stretched out his arm across
+the parapet.  "Look!" he cried eagerly, proudly.  "There is what I
+brought you here to see.  Look!"
+
+Jim looked and saw, and his face lit up.  Far away on the horizon's
+edge, unearthly in its beauty, hung the great mass of Mont Blanc;
+white as silver, soft as velvet, and here and there sparkling with
+gold as though the flame of a fire leaped and sank.
+
+"Oho!" said Hanaud as he watched Jim's face.  "So we have that in
+common.  You perhaps have stood on the top of that mountain?"
+
+"Five times," Jim answered, with a smile made up of many memories.
+"I hope to do so again."
+
+"You are fortunate," said Hanaud a little enviously.  "For me I see
+him only in the distance.  But even so--if I am troubled--it is like
+sitting silent in the company of a friend."
+
+Jim Frobisher's mind strayed back over memories of snow slope and
+rock ridge.  It was a true phrase which Hanaud had used.  It
+expressed one of the many elusive, almost incommunicable emotions
+which mountains did mean to the people who had "that"--the passion
+for mountains--in common.  Jim glanced curiously at Hanaud.
+
+"You are troubled about this case, then?" he said sympathetically.
+The distant and exquisite vision of that soaring arc of silver and
+velvet set in the blue air had brought the two men into at all events
+a momentary brotherhood.
+
+"Very," Hanaud returned slowly, without turning his eyes from the
+horizon, "and for more reasons than one.  What do you yourself think
+of it?"
+
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud," Jim said dryly, "that you do not like any
+one to ask any questions except yourself."
+
+Hanaud laughed with an appreciation of the thrust.
+
+"Yes, you wished to ask a question of the beautiful Mademoiselle
+Upcott.  Tell me if I have guessed aright the question you meant to
+ask!  It was whether the face she touched in the darkness was the
+smooth face of a woman or the face of a man."
+
+"Yes.  That was it."
+
+It was now for Hanaud to glance curiously and quickly at Jim.  There
+could be no doubt of the thought which was passing through his mind:
+"I must begin to give you a little special attention, my friend."
+But he was careful not to put his thoughts into words.
+
+"I did not want that question asked," he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it was unnecessary, and unnecessary questions are confusing
+things which had best be avoided altogether."
+
+Jim did not believe one word of that explanation.  He had too clear a
+recollection of the swift movement and the look with which Hanaud had
+checked him.  Both had been unmistakably signs of alarm.  Hanaud
+would not have been alarmed at the prospect of a question being
+asked, merely because the question was superfluous.  There was
+another and, Jim was sure, a very compelling reason in Hanaud's mind.
+Only he could not discover it.
+
+Besides, was the question superfluous?
+
+"Surely," Hanaud replied.  "Suppose that that young lady's hand had
+touched in the darkness the face of a man with its stubble, its tough
+skin, and the short hair of his head around it, bending down so low
+over hers, would not that have been the most vivid, terrifying thing
+to her in all the terrifying incident?  Stretching out her hands
+carelessly above her head, she touches suddenly, unexpectedly, the
+face of a man?  She could not have told her story at all without
+telling that.  It would have been the unforgettable detail, the very
+heart of her terror.  She touched the face of a man!"
+
+Jim recognised that the reasoning was sound, but he was no nearer to
+the solution of his problem--why Hanaud so whole-heartedly objected
+to the question being asked.  And then Hanaud made a quiet remark
+which drove it for a long time altogether out of Jim's speculations.
+
+"Mademoiselle Ann touched the face of a woman in the darkness that
+night--if that night, in the darkness she touched a face at all."
+
+Jim was utterly startled.
+
+"You believe that she was lying to us?" he cried.
+
+Hanaud shook a protesting hand in the air.
+
+"I believe nothing," he said.  "I am looking for a criminal."
+
+"Ann Upcott!"  Jim spoke the name in amazement.  "Ann Upcott!"  Then
+he remembered the look of her as she had told her story, her face
+convulsed with terror, her shaking tones.  "Oh, it's impossible that
+she was lying.  Surely no one could have so mimicked fear?"
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"You may take this from me, my friend.  All women who are great
+criminals are also very artful actresses.  I never knew one who
+wasn't."
+
+"Ann Upcott!" Jim Frobisher once more exclaimed, but now with a
+trifle less of amazement.  He was growing slowly and gradually
+accustomed to the idea.  Still--that girl with the radiant look of
+young Spring!  Oh, no!
+
+"Ann Upcott was left nothing in Mrs. Harlowe's will," he argued.
+"What could she have to gain by murder?"
+
+"Wait, my friend!  Look carefully at her story!  Analyse it.  You
+will see--what?  That it falls into two parts."  Hanaud ground the
+stump of his cigar beneath his heel, offered one of his black
+cigarettes to Jim Frobisher and lighted one for himself.  He lit it
+with a sulphur match which Jim thought would never stop fizzling,
+would never burst into flame.
+
+"One part when she was alone in her bedroom--a little story of terror
+and acted very effectively, but after all any one could invent it.
+The other part was not so easy to invent.  The communicating door
+open for no reason, the light beyond, the voice that whispered, 'That
+will do,' the sound of the struggle!  No, my friend, I don't believe
+that was invented.  There were too many little details which seemed
+to have been lived through.  The white face of the clock and the hour
+leaping at her.  No!  I think all that must stand.  But adapt it a
+little.  See!  This morning Waberski told us a story of the Street of
+Gambetta and of Jean Cladel!"
+
+"Yes," said Jim.
+
+"And I asked you afterwards whether Waberski might not be telling a
+true story of himself and attributing it to Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, interpret Ann Upcott's story in the same way," continued
+Hanaud.  "Suppose that sometime that day she had unlocked the
+communicating door!  What more easy?  Madame Harlowe was up during
+the day-time.  Her room was empty.  And that communicating door
+opened not into Madame's bedroom, where perhaps it might have been
+discovered whether it was locked or not, but into a dressing-room."
+
+"Yes," Jim agreed.
+
+"Well then, continue!  Ann Upcott is left alone after Mademoiselle
+Harlowe's departure to Monsieur de Pouillac's Ball.  She sends Gaston
+to bed.  The house is all dark and asleep.  Suppose then that she is
+joined by--some one--some one with the arrow poison all ready in the
+hypodermic needle.  That they enter the treasure-room just as Ann
+Upcott described.  That she turns on the light for a second
+whilst--some one--crosses the treasure-room and opens the door.
+Suppose that the voice which whispered, 'That will do now,' was the
+voice of Ann Upcott herself and that she whispered it across Madame
+Harlowe's body to the third person in that room!"
+
+"The 'some one,'" exclaimed Jim.  "But, who then?  Who?"
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.  "Why not Waberski?"
+
+"Waberski?" cried Jim with a new excitement in his voice.
+
+"You asked me what had Ann Upcott to gain by this murder and you
+answered your own question.  Nothing you said, Monsieur Frobisher,
+but did your quick answer cover the ground?  Waberski--he at all
+events expected a fine fat legacy.  What if he in return for help
+proposed to share that fine fat legacy with the exquisite
+Mademoiselle Ann.  Has she no motive now?  In the end what do we know
+of her at all except that she is the paid companion and therefore
+poor?  Mademoiselle Ann!"; and he threw up his hands.  "Where does
+she spring from?  How did she come into that house?  Was she perhaps
+Waberski's friend?"--and a cry from Jim brought Hanaud to a stop.
+
+Jim had thought of Waberski as the possible murderer if murder had
+been done--a murderer who, disappointed of his legacy, the profits of
+his murder, had carried on his villainy to blackmail and a false
+accusation.  But he had not associated Ann Upcott with him until
+those moments on the Terrace Tower.  Yet now memories began to crowd
+upon him.  The letter to him, for instance.  She had said that
+Waberski had claimed her support and ridiculed his claim.  Might that
+letter not have been a blind and a rather cunning blind?  Above all
+there was a scene passing vividly through his mind which was very
+different from the scene spread out before his eyes, a scene of
+lighted rooms and a crowd about a long green table, and a fair
+slender girl seated at the table, who lost and lost until the whole
+of her little pile of banknotes was swept in by the croupier's rake,
+and then turned away with a high carriage but a quivering lip.
+
+"Aha!" said Hanaud keenly.  "You know something after all of Ann
+Upcott, my friend.  What do you know?"
+
+Jim hesitated.  At one moment it did not seem fair to her that he
+should relate his story.  Explained, it might wear so different a
+complexion.  At another moment that it would be fairer to let her
+explain it.  And there was Betty to consider.  Yes, above all there
+was Betty to consider.  He was in Dijon on her behalf.
+
+"I will tell you," he said to Hanaud.  "When I saw you in Paris, I
+told you that I had never seen Ann Upcott in all my life.  I believed
+it.  It wasn't until she danced into the library yesterday morning
+that I realised I had misled you.  I saw Ann Upcott at the _trente et
+quarante_ table at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo in January of
+this year.  I sat next to her.  She was quite alone and losing her
+money.  Nothing would go right for her.  She bore herself proudly and
+well.  The only sign I saw of distress was the tightening of her
+fingers about her little handbag, and a look of defiance thrown at
+the other players when she rose after her last coup, as though she
+dared them to pity her.  I was on the other hand winning, and I
+slipped a thousand-franc note off the table on to the floor, keeping
+my heel firmly upon it as you can understand.  And as the girl turned
+to move out from the crowd I stopped her.  I said in English, for she
+was obviously of my race, 'This is yours.  You have dropped it on the
+floor.'  She gave me a smile and a little shake of the head.  I think
+that for the moment she dared not trust her lips to speak, and in a
+second, of course, she was swallowed up in the crowd.  I played for a
+little while longer.  Then I too rose and as I passed the entrance to
+the bar on my way to get my coat, this girl rose up from one of the
+many little tables and spoke to me.  She called me by my name.  She
+thanked me very prettily and said that although she had lost that
+evening she was not really in any trouble.  I doubted the truth of
+what she said.  For she had not one ring upon any finger, not the
+tiniest necklace about her throat, not one ornament upon her dress or
+in her hair.  She turned away from me at once and went back to the
+little table where she sat down again in the company of a man.  The
+girl of course was Ann Upcott, the man Waberski.  It was from him no
+doubt that she had got my name."
+
+"Did this little episode happen before Ann Upcott became a member of
+the household?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Jim.  "I think she joined Mrs. Harlowe and Betty at
+Monte Carlo.  I think that she came with them back to Dijon."
+
+"No doubt," said Hanaud.  He sat for a little while in silence.  Then
+he said softly, "That does not look so very well for Mademoiselle
+Ann."
+
+Jim had to admit that it did not.
+
+"But consider this, Monsieur Hanaud," he urged.  "If Ann Upcott,
+which I will not believe, is mixed up in this affair, why should she
+of her own free will volunteer this story of what she heard upon the
+night of the twenty-seventh and invent that face which bent down over
+her in the darkness?"
+
+"I have an idea about that," Hanaud replied.  "She told us this
+story--when?  After I had said that we must have the seals broken
+this afternoon and the rooms thrown open.  It is possible that we may
+come upon something in those rooms which makes it wise for her to
+divert suspicion upon some other woman in the house.  Jeanne Baudin,
+or even Mademoiselle Harlowe's maid Francine Rollard."
+
+"But not Mademoiselle Betty," Jim interposed quickly.
+
+"No, no!" Hanaud returned with a wave of his hand.  "The clock upon
+the marquetry cabinet settled that.  Mademoiselle Betty is out of the
+affair.  Well, this afternoon we shall see.  Meanwhile, my friend,
+you will be late for your luncheon."
+
+Hanaud rose from the bench and with a last look at the magical
+mountain, that outpost of France, they turned towards the city.
+
+Jim Frobisher looked down upon tiny squares green with limes and the
+steep gaily-patterned roofs of ancient houses.  About him the fine
+tapering spires leapt high like lances from the slates of its many
+churches.  A little to the south and a quarter of a mile away across
+the roof tops he saw the long ridge of a big house and the smoke
+rising from a chimney stack or two and behind it the tops of tall
+trees which rippled and shook the sunlight from their leaves.
+
+"The Maison Crenelle!" he said.
+
+There was no answer, not even the slightest movement at his side.
+
+"Isn't it?" he asked and he turned.
+
+Hanaud had not even heard him.  He was gazing also towards the Maison
+Crenelle with the queerest look upon his face; a look with which Jim
+was familiar in some sort of association, but which for a moment or
+two he could not define.  It was not an expression of amazement.  On
+the other hand interest was too weak a word.  Suddenly Jim Frobisher
+understood and comprehension brought with it a sense of discomfort.
+Hanaud's look, very bright and watchful and more than a little
+inhuman, was just the look of a good retriever dog when his master
+brings out a gun.
+
+Jim looked again at the high ridge of the house.  The slates were
+broken at intervals by little gabled windows, but at none of them
+could he see a figure.  From none of them a signal was waved.
+
+"What is it that you are looking at?" asked Jim in perplexity and
+then with a touch of impatience.  "You see something, I'm sure."
+
+Hanaud heard his companion at last.  His face changed in a moment,
+lost its rather savage vigilance, and became the face of a buffoon.
+
+"Of course I see something.  Always I see something.  Am I not
+Hanaud?  Ah, my friend, the responsibility of being Hanaud!  Aren't
+you fortunate to be without it?  Pity me!  For the Hanauds must see
+something everywhere--even when there is nothing to see.  Come!"
+
+He bustled out of the sunlight on that high platform into the dark
+turret of the staircase.  The two men descended the steps and came
+out again into the semi-circle of the Place d'Armes.
+
+"Well!" said Hanaud and then "Yes," as though he had some little
+thing to say and was not quite sure whether he would say it.  Then he
+compromised.  "You shall take a Vermouth with me before you go to
+your luncheon," he said.
+
+"I should be late if I did," Frobisher replied.
+
+Hanaud waved the objection aside with a shake of his outstretched
+forefinger.
+
+"You have plenty of time, Monsieur.  You shall take a Vermouth with
+me, and you will still reach the Maison Crenelle before Mademoiselle
+Harlowe.  I say that, Hanaud," he said superbly, and Jim laughed and
+consented.
+
+"I shall plead your vanity as my excuse when I find her and Ann
+Upcott half through their meal."
+
+A café stands at the corner of the street of Liberty and the Place
+d'Armes, with two or three little tables set out on the pavement
+beneath an awning.  They sat down at one of them, and over the
+Vermouth, Hanaud was once more upon the brink of some recommendation
+or statement.
+
+"You see----" he began and then once more ran away.  "So you have
+been five times upon the top of the Mont Blanc!" he said.  "From
+Chamonix?"
+
+"Once," Jim replied.  "Once from the Col du Géant by the Brenva
+glacier.  Once by the Dôme route.  Once from the Brouillard glacier.
+And the last time by the Mont Mandit."
+
+Hanaud listened with genuine friendliness and said:
+
+"You tell me things which are interesting and very new to me," he
+said warmly.  "I am grateful, Monsieur."
+
+"On the other hand," Jim answered dryly, "you, Monsieur, tell me very
+little.  Even what you brought me to this café to say, you are going
+to keep to yourself.  But for my part I shall not be so churlish.  I
+am going to tell you what I think."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I think we have missed the way."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+Hanaud selected a cigarette from his bundle in its bright blue
+wrapping.
+
+"You will perhaps think me presumptuous in saying so."
+
+"Not the least little bit in the world," Hanaud replied seriously.
+"We of the Police are liable in searching widely to overlook the
+truth under our noses.  That is our danger.  Another angle of
+view--there is nothing more precious.  I am all attention."
+
+Jim Frobisher drew his chair closer to the round table of iron and
+leaned his elbows upon it.
+
+"I think there is one question in particular which we must answer if
+we are to discover whether Mrs. Harlowe was murdered, and if so by
+whom."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"I agree," he said slowly.  "But I wonder whether we have the same
+question in our minds."
+
+"It is a question which we have neglected.  It is this--Who put back
+the Professor's treatise on Sporanthus in its place upon the
+bookshelf in the library, between mid-day yesterday and this morning."
+
+Hanaud struck another of his abominable matches, and held it in the
+shelter of his palm until the flame shone.  He lit his cigarette and
+took a few puffs at it.
+
+"No doubt that question is important," he admitted, although in
+rather an off-hand way.  "But it is not mine.  No.  I think there is
+another more important still.  I think if we could know why the door
+of the treasure-room, which had been locked since Simon Harlowe's
+death, was unlocked on the night of the twenty-seventh of April, we
+should be very near to the whole truth of this dark affair.  But,"
+and he flung out his hands, "that baffles me."
+
+Jim left him sitting at the table and staring moodily upon the
+pavement, as if he hoped to read the answer there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE: _The Breaking of the Seals_
+
+A few minutes later Jim Frobisher had to admit that Hanaud guessed
+very luckily.  He would not allow that it was more than a guess.
+Monsieur Hanaud might be a thorough little Mr. Know-All; but no
+insight, however brilliant, could inform him of so accidental a
+circumstance.  But there the fact was.  Frobisher did arrive at the
+Maison Crenelle, to his great discomfort, before Betty Harlowe.  He
+had loitered with Hanaud at the café just so that this might not take
+place.  He shrank from being alone with Ann Upcott now that he
+suspected her.  The most he could hope to do was to conceal the
+reason of his trouble.  The trouble itself in her presence he could
+not conceal.  She made his case the more difficult perhaps by a
+rather wistful expression of sympathy.
+
+"You are distressed," she said gently.  "But surely you need not be
+any longer.  What I said this morning was true.  It was half-past ten
+when that dreadful whisper reached my ears.  Betty was a mile away
+amongst her friends in a ball-room.  Nothing can shake that."
+
+"It is not on her account that I am troubled," he cried, and Ann
+looked at him with startled eyes.
+
+Betty crossed the court and joined them in the hall before Ann could
+ask a question; and throughout their luncheon he made conversation
+upon indifferent subjects with rapidity, if without entertainment.
+
+Fortunately there was no time to spare.  They were still indeed
+smoking their cigarettes over their coffee when Gaston informed them
+that the Commissary of Police with his secretary was waiting in the
+library.
+
+"This is Mr. Frobisher, my solicitor in London," said Betty as she
+presented Jim.
+
+The Commissary, Monsieur Girardot, was a stout, bald, middle-aged man
+with a pair of folding glasses sitting upon a prominent fat nose; his
+secretary, Maurice Thevenet, was a tall good-looking novice in the
+police administration, a trifle flashy in his appearance, and in his
+own esteem, one would gather, rather a conqueror amongst the fair.
+
+"I have asked Monsieur Bex, Mademoiselle's notary in Dijon, to be
+present," said Jim.
+
+"That is quite in order," replied the Commissary, and Monsieur Bex
+was at that moment announced.  He came on the very moment of three.
+The clock was striking as he bowed in the doorway.  Everything was
+just as it should be.  Monsieur Bex was pleased.
+
+"With Monsieur le Commissaire's consent," he said, smiling, "we can
+now proceed with the final ceremonies of this affair."
+
+"We wait for Monsieur Hanaud," said the Commissary.
+
+"Hanaud?"
+
+"Hanaud of the Sûrété of Paris, who has been invited by the Examining
+Magistrate to take charge of this case," the Commissary explained.
+
+"Case?" cried Monsieur Bex in perplexity.  "But there is no case for
+Hanaud to take charge of;" and Betty Harlowe drew him a little aside.
+
+Whilst she gave the little notary some rapid summary of the incidents
+of the morning, Jim went out of the room into the hall in search of
+Hanaud.  He saw him at once; but to his surprise Hanaud came forward
+from the back of the hall as if he had entered the house from the
+garden.
+
+"I sought you in the dining-room," he said, pointing to the door of
+that room which certainly was at the back of the house behind the
+library, with its entrance behind the staircase.  "We will join the
+others."
+
+Hanaud was presented to Monsieur Bex.
+
+"And this gentleman?" asked Hanaud, bowing slightly to Thevenet.
+
+"My secretary, Maurice Thevenet," said the Commissary, and in a loud
+undertone, "a charming youth, of an intelligence which is surprising.
+He will go far."
+
+Hanaud looked at Thevenet with a friendly interest.  The young
+recruit gazed at the great man with kindling eyes.
+
+"This will be an opportunity for me, Monsieur Hanaud, by which, if I
+do not profit, I prove myself of no intelligence at all," he said
+with a formal modesty which quite went to the heart of Monsieur Bex.
+
+"That is very correct," said he.
+
+Hanaud for his part was never averse to flattery.  He cocked an eye
+at Jim Frobisher; he shook the secretary warmly by the hand.
+
+"Then don't hesitate to ask me questions, my young friend," he
+answered.  "I am Hanaud now, yes.  But I was once young Maurice
+Thevenet without, alas! his good looks."
+
+Maurice Thevenet blushed with the most becoming diffidence.
+
+"That is very kind," said Monsieur Bex.
+
+"This looks like growing into a friendly little family party," Jim
+Frobisher thought, and he quite welcomed a "Hum" and a "Ha" from the
+Commissary.
+
+He moved to the centre of the room.
+
+"We, Girardot, Commissaire of Police, will now remove the seals," he
+said pompously.
+
+He led the way from the Library across the hall and along the
+corridor to the wide door of Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom.  He broke the
+seals and removed the bands.  Then he took a key from the hand of his
+secretary and opened the door upon a shuttered room.  The little
+company of people surged forward.  Hanaud stretched out his arms and
+barred the way.
+
+"Just for a moment, please!" he ordered and over his shoulder Jim
+Frobisher had a glimpse of the room which made him shiver.
+
+This morning in the garden some thrill of the chase had made him for
+a moment eager that Hanaud should press on, that development should
+follow upon development until somewhere a criminal stood exposed.
+Since the hour, however, which he had spent upon the Tower of the
+Terrace, all thought of the chase appalled him and he waited for
+developments in fear.  This bedroom mistily lit by a few stray
+threads of daylight which pierced through the chinks of the shutters,
+cold and silent and mysterious, was for him peopled with phantoms,
+whose faces no one could see, who struggled dimly in the shadows.
+Then Hanaud and the Commissary crossed to the windows opposite,
+opened them and flung back the shutters.  The clear bright light
+flooded every corner in an instant and brought to Jim Frobisher
+relief.  The room was swept and clean, the chairs ranged against the
+wall, the bed flat and covered with an embroidered spread; everywhere
+there was order; it was as empty of suggestion as a vacant bedroom in
+an hotel.
+
+Hanaud looked about him.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "This room stood open for a week after Madame's
+funeral.  It would have been a miracle if we discovered anything
+which could help us."
+
+He went to the bed, which stood with its head against the wall midway
+between the door and the windows.  A small flat stand with a button
+of enamel lay upon the round table by the bed-side, and from the
+stand a cord ran down by the table leg and disappeared under the
+carpet.
+
+"This is the bell into what was the maid's bedroom, I suppose," he
+said, turning towards Betty.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hanaud stooped and minutely examined the cord.  But there was no sign
+that it had ever been tampered with.  He stood up again.
+
+"Mademoiselle, will you take Monsieur Girardot into Jeanne Baudin's
+bedroom and close the door.  I shall press this button, and you will
+know whether the bell rings whilst we here shall be able to assure
+ourselves whether sounds made in one of the rooms would be heard in
+the other."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Betty took the Commissary of Police away, and a few seconds later
+those in Mrs. Harlowe's room heard a door close in the corridor.
+
+"Will you shut our door now, if you please?" Hanaud requested.
+
+Bex, the notary, closed it.
+
+"Now, silence, if you please!"
+
+Hanaud pressed the button, and not a sound answered him.  He pressed
+it again and again with the same result.  The Commissary returned to
+the bedroom.
+
+"Well?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"It rang twice," said the Commissary.
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.
+
+"And an electric bell has a shrill, penetrating sound," he cried.
+"Name of a name, but they built good houses when the Maison Crenelle
+was built!  Are the cupboards and drawers open?"
+
+He tried one and found it locked.  Monsieur Bex came forward.
+
+"All the drawers were locked on the morning when Madame Harlowe's
+death was discovered.  Mademoiselle Harlowe herself locked them in my
+presence and handed to me the keys for the purpose of making an
+inventory.  Mademoiselle was altogether correct in so doing.  For
+until the funeral had taken place the terms of the will were not
+disclosed."
+
+"But afterwards, when you took the inventory you must have unlocked
+them."
+
+"I have not yet begun the inventory, Monsieur Hanaud.  There were the
+arrangements for the funeral, a list of the properties to be made for
+valuation, and the vineyards to be administered."
+
+"Oho," cried Hanaud alertly.  "Then these wardrobes and cupboards and
+drawers should hold exactly what they held on the night of the
+twenty-seventh of April."  He ran quickly about the room trying a
+door here, a drawer there, and came to a stop beside a cupboard
+fashioned in the thickness of the wall.  "The trouble is that a child
+with a bent wire could unlock any one of them.  Do you know what
+Madame Harlowe kept in this, Monsieur Bex?" and Hanaud rapped with
+his knuckles upon the cupboard door.
+
+"No, I have no idea.  Shall I open it?" and Bex produced a bunch of
+keys from his pocket.
+
+"Not for the moment, I think," said Hanaud.
+
+He had been dawdling over the locks and the drawers, as though time
+meant nothing to him at all.  He now swung briskly back into the
+centre of the room, making notes, it seemed to Frobisher, of its
+geography.  The door opening from the corridor faced, across the
+length of the floor, the two tall windows above the garden.  If one
+stood in the doorway facing these two windows, the bed was on the
+left hand.  On the corridor side of the bed, a second smaller door,
+which was half open, led to a white-tiled bath-room.  On the window
+side of the bed was the cupboard in the wall about the height of a
+woman's shoulders.  A dressing-table stood between the windows, a
+great fire-place broke the right-hand wall, and in that same wall,
+close to the right-hand window, there was yet another door.  Hanaud
+moved to it.
+
+"This is the door of the dressing-room?" he asked of Ann Upcott, and
+without waiting for an answer pushed it open.
+
+Monsieur Bex followed upon his heels with his keys rattling.
+"Everything here has been locked up too," he said.
+
+Hanaud paid not the slightest attention.  He opened the shutters.
+
+It was a narrow room without any fire-place at all, and with a door
+exactly opposite to the door by which Hanaud had entered.  He went at
+once to this door.
+
+"And this must be the communicating door which leads into what is
+called the treasure-room," he said, and he paused with his hand upon
+the knob and his eyes ranging alertly over the faces of the company.
+
+"Yes," said Ann Upcott.
+
+Jim was conscious of a queer thrill.  He thought of the opening of
+some newly-discovered tomb of a Pharaoh in a hill-side of the Valley
+of Kings.  Suspense passed from one to the other as they waited, but
+Hanaud did not move.  He stood there impassive and still like some
+guardian image at the door of the tomb.  Jim felt that he was never
+going to move, and in a voice of exasperation he cried:
+
+"Is the door locked?"
+
+Hanaud replied in a quiet but a singular voice.  No doubt he, too,
+felt that strange current of emotion and expectancy which bound all
+in the room under a spell, and even gave to their diverse faces for a
+moment a kind of family similitude.
+
+"I don't know yet whether it's locked or not," he said.  "But since
+this room is now the private sitting-room of Mademoiselle Harlowe, I
+think that we ought to wait until she rejoins us."
+
+Monsieur Bex just had time to remark with approval, "That is very
+correct," before Betty's fresh, clear voice rang out from the doorway
+leading to Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom:
+
+"I am here."
+
+Hanaud turned the handle.  The door was not locked.  It opened at a
+touch--inwards towards the group of people and upwards towards the
+corridor.  The treasure-room was before them, shrouded in dim light,
+but here and there a beam of light sparkled upon gold and held out a
+promise of wonders.  Hanaud picked his way daintily to the windows
+and fastened the shutters back against the outside wall.  "I beg that
+nothing shall be touched," he said as the others filed into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN: _Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room_
+
+Like the rest of the reception-rooms along the corridor, it was
+longer than it was broad and more of a gallery than a room.  But it
+had been arranged for habitation rather than for occasional visits.
+For it was furnished with a luxurious comfort and not over-crowded.
+In the fawn-coloured panels of the walls a few exquisite pictures by
+Fragonard had been framed; on the writing-table of Chinese
+Chippendale by the window every appointment, ink-stand, pen-tray,
+candlestick, sand-caster and all were of the pink Battersea enamel
+and without a flaw.  But they were there for use, not for exhibition.
+Moreover a prominent big fire-place in the middle of the wall on the
+side of the hall, jutted out into the room and gave it almost the
+appearance of two rooms in communication, The one feature of the
+room, indeed, which at a first glimpse betrayed the collector, was
+the Sedan chair set in a recess of the wall by the fire-place and
+opposite to the door communicating with Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom.  Its
+body was of a pale French grey in colour, with elaborately carved
+mouldings in gold round the panels and medallions representing
+fashionable shepherds and shepherdesses daintily painted in the
+middle of them.  It had glass windows at the sides to show off the
+occupant, and it was lined with pale grey satin, embroidered in gold
+to match the colour of the panels.  The roof, which could be raised
+upon a hinge at the back, was ornamented with gold filigree work, and
+it had a door in front of which the upper part was glass.  Altogether
+it was as pretty a gleaming piece of work as the art of
+carriage-building could achieve, and a gilt rail very fitly protected
+it.  Even Hanaud was taken by its daintiness.  He stood with his
+hands upon the rail examining it with a smile of pleasure, until Jim
+began to think that he had quite forgotten the business which had
+brought him there.  However, he brought himself out of his dream with
+a start.
+
+"A pretty world for rich people, Monsieur Frobisher," he said.  "What
+pictures of fine ladies in billowy skirts and fine gentlemen in silk
+stockings!  And what splashings of mud for the unhappy devils who had
+to walk!"
+
+He turned his back to the chair and looked across the room.  "That is
+the clock which marked half-past ten, Mademoiselle, during the moment
+when you had the light turned up?" he asked of Ann.
+
+"Yes," she answered quickly.  Then she looked at it again.  "Yes,
+that's it."
+
+Jim detected or fancied that he detected a tiny change in her
+intonation, as she repeated her assurance, not an inflexion of
+doubt--it was not marked enough for that--but of perplexity.  It was
+clearly, however, fancy upon his part, for Hanaud noticed nothing at
+all.  Jim pulled himself up with an unspoken remonstrance.  "Take
+care!" he warned himself.  "For once you begin to suspect people,
+they can say and do nothing which will not provide you with material
+for suspicion."
+
+Hanaud was without doubt satisfied.  The clock was a beautiful small
+gilt clock of the Louis Quinze period, shaped with a waist like a
+violin; it had a white face, and it stood upon a marquetry Boulle
+cabinet, a little more than waist high, in front of a tall Venetian
+mirror.  Hanaud stood directly in front of it and compared it with
+his watch.
+
+"It is exact to the minute, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty, with a
+smile as he replaced his watch in his pocket.
+
+He turned about, so that he stood with his back to the clock.  He
+faced the fire-place across the narrow neck of the room.  It had an
+Adam mantelpiece, fashioned from the same fawn-coloured wood as the
+panels, with slender pillars and some beautiful carving upon the
+board beneath the shelf.  Above the shelf one of the Fragonards was
+framed in the wall and apparently so that nothing should mask it,
+there were no high ornaments at all upon the shelf itself.  One or
+two small boxes of Battersea enamel and a flat glass case alone
+decorated it.  Hanaud crossed to the mantelshelf and, after a
+moment's inspection, lifted, with a low whistle of admiration, the
+flat glass case.
+
+"You will pardon me, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty.  "But I shall
+probably never in my life have the luck to see anything so
+incomparable again.  And the mantel-shelf is a little high for me to
+see it properly."
+
+Without waiting for the girl's consent he carried it towards the
+window.
+
+"Do you see this, Monsieur Frobisher?" he called out, and Jim went
+forward to his side.
+
+The case held a pendant wrought in gold and chalcedony and
+translucent enamels by Benvenuto Cellini.  Jim acknowledged that he
+had never seen craftsmanship so exquisite and delicate, but he chafed
+none the less at Hanaud's diversion from his business.
+
+"One could spend a long day in this room," the detective exclaimed,
+"admiring these treasures."
+
+"No doubt," Jim replied dryly.  "But I had a notion that we were
+going to spend an afternoon looking for an arrow."
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"My friend, you recall me to my duty."  He looked at the jewel again
+and sighed.  "Yes, as you say, we are not visitors here to enjoy
+ourselves."
+
+He carried the case back again to the mantelshelf and replaced it.
+Then all at once his manner changed.  He was leaning forward with his
+hands still about the glass case.  But he was looking down.  The
+fire-grate was hidden from the room by a low screen of blue lacquer;
+and Hanaud, from the position in which he stood, could see over the
+screen into the grate itself.
+
+"What is all this?" he asked.
+
+He lifted the screen from the hearth and put it carefully aside.  All
+now could see what had disturbed him--a heap of white ashes in the
+grate.
+
+Hanaud went down upon his knees and picking up the shovel from the
+fender he thrust it between the bars and drew it out again with a
+little layer of the ashes upon it.  They were white and had been
+pulverised into atoms.  There was not one flake which would cover a
+finger-nail.  Hanaud touched them gingerly, as though he had expected
+to find them hot.
+
+"This room was sealed up on Sunday morning and to-day is Thursday
+afternoon," said Jim Frobisher with heavy sarcasm.  "Ashes do not as
+a rule keep hot more than three days, Monsieur Hanaud."
+
+Maurice Thevenet looked at Frobisher with indignation.  He was daring
+to make fun of Hanaud!  He treated the Sûrété with no more respect
+than one might treat--well, say Scotland Yard.
+
+Even Monsieur Bex had an air of disapproval.  For a partner of the
+firm of Frobisher & Haslitt this gentleman was certainly not very
+correct.  Hanaud on the contrary was milk and water.
+
+"I have observed it," he replied mildly, and he sat back upon his
+heels with the shovel still poised in his hands.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" he called; and Betty moved forward and leaned against
+the mantelshelf at his side.  "Who burnt these papers so very
+carefully?" he asked.
+
+"I did," Betty replied.
+
+"And when?"
+
+"On Saturday night, a few, and the rest on Sunday morning, before
+Monsieur le Commissaire arrived."
+
+"And what were they, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Letters, Monsieur."
+
+Hanaud looked up into her face quickly.
+
+"Oho!" he said softly.  "Letters!  Yes!  And what kind of letters, if
+you please?"
+
+Jim Frobisher was for throwing up his hands in despair.  What in the
+world had happened to Hanaud?  One moment he forgot altogether the
+business upon which he was engaged in his enjoyment of Simon
+Harlowe's collection.  The next he was off on his wild-goose chase
+after anonymous letters.  Jim had not a doubt that he was thinking of
+them now.  One had only to say "letters," and he was side-tracked at
+once, apparently ready to accuse any one of their authorship.
+
+"They were quite private letters," Betty replied, whilst the colour
+slowly stained her cheeks.  "They will not help you."
+
+"So I see," Hanaud returned, with just a touch of a snarl in his
+voice as he shook the shovel and flung the ashes back into the grate.
+"But I am asking you, Mademoiselle, what kind of letters these were."
+
+Betty did not answer.  She looked sullenly down at the floor, and
+then from the floor to the windows; and Jim saw with a stab of pain
+that her eyes were glistening with tears.
+
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud, that we have come to a point when
+Mademoiselle and I should consult together," he interposed.
+
+"Mademoiselle would certainly be within her rights," said Monsieur
+Bex.
+
+But Mademoiselle waived her rights with a little petulant movement of
+her shoulders.
+
+"Very well."
+
+She showed her face now to them all, with the tears abrim in her big
+eyes, and gave Jim a little nod of thanks and recognition.
+
+"You shall be answered, Monsieur Hanaud," she said with a catch in
+her voice.  "It seems that nothing, however sacred, but must be
+dragged out into the light.  But I say again those letters will not
+help you."
+
+She looked across the group to her notary.
+
+"Monsieur Bex," she said, and he moved forward to the other side of
+Hanaud.
+
+"In Madame's bedroom between her bed and the door of the bathroom
+there stood a small chest in which she kept a good many unimportant
+papers, such as old receipted bills, which it was not yet wise to
+destroy.  This chest I took to my office after Madame's death, of
+course with Mademoiselle's consent, meaning to go through the papers
+at my leisure and recommend that all which were not important should
+be destroyed.  My time, however, was occupied, as I have already
+explained to you, and it was not until the Friday of the sixth of May
+that I opened the chest at all.  On the very top I saw, to my
+surprise, a bundle of letters in which the writing had already faded,
+tied together with a ribbon.  One glance was enough to assure me that
+they were very private and sacred things with which Mademoiselle's
+notary had nothing whatever to do.  Accordingly, on the Saturday
+morning, I brought them back myself to Mademoiselle Betty."
+
+With a bow Monsieur Bex retired and Betty continued the story.
+
+"I put the letters aside so that I might read them quietly after
+dinner.  As it happened I could not in any case have given them
+attention before.  For on that morning Monsieur Boris formulated his
+charge against me, and in the afternoon I was summoned to the Office
+of the Examining Magistrate.  As you can understand, I was--I don't
+say frightened--but distressed by this accusation; and it was not
+until quite late in the evening, and then rather to distract my
+thoughts than for any other reason, that I looked at the letters.
+But as soon as I did look at them I understood that they must be
+destroyed.  There were reasons, which"--and her voice faltered, and
+with an effort again grew steady--"which I feel it rather a sacrilege
+to explain.  They were letters which passed between my uncle Simon
+and Mrs. Harlowe during the time when she was very unhappily married
+to Monsieur Raviart and living apart from him--sometimes long
+letters, sometimes little scraps of notes scribbled off--without
+reserve--during a moment of freedom.  They were the letters of," and
+again her voice broke and died away into a whisper, so that none
+could misunderstand her meaning--"of lovers--lovers speaking very
+intimate things, and glorying in their love.  Oh, there was no doubt
+that they ought to be destroyed!  But I made up my mind that I ought
+to read them, every one, first of all lest there should be something
+in them which I ought to know.  I read a good many that night and
+burnt them.  But it grew late--I left the rest until the Sunday
+morning.  I finished them on the Sunday morning, and what I had left
+over I burnt then.  It was soon after I had finished burning them
+that Monsieur le Commissaire came to affix his seals.  The ashes
+which you see there, Monsieur Hanaud, are the ashes of the letters
+which I burnt upon the Sunday morning."
+
+Betty spoke with a very pretty and simple dignity which touched her
+audience to a warm sympathy.  Hanaud gently tilted the ashes back
+into the grate.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I am always in the wrong with you," he said with an
+accent of remorse.  "For I am always forcing you to statements which
+make me ashamed and do you honour."
+
+Jim acknowledged that Hanaud, when he wished, could do the handsome
+thing with a very good grace.  Unfortunately grace seemed never to be
+an enduring quality in him; as, for instance, now.  He was still upon
+his knees in front of the hearth.  Whilst making his apology he had
+been raking amongst the ashes with the shovel without giving, to all
+appearance, any thought to what he was doing.  But his attention was
+now arrested.  The shovel had disclosed an unburnt fragment of
+bluish-white paper.  Hanaud's body stiffened.  He bent forward and
+picked the scrap of paper out from the grate, whilst Betty, too,
+stooped with a little movement of curiosity.
+
+Hanaud sat back again upon his heels.
+
+"So!  You burnt more than letters last Sunday morning," he said.
+
+Betty was puzzled and Hanaud held out to her the fragment of paper.
+
+"Bills too, Mademoiselle."
+
+Betty took the fragment in her hand and shook her head over it.  It
+was obviously the right-hand top corner of a bill.  For an intriguing
+scrap of a printed address was visible and below a figure or two in a
+column.
+
+"There must have been a bill or two mixed up with the letters," said
+Betty.  "I don't remember it."
+
+She handed the fragment of paper back to Hanaud, who sat and looked
+at it.  Jim Frobisher standing just behind him read the printed ends
+of names and words and the figures beneath and happened to remember
+the very look of them, Hanaud held them so long in his hand; the top
+bit of name in large capital letters, the words below echelonned in
+smaller capitals, then the figures in the columns and all enclosed in
+a rough sort of triangle with the diagonal line browned and made
+ragged by the fire--thus--
+
+  ERON
+    STRUCTION
+           LLES
+              IS
+                 ========
+                  375.05
+
+
+"Well, it is of no importance luckily," said Hanaud and he tossed the
+scrap of paper back into the grate.  "Did you notice these ashes,
+Monsieur Girardot, on Sunday morning?"  He turned any slur the
+question might seem to cast upon Betty's truthfulness with an
+explanation.
+
+"It is always good when it is possible to get a corroboration,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+Betty nodded, but Girardot was at a loss.  He managed to look
+extremely important, but importance was not required.
+
+"I don't remember," he said.
+
+However, corroboration of a kind at all events did come though from
+another source.
+
+"If I might speak, Monsieur Hanaud?" said Maurice Thevenet eagerly.
+
+"But by all means," Hanaud replied.
+
+"I came into this room just behind Monsieur Girardot on the Sunday
+morning.  I did not see any ashes in the hearth, that is true.  But
+Mademoiselle Harlowe was in the act of arranging that screen of blue
+lacquer in front of the fireplace, just as we saw it to-day.  She
+arranged it, and when she saw who her visitors were she stood up with
+a start of surprise."
+
+"Aha!" said Hanaud cordially.  He smiled at Betty.  "This evidence is
+just as valuable as if he had told us that he had seen the ashes
+themselves."
+
+He rose to his feet and went close to her.
+
+"But there is another letter which you were good enough to promise to
+me," he said.
+
+"The an----" she began and Hanaud stopped her hurriedly.
+
+"It is better that we hold our tongues," he said with a nod and a
+grin which recognised that in this matter they were accomplices.
+"This is to be our exclusive little secret, which, if he is very
+good, we will share with Monsieur le Commissaire."
+
+He laughed hugely at his joke, whilst Betty unlocked a drawer in the
+Chippendale secretary.  Girardot the Commissaire tittered, not quite
+sure that he thought very highly of it.  Monsieur Bex, on the other
+hand, by a certain extra primness of his face, made it perfectly
+clear that in his opinion such a jape was very, very far from correct.
+
+Betty produced a folded sheet of common paper and handed it to
+Hanaud, who took it aside to the window and read it carefully.  Then
+with a look he beckoned Girardot to his side.
+
+"Monsieur Frobisher can come too.  For he is in the secret," he
+added; and the three men stood apart at the window looking at the
+sheet of paper.  It was dated the 7th of May, signed "The Scourge,"
+like the others of this hideous brood, and it began without any
+preface.  There were only a few words typed upon it, and some of them
+were epithets not to be reproduced which made Jim's blood boil that a
+girl like Betty should ever have had to read them.
+
+
+    "_Your time is coming now, you----_" and here followed the string
+    of abominable obscenities.  "_You are for it, Betty Harlowe.
+    Hanaud the detective from Paris is coming to look after you with
+    his handcuffs in his pocket.  You'll look pretty in handcuffs,
+    won't you, Betty?  It's your white neck we want!  Three cheers
+    for Woberski?  The Scourge._"
+
+
+Girardot stared at the brutal words and settled his glasses on his
+nose and stared again.
+
+"But--but----" he stammered and he pointed to the date.  A warning
+gesture made by Hanaud brought him to a sudden stop, but Frobisher
+had little doubt as to the purport of that unfinished exclamation.
+Girardot was astonished, as Hanaud himself had been, that this item
+of news had so quickly leaked abroad.
+
+Hanaud folded the letter and turned back into the room.
+
+"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty, and Thevenet the
+secretary took his notebook from his pocket.
+
+"Shall I make you a copy of the letter, Monsieur Hanaud?" he said,
+sitting down and holding out his hand.
+
+"I wasn't going to give it back," Hanaud answered, "and a copy at the
+present stage isn't necessary.  A little later on I may ask for your
+assistance."
+
+He put the letter away in his letter-case, and his letter-case away
+in his breast-pocket.  When he looked up again he saw that Betty was
+holding out to him a key.
+
+"This unlocks the cabinet at the end of the room," she said.
+
+"Yes!  Let us look now for the famous arrow, or we shall have
+Monsieur Frobisher displeased with us again," said Hanaud.
+
+The cabinet stood against the wall at the end of the room opposite to
+the windows, and close to the door which opened on to the hall.
+Hanaud took the key, unlocked the door of the cabinet and started
+back with a "Wow."  He was really startled, for facing him upon a
+shelf were two tiny human heads, perfect in feature, in hair, in
+eyes, but reduced to the size of big oranges.  They were the heads of
+Indian tribesmen killed upon the banks of the Amazon, and preserved
+and reduced by their conquerors by the process common amongst those
+forests.
+
+"If the arrow is anywhere in this room, it is here that we should
+find it," he said, but though he found many curious oddities in that
+cabinet, of the perfect specimen of a poison arrow there was never a
+trace.  He turned away with an air of disappointment.
+
+"Well then, Mademoiselle, there is nothing else for it," he said
+regretfully; and for an hour he searched that room, turning back the
+carpet, examining the upholstery of the chairs, and the curtains,
+shaking out every vase, and finally giving his attention to Betty's
+secretary.  He probed every cranny of it; he discovered the simple
+mechanism of its secret drawers; he turned out every pigeon-hole;
+working with extraordinary swiftness and replacing everything in its
+proper place.  At the end of the hour the room was as orderly as when
+he had entered it; yet he had gone through it with a tooth comb.
+
+"No, it is not here," he said and he seated himself in a chair and
+drew a breath.  "But on the other hand, as the two ladies and
+Monsieur Frobisher are aware, I was prepared not to find it here."
+
+"We have finished then?" said Betty, but Hanaud did not stir.
+
+"For a moment," he replied, "I shall be glad, Monsieur Girardot, if
+you will remove the seals in the hall from the door at the end of the
+room."
+
+The Commissary went out by the way of Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom,
+accompanied by his secretary.  After a minute had passed a key grated
+in the lock and the door was opened.  The Commissary and his
+secretary returned into the room from the hall.
+
+"Good!" said Hanaud.
+
+He rose from this chair and looking around at the little group, now
+grown puzzled and anxious, he said very gravely:
+
+"In the interest of justice I now ask that none of you shall
+interrupt me by either word or gesture, for I have an experiment to
+make."
+
+In a complete silence he walked to the fireplace and rang the bell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN: _An Experiment and a Discovery_
+
+Gaston answered the bell.
+
+"Will you please send Francine Rollard here," said Hanaud.
+
+Gaston, however, stood his ground.  He looked beyond Hanaud to Betty.
+
+"If Mademoiselle gives me the order," he said respectfully.
+
+"At once then, Gaston," Betty replied, and she sat down in a chair.
+
+Francine Rollard was apparently difficult to persuade.  For the
+minutes passed, and when at last she did come into the treasure room
+she was scared and reluctant.  She was a girl hardly over twenty,
+very neat and trim and pretty, and rather like some wild shy creature
+out of the woods.  She looked round the group which awaited her with
+restless eyes and a sullen air of suspicion.  But it was the
+suspicion of wild people for townsfolk.
+
+"Rollard," said Hanaud gently, "I sent for you, for I want another
+woman to help me in acting a little scene."
+
+He turned towards Ann Upcott.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle, will you please repeat exactly your movements
+here on the night when Madame Harlowe died?  You came into the
+room--so.  You stood by the electric-light switch there.  You turned
+it on, you noticed the time, and you turned it off quickly.  For this
+communicating door stood wide open--so!--and a strong light poured
+out of Madame Harlowe's bedroom through the doorway."
+
+Hanaud was very busy, placing himself first by the side of Ann to
+make sure that she stood in the exact place which she had described,
+and then running across the room to set wide open the communicating
+door.
+
+"You could just see the light gleaming on the ornaments and panels of
+the Sedan chair, on the other side of the fireplace on your right.
+So!  And there, Mademoiselle, you stood in the darkness and," his
+words lengthened out now with tiny intervals between each one--"you
+heard the sound of the struggle in the bedroom and caught some words
+spoken in a clear whisper."
+
+"Yes," Ann replied with a shiver.  The solemn manner of authority
+with which he spoke obviously alarmed her.  She looked at him with
+troubled eyes.
+
+"Then will you stand there once more," he continued, "and once more
+listen as you listened on that night.  I thank you!"  He went away to
+Betty.  "Now, Mademoiselle, and you, Francine Rollard, will you both
+please come with me."
+
+He walked towards the communicating door but Betty did not even
+attempt to rise from her chair.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she said with her cheeks very white and her voice
+shaking, "I can guess what you propose to do.  But it is horrible and
+rather cruel to us.  And I cannot see how it will help."
+
+Ann Upcott broke in before Hanaud could reply.  She was more troubled
+even than Betty, though without doubt hers was to be the easier part.
+
+"It cannot help at all," she said.  "Why must we pretend now the
+dreadful thing which was lived then?"
+
+Hanaud turned about in the doorway.
+
+"Ladies, I beg you to let me have my way.  I think that when I have
+finished, you will yourselves understand that my experiment has not
+been without its use.  I understand of course that moments like these
+bring their distress.  But--you will pardon me--I am not thinking of
+you"--and there was so much quietude and gravity in the detective's
+voice that his words, harsh though they were, carried with them no
+offence.  "No, I am thinking of a woman more than double the age of
+either of you, whose unhappy life came to an end here on the night of
+the 27th of April.  I am remembering two photographs which you,
+Mademoiselle Harlowe, showed me this morning--I am moved by them.
+Yes, that is the truth."
+
+He closed his eyes as if he saw those two portraits with their
+dreadful contrast impressed upon his eyelids.  "I am her advocate,"
+he cried aloud in a stirring voice.  "The tragic woman, I stand for
+her!  If she was done to death, I mean to know and I mean to punish!"
+
+Never had Frobisher believed that Hanaud could have been so
+transfigured, could have felt or spoken with so much passion.  He
+stood before them an erect and menacing figure, all his grossness
+melted out of him, a man with a flaming sword.
+
+"As for you two ladies, you are young.  What does a little distress
+matter to you?  A few shivers of discomfort?  How long will they
+last?  I beg you not to hinder me!"
+
+Betty rose up from her chair without another word.  But she did not
+rise without an effort, and when she stood up at last she swayed upon
+her feet and her face was as white as chalk.
+
+"Come, Francine!" she said, pronouncing her words like a person with
+an impediment of speech.  "We must show Monsieur Hanaud that we are
+not the cowards he takes us for."
+
+But Francine still held back.
+
+"I don't understand at all.  I am only a poor girl and this frightens
+me.  The police!  They set traps--the police."
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"And how often do they catch the innocent in them?  Tell me that,
+Mademoiselle Francine!"
+
+He turned almost contemptuously towards Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom.
+Betty and Francine followed upon his heels, the others trooped in
+behind, with Frobisher last of all.  He indeed was as reluctant to
+witness Hanaud's experiment as the girls were to take a part in it.
+It savoured of the theatrical.  There was to be some sort of imagined
+reproduction of the scene which Ann Upcott had described, no doubt
+with the object of testing her sincerity.  It would really be a test
+of nerves more than a test of honesty and to Jim was therefore
+neither reliable nor fair play.  He paused in the doorway to say a
+word of encouragement to Ann, but she was gazing again with that
+curious air of perplexity at the clock upon the marquetry cabinet.
+
+"There is nothing to fear, Ann," he said, and she withdrew her eyes
+from the clock.  They were dancing now as she turned them upon
+Frobisher.
+
+"I wondered whether I should ever hear you call me by my name," she
+said with a smile.  "Thank you, Jim!"  She hesitated and then the
+blood suddenly mounted into her face.  "I'll tell you, I was a little
+jealous," she added in a low voice and with a little laugh at herself
+as though she was a trifle ashamed of the confession.
+
+Jim was luckily spared the awkwardness of an answer by the appearance
+of Hanaud in the doorway.
+
+"I hate to interrupt, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with a smile; "but
+it is of a real importance that Mademoiselle should listen without
+anything to distract her."
+
+Jim followed Hanaud into the bedroom, and was startled.  The
+Commissary and his secretary and Monsieur Bex were in a group apart
+near to one of the windows.  Betty Harlowe was stretched upon Mrs.
+Harlowe's bed; Francine Rollard stood against the wall, near to the
+door, clearly frightened out of her wits and glancing from side to
+side with the furtive restless eyes of the half-tamed.  But it was
+not this curious spectacle which so surprised Jim Frobisher, but
+something strange, something which almost shocked, in the aspect of
+Betty herself.  She was leaning up on an elbow with her eyes fixed
+upon the doorway and the queerest, most inscrutable fierce look in
+them that he had ever seen.  She was quite lost to her environment.
+The experiment from which Francine shrank had no meaning for her.
+She was possessed--the old phrase leapt into Jim's thoughts--though
+her face was as still as a mass, a mask of frozen passion.  It was
+only for a second, however, that the strange seizure lasted.  Betty's
+face relaxed; she dropped back upon the bed with her eyes upon Hanaud
+like one waiting for instructions.
+
+Hanaud, by pointing a finger, directed Jim to take his place amongst
+the group at the window.  He placed himself upon one side of the bed,
+and beckoned to Francine.  Very slowly she approached the end of the
+bed.  Hanaud directed her in the same silent way to come opposite to
+him on the other side of the bed.  For a little while Francine
+refused.  She stood stubbornly shaking her head at the very foot of
+the bed.  She was terrified of some trick, and when at last at a sign
+from Betty she took up the position assigned to her, she minced to it
+gingerly as though she feared the floor would open beneath her feet.
+Hanaud made her another sign and she looked at a scrap of paper on
+which Hanaud had written some words.  The paper and her orders had
+obviously been given to her whilst Jim was talking to Ann Upcott.
+Francine knew what she was to do, but her suspicious peasant nature
+utterly rebelled against it.  Hanaud beckoned to her with his eyes
+riveted upon her compelling her, and against her will she bent
+forwards over the bed and across Betty Harlowe's body.
+
+A nod from Hanaud now, and she spoke in a low, clear whisper:
+
+"That--will--do--now."
+
+And hardly had she spoken those few words which Ann Upcott said she
+had heard on the night of Mrs. Harlowe's death, but Hanaud himself
+must repeat them and also in a whisper.
+
+Having whispered, he cried aloud towards the doorway in his natural
+voice:
+
+"Did you hear, Mademoiselle?  Was that the whisper which reached your
+ears on the night when Madame died?"
+
+All those in the bedroom waited for the answer in suspense.  Francine
+Rollard, indeed, with her eyes fixed upon Hanaud in a very agony of
+doubt.  And the answer came.
+
+"Yes, but whoever whispered, whispered twice this afternoon.  On the
+night when I came down in the dark to the treasure room, the words
+were only whispered once."
+
+"It was the same voice which whispered them twice, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes ... I think so ... I noticed no difference ... Yes."
+
+And Hanaud flung out his arms with a comic gesture of despair, and
+addressed the room.
+
+"You understand now my little experiment.  A voice that whispers!
+How shall one tell it from another voice that whispers!  There is no
+intonation, no depth, no lightness.  There is not even sex in a voice
+which whispers.  We have no clue, no, not the slightest to the
+identity of the person who whispered, 'That will do now,' on the
+night when Madame Harlowe died."  He waved his hand towards Monsieur
+Bex.  "I will be glad if you will open now these cupboards, and
+Mademoiselle Harlowe will tell us, to the best of her knowledge,
+whether anything has been taken or anything disturbed."
+
+Hanaud returned to the treasure room, leaving Monsieur Bex and Betty
+at their work, with the Commissary and his secretary to supervise
+them.  Jim Frobisher followed him.  He was very far from believing
+that Hanaud had truthfully explained the intention of his experiment.
+The impossibility of identifying a voice which whispers!  Here was
+something with which Hanaud must have been familiar from a hundred
+cases!  No, that interpretation would certainly not work.  There was
+quite another true reason for this melodramatic little scene which he
+had staged.  He was following Hanaud in the hope of finding out that
+reason, when he heard him speaking in a low voice, and he stopped
+inside the dressing-room close to the communicating door where he
+could hear every word and yet not be seen himself.
+
+"Mademoiselle," Hanaud was saying to Ann Upcott, "there is something
+about this clock here which troubles you."
+
+"Yes--of course it's nonsense....  I must be wrong....  For here is
+the cabinet and on it stands the clock."
+
+Jim could gather from the two voices that they were both standing
+together close to the marquetry cabinet.
+
+"Yes, yes," Hanaud urged.  "Still you are troubled."
+
+There was a moment's silence.  Jim could imagine the girl looking
+from the clock to the door by which she had stood, and back again
+from the door to the clock.  Surely that scene in the bedroom had
+been staged to extort some admission from Ann Upcott of the falsity
+of her story.  Was he now, since the experiment had failed, resorting
+to another trick, setting a fresh trap?
+
+"Well?" he asked insistently.  "Why are you troubled?"
+
+"It seems to me," Ann replied in a voice of doubt, "that the clock is
+lower now than it was.  Of course it can't be ... and I had only one
+swift glimpse of it....  Yet my recollection is so vivid--the room
+standing out revealed in the moment of bright light, and then
+vanishing into darkness again....  Yes, the clock seemed to me to be
+placed higher..." and suddenly she stopped as if a warning hand had
+been laid upon her arm.  Would she resume?  Jim was still wondering
+when silently, like a swift animal, Hanaud was in the doorway and
+confronting him.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with an odd note of relief in his
+voice, "we shall have to enlist you in the Sûrété very soon.  That I
+can see.  Come in!"
+
+He took Jim by the arm and led him into the room.
+
+"As for that matter of the clock, Mademoiselle, the light goes up and
+goes out--it would have been a marvel if you had within that flash of
+vision seen every detail precisely true.  No, there is nothing
+there!"  He flung himself into a chair and sat for a little while
+silent in an attitude of dejection.
+
+"You said this morning to me, Monsieur, that I had nothing to go
+upon, that I was guessing here, and guessing there, stirring up old
+troubles which had better be left quietly in their graves, and at the
+end discovering nothing.  Upon my word, I believe you are right!  My
+little experiment!  Was there ever a failure more abject?"
+
+Hanaud sat up alertly.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+Jim Frobisher had had a brain wave.  The utter disappointment upon
+Hanaud's face and in his attitude had enlightened him.  Yes, his
+experiment had failed.  For it was aimed at Francine Rollard.  He had
+summoned her without warning, he had bidden her upon the instant to
+act a scene, nay, to take the chief part in it, in the hope that it
+would work upon her and break her down to a confession of guilt.  He
+suspected Ann.  Well, then, Ann must have had an accomplice.  To
+discover the accomplice--there was the object of the experiment.  And
+it had failed abjectedly, as Hanaud himself confessed.  Francine had
+shrunk from the ordeal, no doubt, but the reason of the shrinking was
+manifest--fear of the police, suspicion of a trap, the furtive
+helplessness of the ignorant.  She had not delivered herself into
+Hanaud's toils.  But not a word of this conjecture did Jim reveal to
+Hanaud.  To his question what was the matter, he answered simply:
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Hanaud beat with the palms of his hands upon the arms of his chair.
+
+"Nothing, eh? nothing!  That's the only answer in this case.  To
+every question!  To every search!  Nothing, nothing, nothing;" and as
+he ended in a sinking voice, a startled cry rang out in the bedroom.
+
+"Betty!" Ann exclaimed.
+
+Hanaud threw off his dejection like an overcoat.  Jim fancied that he
+was out of his chair and across the dressing-room before the sound of
+the cry had ceased.  Certainly Betty could not have moved.  She was
+standing in front of the dressing-table, looking down at a big
+jewel-case of dark blue morocco leather, and she was lifting up and
+down the open lid of it with an expression of utter incredulity.
+
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  "It is unlocked.  We have something, after all,
+Monsieur Frobisher.  Here is a jewel-case unlocked, and jewel-cases
+do not unlock themselves.  It was here?"
+
+He looked towards the cupboard in the wall, of which the door stood
+open.
+
+"Yes," said Betty.  "I opened the door, and took the case out by the
+side handles.  The lid came open when I touched it."
+
+"Will you look through it, please, and see whether anything is
+missing?"
+
+While Betty began to examine the contents of the jewel-case, Hanaud
+went to Francine, who stood apart.  He took her by the arm and led
+her to the door.
+
+"I am sorry if I frightened you, Francine," he said.  "But, after
+all, we are not such alarming people, the Police, eh?  No, so long as
+good little maids hold their good little tongues, we can be very good
+friends.  Of course, if there is chatter, little Francine, and
+gossip, little Francine, and that good-looking baker's boy is
+to-morrow spreading over Dijon the story of Hanaud's little
+experiment, Hanaud will know where to look for the chatterers."
+
+"Monsieur, I shall not say one word," cried Francine.
+
+"And how wise that will be, little Francine!" Hanaud rejoined in a
+horribly smooth and silky voice.  "For Hanaud can be the wickedest of
+wicked Uncles to naughty little chatterers.  Ohhoho, yes!  He seizes
+them tight--so--and it will be ever so long before he says to them
+'That--will--do--now!'"
+
+He rounded off his threats with a quite friendly laugh and gently
+pushed Francine Rollard from the room.  Then he returned to Betty,
+who had lifted the tray out of the box and was opening some smaller
+cases which had been lying at the bottom.  The light danced upon
+pendant and bracelet, buckle and ring, but Betty still searched.
+
+"You miss something, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It was, after all, certain that you would," Hanaud continued.  "If
+murders are committed, there will be some reason.  I will even
+venture to guess that the jewel which you miss is of great value."
+
+"It is," Betty admitted.  "But I expect it has only been mislaid.  No
+doubt we shall find it somewhere, tucked away in a drawer."  She
+spoke with very great eagerness, and a note of supplication that the
+matter should rest there.  "In any case, what has disappeared is
+mine, isn't it?  And I am not going to imitate Monsieur Boris.  I
+make no complaint."
+
+Hanaud shook his head.
+
+"You are very kind, Mademoiselle.  But we cannot, alas! say here
+'That will do now.'"  It was strange to Jim to notice how he kept
+harping upon the words of that whisper.  "We are not dealing with a
+case of theft, but with a case of murder.  We must go on.  What is it
+that you miss?"
+
+"A pearl necklace," Betty answered reluctantly.
+
+"A big one?"
+
+It was noticeable that as Betty's reluctance increased Hanaud became
+more peremptory and abrupt.
+
+"Not so very."
+
+"Describe it to me, Mademoiselle!"
+
+Betty hesitated.  She stood with a troubled face looking out upon the
+garden.  Then with a shrug of resignation she obeyed.
+
+"There were thirty-five pearls--not so very large, but they were
+perfectly matched and of a beautiful pink.  My uncle took a great
+deal of trouble and some years to collect them.  Madame told me
+herself that they actually cost him nearly a hundred thousand pounds.
+They would be worth even more now."
+
+"A fortune, then," cried Hanaud.
+
+Not a person in that room had any belief that the necklace would be
+found, laid aside somewhere by chance.  Here was Hanaud's case
+building itself up steadily.  Another storey was added to it this
+afternoon.  This or that experiment might fail.  What did that
+matter?  A motive for the murder came to light now.  Jim had an
+intuition that nothing now could prevent a definite result; that the
+truth, like a beam of light that travels for a million of years,
+would in the end strike upon a dark spot, and that some one would
+stand helpless and dazzled in a glare--the criminal.
+
+"Who knew of this necklace of yours, Mademoiselle, beside yourself?"
+Hanaud asked.
+
+"Every one in the house, Monsieur.  Madame wore it nearly always."
+
+"She wore it, then, on the day of her death?"
+
+"Yes, I----" Betty began, and she turned towards Ann for
+confirmation, and then swiftly turned away again.  "I think so."
+
+"I am sure of it," said Ann steadily, though her face had grown
+rather white and her eyes anxious.
+
+"How long has Francine Rollard been with you?" Hanaud asked of Betty.
+
+"Three years.  No--a little more.  She is the only maid I have ever
+had," Betty answered with a laugh.
+
+"I see," Hanaud said thoughtfully; and what he saw, it seemed to Jim
+Frobisher that every one else in that room saw too.  For no one
+looked at Ann Upcott.  Old servants do not steal valuable necklaces:
+Ann Upcott and Jeanne Baudin, the nurse, were the only new-comers to
+the Maison Crenelle these many years; and Jeanne Baudin had the best
+of characters.  Thus the argument seemed to run though no one
+expressed it in words.
+
+Hanaud turned his attention to the lock of the cupboard, and shook
+his head over it.  Then he crossed to the dressing-table and the
+morocco case.
+
+"Aha!" he said with a lively interest.  "This is a different affair;"
+and he bent down closely over it.
+
+The case was not locked with a key at all.  There were three small
+gilt knobs in the front of the case, and the lock was set by the
+number of revolutions given to each knob.  These, of course, could be
+varied with each knob, and all must be known before the case could be
+opened--Mrs. Harlowe's jewels had been guarded by a formula.
+
+"There has been no violence used here," said Hanaud, standing up
+again.
+
+"Of course my aunt may have forgotten to lock the case," said Betty.
+
+"Of course that's possible," Hanaud agreed.
+
+"And of course this room was open to any one between the time of my
+aunt's funeral and Sunday morning, when the doors were sealed."
+
+"A week, in fact--with Boris Waberski in the house," said Hanaud.
+
+"Yes ... yes," said Betty.  "Only ... but I expect it is just mislaid
+and we shall find it.  You see Monsieur Boris expected to get some
+money from my lawyers in London.  No doubt he meant to make a bargain
+with me.  It doesn't look as if he had stolen it.  He wouldn't want a
+thousand pounds if he had."
+
+Jim had left Boris out of his speculations.  He had recollected him
+with a thrill of hope that he would be discovered to be the thief
+when Hanaud mentioned his name.  But the hope died away again before
+the reluctant and deadly reasoning of Betty Harlowe.  On the other
+hand, if Boris and Ann were really accomplices in the murder, because
+he wanted his legacy, the necklace might well have been Ann's share.
+More and more, whichever way one looked at it, the facts pointed
+damningly towards Ann.
+
+"Well, we will see if it has been mislaid," said Hanaud.  "But
+meanwhile, Mademoiselle, it would be well for you to lock that case
+up and to take it some time this afternoon to your bankers."
+
+Betty shut down the lid and spun the knobs one after the other.
+Three times a swift succession of sharp little clicks was heard in
+the room.
+
+"You have not used, I hope, the combination which Madame Harlowe
+used," said Hanaud.
+
+"I never knew the combination she used," said Betty.  She lifted the
+jewel-case back into its cupboard; and the search of the drawers and
+the cupboards began.  But it was as barren of result as had been the
+search of the treasure-room for the arrow.
+
+"We can do no more," said Hanaud.
+
+"Yes.  One thing more."
+
+The correction came quietly from Ann Upcott.  She was standing by
+herself, very pale and defiant.  She knew now that she was suspected.
+The very care with which every one had avoided even looking at her
+had left her in no doubt.
+
+Hanaud looked about the room.
+
+"What more can we do?" he asked.
+
+"You can search my rooms."
+
+"No!" cried Betty violently.  "I won't have it!"
+
+"If you please," said Ann.  "It is only fair to me."
+
+Monsieur Bex nodded violently.
+
+"Mademoiselle could not be more correct," said he.
+
+Ann addressed herself to Hanaud.
+
+"I shall not go with you.  There is nothing locked in my room except
+a small leather dispatch-case.  You will find the key to that in the
+left-hand drawer of my dressing-table.  I will wait for you in the
+library."
+
+Hanaud bowed, and before he could move from his position Betty did a
+thing for which Jim could have hugged her there and then before them
+all.  She went straight to Ann and set her arm about her waist.
+
+"I'll wait with you, Ann," she said.  "Of course it's ridiculous,"
+and she led Ann out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN: _The Finding of the Arrow_
+
+Ann's rooms were upon the second floor with the windows upon the
+garden, a bedroom and a sitting-room communicating directly with one
+another.  They were low in the roof, but spacious, and Hanaud, as he
+looked around the bedroom, said in a tone of doubt:
+
+"Yes ... after all, if one were frightened suddenly out of one's
+wits, one might stumble about this room in the dark and lose one's
+way to the light switch.  There isn't one over the bed."  Then he
+shrugged his shoulders.  "But, to be sure, one would be careful that
+one's details could be verified.  So----" and the doubt passed out of
+his voice.
+
+The words were all Greek to the Commissary of Police and his
+secretary and Monsieur Bex.  Maurice Thevenet, indeed, looked sharply
+at Hanaud, as if he was on the point of asking one of those questions
+which he had been invited to ask.  But Girardot, the Commissary who
+was panting heavily with his ascent of two flights of stairs, spoke
+first.
+
+"We shall find nothing to interest us here," he said.  "That pretty
+girl would never have asked us to pry about amongst her dainty
+belongings if there had been anything to discover."
+
+"One never knows," replied Hanaud.  "Let us see!"
+
+Jim walked away into the sitting-room.  He had no wish to follow step
+by step Hanaud and the Commissary in their search; and he had noticed
+on the table in the middle of the room a blotting-pad and some
+notepaper and the materials for writing.  He wanted to get all this
+whirl of conjecture and fact and lies, in which during the last two
+days he had lived, sorted and separated and set in order in his mind;
+and he knew no better way of doing so than by putting it all down
+shortly in the "for" and "against" style of Robinson Crusoe on his
+desert island.  He would have a quiet hour or so whilst Hanaud
+indefatigably searched.  He took a sheet of paper, selected a pen at
+random from the tray and began.  It cost Ann Upcott, however, a good
+many sheets of notepaper, and more than once the nib dropped out of
+his pen-holder and was forced back into it before he had finished.
+But he had his problem reduced at last to these terms:
+
+  For                                  Against
+
+  (1) Although suspicion that          But in the absence of any
+  murder had been committed            trace of poison in the dead
+  arose in the first instance only     woman's body, it is difficult to
+  from the return to its shelf of      see how the criminal can be
+  the "Treatise on Sporanthus          brought to justice, except by
+  Hispidus," subsequent developments,
+  e.g., the disappearance of           (a) A confession.
+  the Poison Arrow, the introduction
+  into the case of the ill-famed       (b) The commission of another
+  Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott's story      crime of a similar kind.
+  of her visit to the Treasure         Hanaud's theory--once a
+  Room, and now the mystery of         poisoner always a poisoner.
+  Mrs. Harlowe's pearl necklace,
+  make out a prima facie case for
+  inquiry.
+
+  (2) If murder was committed,         Ann Upcott's story may be
+  it is probable that it was           partly or wholly false.  She
+  committed at half-past ten at night  knew that Mrs. Harlowe's
+  when Ann Upcott in the Treasure      bedroom was to be opened and
+  Room heard the sound of a            examined.  If she also knew that
+  struggle and the whisper, "That      the pearl necklace had
+  will do now."                        disappeared, she must have realised
+                                       that it would be advisable for
+                                       her to tell some story before its
+                                       disappearance was discovered,
+                                       which would divert suspicion
+                                       from her.
+
+  (3) It is clear that whoever         It is possible that the
+  committed the murder, if murder      disappearance of the necklace is in
+  was committed, Betty Harlowe         no way connected with the
+  had nothing to do with it.  She      murder, if murder there was.
+  had an ample allowance.  She
+  was at M. Pouillac's Ball on
+  the night.  Moreover, once
+  Mrs. Harlowe was dead, the necklace
+  became Betty Harlowe's
+  property.  Had she committed the
+  murder, the necklace would not
+  have disappeared.
+
+  (4) Who then are possibly
+  guilty?
+
+  (i) The servants.                    (i) All of them have many
+                                       years of service to their credit.
+                                       It is not possible that any of
+                                       them would have understood
+                                       enough of the "Treatise on
+                                       Sporanthus Hispidus" to make
+                                       use of it.  If any of them were
+                                       concerned it can only be as an
+                                       accessory or assistant working
+                                       under the direction of another.
+
+  (ii) Jeanne Baudin the nurse.        No one suspects her.  Her
+                                       record is good.
+  More attention might be given
+  to her.  It is too easily accepted
+  that she has nothing to do
+  with it.
+
+  (iii) Francine Rollard.  She         She was frightened of the
+  was certainly frightened this        police as a class, rather than of
+  afternoon.  The necklace would       being accused of a crime.  She
+  be a temptation.                     acted her part in the reconstruction
+                                       scene without breaking
+  Was it she who bent over Ann         down.  If she were concerned, it
+  Upcott in the darkness?              could only be for the reason
+                                       given above, as an assistant.
+
+  (iv) Ann Upcott.                     Her introductions may be
+                                       explicable on favourable grounds.
+  Her introduction into the            Until we know more of her
+  Maison Crenelle took place           history it is impossible to judge.
+  through Waberski and under
+  dubious circumstances.  She is
+  poor, a paid companion, and the
+  necklace is worth a considerable
+  fortune.
+
+  She was in the house on the          Her account of the night of
+  night of Mrs. Harlowe's death.       the 27th April may be true from
+  She told Gaston he could turn        beginning to end.
+  out the lights and go to bed
+  early that evening.  She could
+  easily have admitted Waberski
+  and received the necklace as the
+  price of her complicity.
+
+  The story she told us in the         In that case the theory of a
+  garden may have been the true        murder is enormously strengthened.
+  story of what occurred adapted.      But who whispered, "That
+  It may have been she who             will do now"?  And who was
+  whispered "That will do now."        bending over Ann Upcott when
+  She may have whispered it to         she waked up?
+  Waberski.
+
+  Her connection with Waberski
+  was sufficiently close to make
+  him count upon Ann's support
+  in his charge against Betty.
+
+  (v) Waberski.
+
+  He is a scoundrel, a would-be
+  blackmailer.
+
+  He was in straits for money
+  and he expected a thumping
+  legacy from Mrs. Harlowe.
+
+  He may have brought Ann
+  Upcott into the house with the
+  thought of murder in his mind.
+
+  Having failed to obtain any
+  profit from his crime, he accuses
+  Betty of the same crime as a
+  blackmailing proposition.
+
+  As soon as he knew that              But he would have collapsed
+  Mrs. Harlowe had been exhumed and    equally if he had believed that
+  an autopsy made he collapsed.        no murder had been committed
+  He knew, if he had used himself      at all.
+  the poison arrow, that no trace
+  of poison would be found.
+
+  He knew of Jean Cladel, and
+  according to his own story was
+  in the Rue Gambetta close to
+  Jean Cladel's shop.  It is possible
+  that he himself had been visiting
+  Cladel to pay for the solution of
+  Strophanthus.
+
+
+If murder was committed the two people most obviously suspect are Ann
+Upcott and Waberski working in collusion.
+
+To this conclusion Jim Frobisher was reluctantly brought, but even
+whilst writing it down there were certain questions racing through
+his mind to which he could find no answer.  He was well aware that he
+was an utter novice in such matters as the investigation of crimes;
+and he recognised that were the answers to these questions known to
+him, some other direction might be given to his thoughts.
+
+Accordingly he wrote those troublesome questions beneath his
+memorandum--thus:
+
+But
+
+(1) Why does Hanaud attach no importance to the return of the
+"Treatise on Sporanthus Hispidus" to its place in the library?
+
+(2) What was it which so startled him upon the top of the Terrace
+Tower?
+
+(3) What was it that he had in his mind to say to me at the Café in
+the Place D'Armes and in the end did not say?
+
+(4) Why did Hanaud search every corner of the treasure room for the
+missing poison arrow--except the interior of the Sedan chair?
+
+The noise of a door gently closing aroused him from his speculations.
+He looked across the room.  Hanaud had just entered it from the
+bedroom, shutting the communicating door behind him.  He stood with
+his hand upon the door-knob gazing at Frobisher with a curious
+startled stare.  He moved swiftly to the end of the table at which
+Jim was sitting.
+
+"How you help me!" he said in a low voice and smiling.  "How you do
+help me!"
+
+Alert though Jim's ears were to a note of ridicule, he could discover
+not a hint of it.  Hanaud was speaking with the utmost sincerity, his
+eyes very bright and his heavy face quite changed by that uncannily
+sharp expression which Jim had learned to associate with some new
+find in the development of the case.
+
+"May I see what you have written?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"It could be of no value to you," Jim replied modestly, but Hanaud
+would have none of it.
+
+"It is always of value to know what the other man thinks, and even
+more what the other man sees.  What did I say to you in Paris?  The
+last thing one sees one's self is the thing exactly under one's
+nose"; and he began to laugh lightly but continuously and with a
+great deal of enjoyment, which Jim did not understand.  He gave in,
+however, over his memorandum and pushed it along to Hanaud, ashamed
+of it as something schoolboyish, but hopeful that some of these
+written questions might be answered.
+
+Hanaud sat down at the end of the table close to Jim and read the
+items and the questions very slowly with an occasional grunt, and a
+still more occasional "Aha!" but with a quite unchanging face.  Jim
+was in two minds whether to snatch it from his hands and tear it up
+or dwell upon its recollected phrases with a good deal of pride.  One
+thing was clear.  Hanaud took it seriously.
+
+He sat musing over it for a moment or two.
+
+"Yes, here are questions, and dilemmas."  He looked at Frobisher with
+friendliness.  "I shall make you an allegory.  I have a friend who is
+a matador in Spain.  He told me about the bull and how foolish those
+people are who think the bull not clever.  Yes, but do not jump and
+look the offence with your eyes and tell me how very vulgar I am and
+how execrable my taste.  All that I know very well.  But listen to my
+friend the matador!  He says all that the bull wants, to kill without
+fail all the bull-fighters in Spain, is a little experience.  And
+very little, he learns so quick.  Look!  Between the entrance of the
+bull into the arena and his death there are reckoned twenty minutes.
+And there should not be more, if the matador is wise.  The bull--he
+learns so quick the warfare of the ring.  Well, I am an old bull who
+has fought in the arena many times.  This is your first corrida.  But
+only ten minutes of the twenty have passed.  Already you have learned
+much.  Yes, here are some shrewd questions which I had not expected
+you to ask.  When the twenty are gone, you will answer them all for
+yourself.  Meanwhile"--he took up another pen and made a tiny
+addition to item one--"I carry this on one step farther.  See!"
+
+He replaced the memorandum under Jim's eyes.  Jim read:
+
+"--subsequent developments, e.g., the disappearance of the Poison
+Arrow, the introduction into the case of the ill-famed Jean Cladel,
+Ann Upcott's story of her visit to the treasure-room, and now the
+mystery of Mrs. Harlowe's pearl necklace, _and the finding of the
+arrow_, make out a prima facie case for inquiry."
+
+
+Jim sprang to his feet in excitement.
+
+"You have found the arrow, then?" he cried, glancing towards the door
+of Ann Upcott's bedroom.
+
+"Not I, my friend," replied Hanaud with a grin.
+
+"The Commissaire, then?"
+
+"No, not the Commissaire."
+
+"His secretary, then?"
+
+Jim sat down again in his chair.
+
+"I am sorry.  He wears cheap rings.  I don't like him."
+
+Hanaud broke into a laugh of delight.
+
+"Console yourself!  I, too, don't like that young gentleman of whom
+they are all so proud.  Maurice Thevenet has found nothing."
+
+Jim looked at Hanaud in a perplexity.
+
+"Here is a riddle," he said.
+
+Hanaud rubbed his hands together.
+
+"Prove to me that you have been ten minutes in the bull-ring," he
+said.
+
+"I think that I have only been five," Jim replied with a smile.  "Let
+me see!  The arrow had not been discovered when we first entered
+these rooms?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And it is discovered now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And it was not discovered by you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor the Commissaire?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor Maurice Thevenet?"
+
+"No."
+
+Jim stared and shook his head.
+
+"I have not been one minute in the bull-ring.  I don't understand."
+
+Hanaud's face was all alight with enjoyment.
+
+"Then I take your memorandum and I write again."
+
+He hid the paper from Jim Frobisher's eyes with the palm of his left
+hand, whilst he wrote with his right.  Then with a triumphant gesture
+he laid it again before Jim.  The last question of all had been
+answered in Hanaud's neat, small handwriting.
+
+Jim read:
+
+
+    (4) Why did Hanaud search every corner of the treasure-room for
+    the missing Poison Arrow--except the interior of the Sedan chair?
+
+
+Underneath the question Hanaud had written as if it was Jim Frobisher
+himself who answered the question:
+
+
+    "It was wrong of Hanaud to forget to examine the Sedan chair, but
+    fortunately no harm has resulted from that lamentable omission.
+    For Life, the incorrigible Dramatist, had arranged that the head
+    of the arrow-shaft should be the pen-holder with which I have
+    written this memorandum."
+
+
+Jim looked at the pen-holder and dropped it with a startled cry.
+
+There it was--the slender, pencil-like shaft expanding into a slight
+bulb where the fingers held it, and the nib inserted into the tiny
+cleft made for the stem of the iron dart!  Jim remembered that the
+nib had once or twice become loose and spluttered on the page, until
+he had jammed it in violently.
+
+Then came a terrible thought.  His jaw dropped; he stared at Hanaud
+in awe.
+
+"I wonder if I sucked the end of it, whilst I was thinking out my
+sentences," he stammered.
+
+"O Lord!" cried Hanaud, and he snatched up the pen-holder and rubbed
+it hard with his pocket handkerchief.  Then he spread out the
+handkerchief upon the table, and fetching a small magnifying glass
+from his pocket, examined it minutely.  He looked up with relief.
+
+"There is not the least little trace of that reddish-brown clay which
+made the poison paste.  The arrow was scraped clean before it was put
+on that tray of pens.  I am enchanted.  I cannot now afford to lose
+my junior colleague."
+
+Frobisher drew a long breath and lit a cigarette, and gave another
+proof that he was a very novice of a bull.
+
+"What a mad thing to put the head of that arrow-shaft, which a glance
+at the plates in the Treatise would enable a child to identify, into
+an open tray of pens without the slightest concealment!" he exclaimed.
+
+It looked as if Ann Upcott was wilfully pushing her neck into the
+wooden ring of the guillotine.
+
+Hanaud shook his head.
+
+"Not so mad, my friend!  The old rules are the best.  Hide a thing in
+some out-of-the-way corner, and it will surely be found.  Put it to
+lie carelessly under every one's nose and no one will see it at all.
+No, no!  This was cleverly done.  Who could have foreseen that
+instead of looking on at our search you were going to plump yourself
+down in a chair and write your memorandum so valuable on Mademoiselle
+Ann's notepaper?  And even then you did not notice your pen.  Why
+should you?"
+
+Jim, however, was not satisfied.
+
+"It is a fortnight since Mrs. Harlowe was murdered, if she was
+murdered," he cried.  "What I don't understand is why the arrow
+wasn't destroyed altogether!"
+
+"But until this morning there was never any question of the arrow,"
+Hanaud returned.  "It was a curiosity, an item in a collection--why
+should one trouble to destroy it?  But this morning the arrow becomes
+a dangerous thing to possess.  So it must be hidden away in a hurry.
+For there is not much time.  An hour whilst you and I admired Mont
+Blanc from the top of the Terrace Tower."
+
+"And while Betty was out of the house," Jim added quickly.
+
+"Yes--that is true," said Hanaud.  "I had not thought of it.  You can
+add that point, Monsieur Frobisher, to the reasons which put
+Mademoiselle Harlowe out of our considerations.  Yes."
+
+He sat lost in thought for a little while and speaking now and then a
+phrase rather to himself than to his companion: "To run up here--to
+cut the arrow down--to round off the end as well as one can in a
+hurry--to stain it with some varnish--to mix it with the other pens
+in the tray.  Not so bad!"  He nodded his head in appreciation of the
+trick.  "But nevertheless things begin to look black for that
+exquisite Mademoiselle Ann with her delicate colour and her pretty
+ways."
+
+A noise of the shifting of furniture in the bedroom next door
+attracted his attention.  He removed the nib from the arrow-head.
+
+"We will keep this little matter to ourselves just for the moment,"
+he said quickly, and he wrapped the improvised pen-holder in a sheet
+of the notepaper.  "Just you and I shall know of it.  No one else.
+This is my case, not Girardot's.  We will not inflict a great deal of
+pain and trouble until we are sure."
+
+"I agree," said Jim eagerly.  "That's right, I am sure."
+
+Hanaud tucked the arrow-head carefully away in his pocket.
+
+"This, too," he said, and he took up Jim Frobisher's memorandum.  "It
+is not a good thing to carry about, and perhaps lose.  I will put it
+away at the Prefecture with the other little things I have collected."
+
+He put the memorandum into his letter-case and got up from his chair.
+
+"The rest of the arrow-shaft will be somewhere in this room, no
+doubt, and quite easy to see.  But we shall not have time to look for
+it, and, after all, we have the important part of it."
+
+He turned towards the mantelshelf, where some cards of invitation
+were stuck in the frame of the mirror, just as the door was opened
+and the Commissary with his secretary came out from the bedroom.
+
+"The necklace is not in that room," said Monsieur Girardot in a voice
+of finality.
+
+"Nor is it here," Hanaud replied with an unblushing assurance.  "Let
+us go downstairs."
+
+Jim was utterly staggered.  This room had not been searched for the
+necklace at all.  First the Sedan chair, then this sitting-room was
+neglected.  Hanaud actually led the way out to the stairs without so
+much as a glance behind him.  No wonder that in Paris he had styled
+himself and his brethren the Servants of Chance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN: _Hanaud Laughs_
+
+At the bottom of the stairs Hanaud thanked the Commissary of Police
+for his assistance.
+
+"As for the necklace, we shall of course search the baggage of every
+one in the house," he said.  "But we shall find nothing.  Of that we
+may be sure.  For if the necklace has been stolen, too much time has
+passed since it was stolen for us to hope to find it here."
+
+He bowed Girardot with much respect out of the house, whilst Monsieur
+Bex took Jim Frobisher a little aside.
+
+"I have been thinking that Mademoiselle Ann should have some legal
+help," he said.  "Now both you and I are attached to the affairs of
+Mademoiselle Harlowe.  And--it is a little difficult to put it
+delicately--it may be that the interests of those two young ladies
+are not identical.  It would not therefore be at all correct for me,
+at all events, to offer her my services.  But I can recommend a very
+good lawyer in Dijon, a friend of mine.  You see, it may be
+important."
+
+Frobisher agreed.
+
+"It may be, indeed.  Will you give me your friend's address?" he said.
+
+Whilst he was writing the address down Hanaud startled him by
+breaking unexpectedly into a loud laugh.  The curious thing was that
+there was nothing whatever to account for it.  Hanaud was standing by
+himself between them and the front door.  In the courtyard outside
+there was no one within view.  Within the hall Jim and Monsieur Bex
+were talking very seriously in a low voice.  Hanaud was laughing at
+the empty air and his laughter betokened a very strong sense of
+relief.
+
+"That I should have lived all these years and never noticed that
+before," he cried aloud in a sort of amazement that there could be
+anything capable of notice which he, Hanaud, had not noticed.
+
+"What is it?" asked Jim.
+
+But Hanaud did not answer at all.  He dashed back through the hall
+past Frobisher and his companion, vanished into the treasure-room,
+closed the door behind him and actually locked it.
+
+Monsieur Bex jerked his chin high in the air.
+
+"He is an eccentric, that one.  He would not do for Dijon."
+
+Jim was for defending Hanaud.
+
+"He must act.  That is true," he replied.  "Whatever he does and
+however keenly he does it, he sees a row of footlights in front of
+him."
+
+"There are men like that," Monsieur Bex agreed.  Like all Frenchmen,
+he was easy in his mind if he could place a man in a category.
+
+"But he is doing something which is quite important," Jim continued,
+swelling a little with pride.  He felt that he had been quite fifteen
+minutes in the bull-ring.  "He is searching for something somewhere.
+I told him about it.  He had overlooked it altogether.  I reproached
+him this morning with his reluctance to take suggestions from people
+only too anxious to help him.  But I did him obviously some
+injustice.  He is quite willing."
+
+Monsieur Bex was impressed and a little envious.
+
+"I must think of some suggestions to make to Hanaud," he said.  "Yes,
+yes!  Was there not once a pearl necklace in England which was
+dropped in a match-box into the gutter when the pursuit became too
+hot?  I have read of it, I am sure.  I must tell Hanaud that he
+should spend a day or two picking up the match-boxes in the gutters.
+He may be very likely to come across that necklace of Madame
+Harlowe's.  Yes, certainly."
+
+Monsieur Bex was considerably elated by the bright idea which had
+come to him.  He felt that he was again upon a level with his English
+colleague.  He saw Hanaud pouncing his way along the streets of Dijon
+and explaining to all who questioned him: "This is the idea of
+Monsieur Bex, the notary.  You know, Monsieur Bex, of the Place
+Etienne Dolet."  Until somewhere near--but Monsieur Bex had not
+actually located the particular gutter in which Hanaud should
+discover the match-box with the priceless beads, when the library
+door opened and Betty came out into the hall.
+
+She looked at the two men in surprise.
+
+"And Monsieur Hanaud?" she asked.  "I didn't see him go."
+
+"He is in your treasure-room," said Jim.
+
+"Oh!"  Betty exclaimed in a voice which showed her interest.  "He has
+gone back there!"
+
+She walked quickly to the door and tried the handle.
+
+"Locked!" she cried with a little start of surprise.  She spoke
+without turning round.  "He has locked himself in!  Why?"
+
+"Because of the footlights," Monsieur Bex answered, and Betty turned
+about and stared at him.  "Yes, we came to that conclusion, Monsieur
+Frobisher and I.  Everything he does must ring a curtain down;" and
+once more the key turned in the lock.
+
+Betty swung round again as the sound reached her ears and came face
+to face with Hanaud.  Hanaud looked over her shoulder at Frobisher
+and shook his head ruefully.
+
+"You did not find it, then?" Jim asked.
+
+"No."
+
+Hanaud looked away from Jim to Betty Harlowe.
+
+"Monsieur Frobisher put an idea into my head, Mademoiselle.  I had
+not looked into that exquisite Sedan chair.  It might well be that
+the necklace had been hidden behind the cushions.  But it is not
+there."
+
+"And you locked the door, Monsieur," said Betty stiffly.  "The door
+of my room, I ask you to notice."
+
+Hanaud drew himself erect.
+
+"I did, Mademoiselle," he replied.  "And then?"
+
+Betty hesitated with some sharp rejoinder on the tip of her tongue.
+But she did not speak it.  She shrugged her shoulders and said coldly
+as she turned from him:
+
+"You are within your rights, no doubt, Monsieur."
+
+Hanaud smiled at her good-humouredly.  He had offended her again.
+She was showing him once more the petulant, mutinous child in her
+which he had seen the morning before.  But the smile did remain upon
+his face.  In the doorway of the library Ann Upcott was standing, her
+face still very pale, and fires smouldering in her eyes.
+
+"You searched my rooms, I hope, Monsieur," she said in a challenging
+voice.
+
+"Thoroughly, Mademoiselle."
+
+"And you did not find the necklace?"
+
+"No!" and he walked straight across the hall to her with a look
+suddenly grown stern.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I should like you to answer me a question.  But you
+need not.  I wish you to understand that.  You have a right to
+reserve your answers for the Office of the Examining Magistrate and
+then give them only in the presence of and with the consent of your
+legal adviser.  Monsieur Bex will assure you that is so."
+
+The girl's defiance weakened.
+
+"What do you wish to ask me?" she asked.
+
+"Exactly how you came to the Maison Crenelle."
+
+The fire died out of her eyes; Ann's eyelids fluttered down.  She
+stretched out a hand against the jamb of the door to steady herself.
+Jim wondered whether she guessed that the head of Simon Harlowe's
+arrow was now hidden in Hanaud's pocket.
+
+"I was at Monte Carlo," she began and stopped.
+
+"And quite alone?" Hanaud continued relentlessly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And without money?"
+
+"With a little money," Ann corrected.
+
+"Which you lost," Hanaud rejoined.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And at Monte Carlo you made the acquaintance of Boris Waberski?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And so you came to the Maison Crenelle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is all very curious, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud gravely, and "If
+it were only curious!" Jim Frobisher wished with all his heart.  For
+Ann Upcott quailed before the detective's glance.  It seemed to him
+that with another question from him, an actual confession would
+falter and stumble from her lips.  A confession of complicity with
+Boris Waberski!  And then?  Jim caught a dreadful glimpse of the
+future which awaited her.  The guillotine?  Probably a fate much
+worse.  For that would be over soon and she at rest.  A few poignant
+weeks, an agony of waiting, now in an intoxication of hope, now in
+the lowest hell of terror; some dreadful minutes at the breaking of a
+dawn--and an end!  That would be better after all than the endless
+years of sordid heart-breaking labour, coarse food and clothes,
+amongst the criminals of a convict prison in France.
+
+Jim turned his eyes away from her with a shiver of discomfort and saw
+with a queer little shock that Betty was watching him with a singular
+intentness; as if what interested her was not so much Ann's peril as
+his feeling about it.
+
+Meanwhile Ann had made up her mind.
+
+"I shall tell you at once the little there is to tell," she declared.
+The words were brave enough, but the bravery ended with the words.
+She had provoked the short interrogatory with a clear challenge.  She
+ended it in a hardly audible whisper.  However, she managed to tell
+her story, leaning there against the post of the door.  Indeed her
+voice strengthened as she went on and once a smile of real amusement
+flickered about her lips and in her eyes and set the dimples playing
+in her cheeks.
+
+Up to eighteen months ago she had lived with her mother, a widow, in
+Dorsetshire, a few miles behind Weymouth.  The pair of them lived
+with difficulty.  For Mrs. Upcott found herself in as desperate a
+position as England provides for gentlewomen.  She was a small
+landowner taxed up to her ears, and then rated over the top of her
+head.  Ann for her part was thought in the neighbourhood to have
+promise as an artist.  On the death of her mother the estate was sold
+as a toy to a manufacturer, and Ann with a small purse and a
+sack-load of ambitions set out for London.
+
+"It took me a year to understand that I was and should remain an
+amateur.  I counted over my money.  I had three hundred pounds left.
+What was I going to do with it?  It wasn't enough to set me up in a
+shop.  On the other hand, I hated the idea of dependence.  So I made
+up my mind to have ten wild gorgeous days at Monte Carlo and make a
+fortune, or lose the lot."
+
+It was then that the smile set her eyes dancing.
+
+"I should do the same again," she cried quite unrepentantly.  "I had
+never been out of England in my life, but I knew a good deal of
+schoolgirl's French.  I bought a few frocks and hats and off I went.
+I had the most glorious time.  I was nineteen.  Everything from the
+sleeping-cars to the croupiers enchanted me.  I stayed at one of the
+smaller hotels up the hill.  I met one or two people whom I knew and
+they introduced me into the Sporting Club.  Oh, and lots and lots of
+people wanted to be kind to me!" she cried.
+
+"That is thoroughly intelligible," said Hanaud dryly.
+
+"Oh, but quite nice people too," Ann rejoined.  Her face was glowing
+with the recollections of that short joyous time.  She had forgotten,
+for the moment, altogether the predicament in which she stood, or she
+was acting with an artfulness which Hanaud could hardly have seen
+surpassed in all his experience of criminals.
+
+"There was a croupier, for instance, at the trente-et-quarante table
+in the big room of the Sporting Club.  I always tried to sit next to
+him.  For he saw that no one stole my money and that when I was
+winning I insured my stake and clawed a little off the heap from time
+to time.  I was there for five weeks and I had made four hundred
+pounds--and then came three dreadful nights and I lost everything
+except thirty pounds which I had stowed away in the hotel safe."  She
+nodded across the hall towards Jim.  "Monsieur Frobisher can tell you
+about the last night.  For he sat beside me and very prettily tried
+to make me a present of a thousand francs."
+
+Hanaud, however, was not to be diverted.
+
+"Afterwards he shall tell me," he said, and resumed his questions.
+"You had met Waberski before that night?"
+
+"Yes, a fortnight before.  But I can't remember who introduced me."
+
+"And Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+
+"Monsieur Boris introduced me a day or two later to Betty at tea-time
+in the lounge of the Hôtel de Paris."
+
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  He glanced at Jim with an almost imperceptible
+shrug of the shoulders.  It was, indeed, becoming more and more
+obvious that Waberski had brought Ann Upcott into that household
+deliberately, as part of a plan carefully conceived and in due time
+to be fulfilled.
+
+"When did Waberski first suggest that you should join Mademoiselle
+Harlowe?" he asked.
+
+"That last night," Ann replied.  "He had been standing opposite to me
+on the other side of the trente-et-quarante table.  He saw that I had
+been losing."
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his head.  "He thought that the opportune
+moment had come."
+
+He extended his arms and let his hands fall against his thighs.  He
+was like a doctor presented with a hopeless case.  He turned half
+aside from Ann with his shoulders bent and his troubled eyes fixed
+upon the marble squares of the floor.  Jim could not but believe that
+he was at this moment debating whether he should take the girl into
+custody.  But Betty intervened.
+
+"You must not be misled, Monsieur Hanaud," she said quickly, "It is
+true no doubt that Monsieur Boris mentioned the subject to Ann for
+the first time that night.  But I had already told both my aunt and
+Monsieur Boris that I should like a friend of my own age to live with
+me and I had mentioned Ann."
+
+Hanaud looked up at her doubtfully.
+
+"On so short an acquaintance, Mademoiselle?"
+
+Betty, however, stuck to her guns.
+
+"Yes.  I liked her very much from the beginning.  She was alone.  It
+was quite clear that she was of our own world.  There was every good
+reason why I should wish for her.  And the four months she has been
+with me have proved to me that I was right."
+
+She crossed over to Ann with a defiant little nod at Hanaud, who
+responded with a cordial grin and dropped into English.
+
+"So I can push that into my pipe and puff it, as my dear Ricardo
+would say.  That is what you mean?  Well, against loyalty, the whole
+world is powerless."  As he made Betty a friendly bow.  He could
+hardly have told Betty in plainer phrase that her intervention had
+averted Ann's arrest; or Ann herself that he believed her guilty.
+
+Every one in the hall understood him in that sense.  They stood
+foolishly looking here and looking there and not knowing where to
+look; and in the midst of their discomfort occurred an incongruous
+little incident which added a touch of the bizarre.  Up the two steps
+to the open door came a girl carrying a big oblong cardboard
+milliner's box.  Her finger was on the bell, when Hanaud stepped
+forward.
+
+"There is no need to ring," he said.  "What have you there?"
+
+The girl stepped into the hall and looked at Ann.
+
+"It is Mademoiselle's dress for the Ball to-morrow night.
+Mademoiselle was to call for a final fitting but did not come.  But
+Madame Grolin thinks that it will be all right."  She laid the box
+upon a chest at the side of the hall and went out again.
+
+"I had forgotten all about it," said Ann.  "It was ordered just
+before Madame died and tried on once."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"For Madame Le Vay's masked ball, no doubt," he said.  "I noticed the
+invitation card on the chimney-piece of Mademoiselle's sitting-room.
+And in what character did Mademoiselle propose to go?"
+
+Ann startled them all.  She flung up her head, whilst the blood
+rushed into her cheeks and her eyes shone.
+
+"Not Madame de Brinvilliers, Monsieur, at all events," she cried.
+
+Even Hanaud was brought up with a start.
+
+"I did not suggest it," he replied coldly.  "But let me see!" and in
+a moment whilst his face was flushed with anger his hands were busily
+untying the tapes of the box.
+
+Betty stepped forward.
+
+"We talked over that little dress, together, Monsieur, more than a
+month ago.  It is meant to represent a water-lily."
+
+"What could be more charming?" Hanaud asked, but his fingers did not
+pause in their work.
+
+"Could suspicion betray itself more brutally?" Jim Frobisher
+wondered.  What could he expect to find in that box?  Did he imagine
+that this Madame Grolin, the milliner, was an accomplice of
+Waberski's too?  The episode was ludicrous with a touch of the
+horrible.  Hanaud lifted off the lid and turned back the
+tissue-paper.  Underneath was seen a short _crêpe de Chine_ frock of
+a tender vivid green with a girdle of gold and a great gold rosette
+at the side.  The skirt was stiffened to stand out at the hips, and
+it was bordered with a row of white satin rosettes with golden
+hearts.  To complete the dress there were a pair of white silk
+stockings with fine gold clocks and white satin shoes with single
+straps across the insteps and little tassels of brilliants where the
+straps buttoned, and four gold stripes at the back round the heels.
+
+Hanaud felt under the frock and around the sides, replaced the lid,
+and stood up again.  He never looked at Ann Upcott.  He went straight
+across to Betty Harlowe.
+
+"I regret infinitely, Mademoiselle, that I have put you to so much
+trouble and occupied so many hours of your day," he said with a good
+deal of feeling.  He made her a courteous bow, took up his hat and
+stick from the table on which he had laid it, and made straight for
+the hall door.  His business in the Maison Grenelle was to all
+appearances finished.
+
+But Monsieur Bex was not content.  He had been nursing his suggestion
+for nearly half an hour.  Like a poem it demanded utterance.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud!" he called; "Monsieur Hanaud!  I have to tell you
+about a box of matches."
+
+"Aha!" Hanaud answered, stopping alertly.  "A box of matches!  I will
+walk with you towards your office, and you shall tell me as you go."
+
+Monsieur Bex secured his hat and his stick in a great hurry.  But he
+had time to throw a glance of pride towards his English colleague.
+"Your suggestion about the treasure room was of no value, my friend.
+Let us see what I can do!"  The pride and the airy wave of the hand
+spoke the unspoken words.  Monsieur Bex was at Hanaud's side in a
+moment, and talked volubly as they passed out of the gates into the
+street of Charles-Robert.
+
+Betty turned to Jim Frobisher.
+
+"To-morrow, now that I am once allowed to use my motor-car, I shall
+take you for a drive and show you something of our neighbourhood.
+This afternoon--you will understand, I know--I belong to Ann."
+
+She took Ann Upcott by the arm and the two girls went out into the
+garden.  Jim was left alone in the hall--as at that moment he wanted
+to be.  It was very still here now and very silent.  The piping of
+birds, the drone of bees outside the open doors were rather an
+accompaniment than an interruption of the silence.  Jim placed
+himself where Hanaud had stood at that moment when he had laughed so
+strangely--half-way between the foot of the stairs where Monsieur Bex
+and he himself had been standing and the open porch.  But Jim could
+detect nothing whatever to provoke any laughter, any excitement.
+"That I should have lived all these years and never noticed it
+before," he had exclaimed.  Notice what?  There was nothing to
+notice.  A table, a chair or two, a barometer hanging upon the wall
+on one side and a mirror hanging upon the wall on the other--No,
+there was nothing.  Of course, Jim reflected, there was a strain of
+the mountebank in Hanaud.  The whole of that little scene might have
+been invented by him maliciously, just to annoy and worry and cause
+discomfort to Monsieur Bex and himself.  Hanaud was very capable of a
+trick like that!  A strain of the mountebank indeed!  He had a great
+deal of the mountebank.  More than half of him was probably
+mountebank.  Possibly quite two-thirds!
+
+"Oh, damn the fellow!  What in the world did he notice?" cried Jim.
+"What did he notice from the top of the Tower?  What did he notice in
+this hall?  Why must he be always noticing something?" and he jammed
+his hat on in a rage and stalked out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: _At Jean Cladel's_
+
+At nine o'clock that night Jim Frobisher walked past the cashier's
+desk and into the hall of the Grande Taverne.  High above his head
+the cinematograph machine whirred and clicked and a blade of silver
+light cut the darkness.  At the opposite end of the hall the square
+screen was flooded with radiance and the pictures melted upon it one
+into the other.
+
+For a little while Jim could see nothing but that screen.  Then the
+hall swam gradually within his vision.  He saw the heads of people
+like great bullets and a wider central corridor where waitresses with
+white aprons moved.  Jim walked up the corridor and turned off to the
+left between the tables.  When he reached the wall he went forward
+again towards the top of the hall.  On his left the hall fell back,
+and in the recess were two large cubicles in which billiard tables
+were placed.  Against the wall of the first of these a young man was
+leaning with his eyes fixed upon the screen.  Jim fancied that he
+recognised Maurice Thevenet, and nodded to him as he passed.  A
+little further on a big man with a soft felt hat was seated alone,
+with a Bock in front of him--Hanaud.  Jim slipped into a seat at his
+side.
+
+"You?" Hanaud exclaimed in surprise.
+
+"Why not?  You told me this is where you would be at this hour,"
+replied Jim, and some note of discouragement in his voice attracted
+Hanaud's attention.
+
+"I didn't think that those two young ladies would let you go," he
+said.
+
+"On the contrary," Jim replied with a short laugh.  "They didn't want
+me at all."
+
+He began to say something more, but thought better of it, and called
+to a waitress.
+
+"Two Bocks, if you please," he ordered, and he offered Hanaud a cigar.
+
+When the Bocks were brought, Hanaud said to him:
+
+"It will be well to pay at once, so that we can slip away when we
+want."
+
+"We have something to do to-night?" Jim asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He said no more until Jim had paid and the waitress had turned the
+two little saucers on which she had brought the Bocks upside down and
+had gone away.  Then he leaned towards Jim and lowered his voice.
+
+"I am glad that you came here.  For I have a hope that we shall get
+the truth to-night, and you ought to be present when we do get it."
+
+Jim lit his own cigar.
+
+"From whom do you hope to get it?"
+
+"Jean Cladel," Hanaud answered in a whisper.  "A little later when
+all the town is quiet we will pay a visit to the street of Gambetta."
+
+"You think he'll talk?"
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"There is no charge against Cladel in this affair.  To make a
+solution of that poison paste is not an offence.  And he has so much
+against him that he will want to be on our side if he can.  Yes, he
+will talk I have no doubt."
+
+There would be an end of the affair then, to-night.  Jim Frobisher
+was glad with an unutterable gladness.  Betty would be free to order
+her life as she liked, and where she liked, to give to her youth its
+due scope and range, to forget the terror and horror of these last
+weeks, as one forgets old things behind locked doors.
+
+"I hope, however," he said earnestly to Hanaud, "and I believe, that
+you will be found wrong, that if there was a murder Ann Upcott had
+nothing to do with it.  Yes, I believe that."  He repeated his
+assertion as much to convince himself as to persuade Hanaud.
+
+Hanaud touched his elbow.
+
+"Don't raise your voice too much, my friend," he said.  "I think
+there is some one against the wall who is honouring us with his
+attention."
+
+Jim shook his head.
+
+"It is only Maurice Thevenet," he said.
+
+"Oho?" answered Hanaud in a voice of relief.  "Is that all?  For a
+moment I was anxious.  It seemed that there was a sentinel standing
+guard over us."  He added in a whisper, "I, too, hope from the bottom
+of my heart that I may be proved wrong.  But what of that arrow head
+in the pen tray?  Eh?  Don't forget that!"  Then he fell into a muse.
+
+"What happened on that night in the Maison Crenelle?" he said.  "Why
+was that communicating door thrown open?  Who was to be stripped to
+the skin by that violent woman?  Who whispered 'That will do now'?
+Is Ann Upcott speaking the truth, and was there some terrible scene
+taking place before she entered so unexpectedly the treasure
+room--some terrible scene which ended in that dreadful whisper?  Or
+is Ann Upcott lying from beginning to end?  Ah, my friend, you wrote
+some questions down upon your memorandum this afternoon.  But these
+are the questions I want answered, and where shall I find the
+answers?"
+
+Jim had never seen Hanaud so moved.  His hands were clenched, and the
+veins prominent upon his forehead, and though he whispered his voice
+shook.
+
+"Jean Cladel may help," said Jim.
+
+"Yes, yes, he may tell us something."
+
+They sat through an episode of the film, and saw the lights go up and
+out again, and then Hanaud looked eagerly at his watch and put it
+back again into his pocket with a gesture of annoyance.
+
+"It is still too early?" Jim asked.
+
+"Yes.  Cladel has no servant and takes his meals abroad.  He has not
+yet returned home."
+
+A little before ten o'clock a man strolled in, and seating himself at
+a table behind Hanaud twice scraped a match upon a match-box without
+getting a light.  Hanaud, without moving, said quietly to Frobisher:
+
+"He is at home now.  In a minute I shall go.  Give me five minutes
+and follow."
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"Where shall we meet?"
+
+"Walk straight along the Rue de la Liberté, and I will see to that,"
+said Hanaud.
+
+He pulled his packet of cigarettes from his pocket, put one between
+his lips, and took his time in lighting it.  Then he got up, but to
+his annoyance Maurice Thevenet recognised him and came forward.
+
+"When Monsieur Frobisher wished me good-evening and joined you I
+thought it was you, Monsieur Hanaud.  But I had not the presumption
+to recall myself to your notice."
+
+"Presumption!  Monsieur, we are of the same service, only you have
+the advantage of youth," said Hanaud politely, as he turned.
+
+"But you are going, Monsieur Hanaud?" Thevenet asked in distress.  "I
+am desolated.  I have broken into a conversation like a clumsy
+fellow."
+
+"Not at all," Hanaud replied.  To Frobisher his patience was as
+remarkable as Maurice Thevenet's impudence.  "We were idly watching a
+film which I think is a little tedious."
+
+"Then, since you are not busy I beg for your indulgence.  One little
+moment that is all.  I should so dearly love to be able to say to my
+friends, 'I sat in the cinema with Monsieur Hanaud--yes, actually
+I'--and asked for his advice."
+
+Hanaud sat down again upon his chair.
+
+"And upon what subject can you, of whom Monsieur Girardot speaks so
+highly, want my advice?" Hanaud asked with a laugh.
+
+The eternal ambition of the provincial was tormenting the eager
+youth.  To get to Paris--all was in that!  Fortune, reputation, a
+life of colour.  A word from Monsieur Hanaud and a way would open.
+He would work night and day to justify that word.
+
+"Monsieur, all I can promise is that when the time comes I shall
+remember you.  But that promise I make now with my whole heart," said
+Hanaud warmly, and with a bow he moved away.
+
+Maurice Thevenet watched him go.
+
+"What a man!" Maurice Thevenet went on enthusiastically.  "I would
+not like to try to keep any secrets from him.  No, indeed!"  Jim had
+heard that sentiment before on other lips and with a greater
+sympathy.  "I did not understand at all what he had in his mind when
+he staged that little scene with Francine Rollard.  But something,
+Monsieur.  Oh, you may be sure.  Something wise.  And that search
+through the treasure room!  How quick and complete!  No doubt while
+we searched Mademoiselle Upcott's bedroom, he was just as quick and
+complete in going through her sitting-room.  But he found nothing.
+No, nothing."
+
+He waited for Jim to corroborate him, but Jim only said "Oho!"
+
+But Thevenet was not to be extinguished.
+
+"I shall tell you what struck me, Monsieur.  He was following out no
+suspicions; isn't that so?  He was detached.  He was gathering up
+every trifle, on the chance that each one might sometime fit in with
+another and at last a whole picture be composed.  An artist!  There
+was a letter, for instance, which Mademoiselle Harlowe handed to him,
+one of those deplorable letters which have disgraced us here--you
+remember that letter, Monsieur?"
+
+"Aha!" said Frobisher, quite in the style of Hanaud.  "But I see that
+this film is coming to its wedding bells.  So I shall wish you a good
+evening."
+
+Frobisher bowed and left Maurice Thevenet to dream of success in
+Paris.  He strolled between the groups of spectators to the entrance
+and thence into the street.  He walked to the arch of the Porte
+Guillaume and turned into the Rue de la Liberté.  The provincial
+towns go to bed early and the street so busy throughout the day was
+like the street of a deserted city.  A couple of hundred yards on, he
+was startled to find Hanaud, sprung from nowhere, walking at his side.
+
+"So my young friend, the secretary engaged you when I had gone?" he
+said.
+
+"Maurice Thevenet," said Jim, "may be as the Commissary says a young
+man of a surprising intelligence, but to tell you the truth, I find
+him a very intrusive fellow.  First of all he wanted to know if you
+had discovered anything in Ann Upcott's sitting-room, and then what
+Miss Harlowe's anonymous letter was about."
+
+Hanaud looked at Jim with interest.
+
+"Yes, he is anxious to learn, that young man, Girardot is right.  He
+will go far.  And how did you answer him?"
+
+"I said 'Oho'! first, and then I said 'Aha'! just like a troublesome
+friend of mine when I ask him a simple question which he does not
+mean to answer."
+
+Hanaud laughed heartily.
+
+"And you did very well," he said.  "Come, let us turn into this
+little street upon the right.  It will take us to our destination."
+
+"Wait!" whispered Jim eagerly.  "Don't cross the road for a moment.
+Listen!"
+
+Hanaud obeyed at once; and both men stood and listened in the empty
+street.
+
+"Not a sound," said Hanaud.
+
+"No!  That is what troubles me!" Jim whispered importantly.  "A
+minute ago there were footsteps behind us.  Now that we have stopped
+they have stopped too.  Let us go on quite straight for a moment or
+two."
+
+"But certainly my friend," said Hanaud.
+
+"And let us not talk either," Jim urged.
+
+"Not a single word," said Hanaud.
+
+They moved forward again and behind them once more footsteps rang
+upon the pavement.
+
+"What did I tell you?" asked Jim, taking Hanaud by the arm.
+
+"That we would neither of us speak," Hanaud replied.  "And lo! you
+have spoken!"
+
+"But why?  Why have I spoken?  Be serious, Monsieur," Jim shook his
+arm indignantly.  "We are being followed."
+
+Hanaud stopped dead and gazed in steady admiration at his junior
+colleague.
+
+"Oh!" he whispered.  "You have discovered that?  Yes, it is true.  We
+are being followed by one of my men who sees to it that we are not
+followed."
+
+Frobisher shook Hanaud's arm off indignantly.  He drew himself up
+stiffly.  Then he saw Hanaud's mouth twitching and he understood that
+he was looking "proper."
+
+"Oh, let us go and find Jean Cladel," he said with a laugh and he
+crossed the road.  They passed into a network of small, mean streets.
+There was not a soul abroad.  The houses were shrouded in darkness.
+The only sounds they heard were the clatter of their own footsteps on
+the pavement and the fainter noise of the man who followed them.
+Hanaud turned to the left into a short passage and stopped before a
+little house with a shuttered shop front.
+
+"This is the place," he said in a low voice and he pressed the button
+in the pillar of the door.  The bell rang with a shrill sharp whirr
+just the other side of the panels.
+
+"We may have to wait a moment if he has gone to bed," said Hanaud,
+"since he has no servant in the house."
+
+A minute or two passed.  The clocks struck the half hour.  Hanaud
+leaned his ear against the panels of the door.  He could not hear one
+sound within the house.  He rang again; and after a few seconds
+shutters were thrown back and a window opened on the floor above.
+From behind the window some one whispered:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The police," Hanaud answered, and at the window above there was
+silence.
+
+"No one is going to do you any harm," Hanaud continued, raising his
+voice impatiently.  "We want some information from you.  That's all."
+
+"Very well."  The whisper came from the same spot.  The man standing
+within the darkness of the room had not moved.  "Wait!  I will slip
+on some things and come down."
+
+The window and the shutter were closed again.  Then through the
+chinks a few beams of light strayed out Hanaud uttered a little grunt
+of satisfaction.
+
+"That animal is getting up at last.  He must have some strange
+clients amongst the good people of Dijon if he is so careful to
+answer them in a whisper."
+
+He turned about and took a step or two along the pavement and another
+step or two back like a man upon a quarter deck.  Jim Frobisher had
+never known him so restless and impatient during these two days.
+
+"I can't help it," he said in a low voice to Jim.  "I think that in
+five minutes we shall touch the truth of this affair.  We shall know
+who brought the arrow to him from the Maison Crenelle."
+
+"If any one brought the arrow to him at all," Jim Frobisher added.
+
+But Hanaud was not in the mood to consider ifs and possibilities.
+
+"Oh, that!" he said with a shrug of the shoulders.  Then he tapped
+his forehead.  "I am like Waberski.  I have it here that some one did
+bring the arrow to Jean Cladel."
+
+He started once more his quarter-deck pacing.  Only it was now a trot
+rather than a walk.  Jim was a little nettled by the indifference to
+his suggestion.  He was still convinced that Hanaud had taken the
+wrong starting point in all his inquiry.  He said tartly:
+
+"Well, if some one did bring the arrow here, it will be the same
+person who replaced the treatise on Sporanthus on its book shelf."
+
+Hanaud came to a stop in front of Jim Frobisher.  Then he burst into
+a low laugh.
+
+"I will bet you all the money in the world that that is not true, and
+then Madame Harlowe's pearl necklace on the top of it.  For after all
+it was not I who brought the arrow to Jean Cladel, whereas it was
+undoubtedly I who put back the treatise on the shelf."
+
+Jim took a step back.  He stared at Hanaud with his mouth open in a
+stupefaction.
+
+"You?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I," replied Hanaud, standing up on the tips of his toes.  "Alone I
+did it."
+
+Then his manner of burlesque dropped from him.  He looked up at the
+shuttered windows with a sudden anxiety.
+
+"That animal is taking longer than he need," he muttered.  "After
+all, it is not to a court ball of the Duke of Burgundy that we are
+inviting him."
+
+He rang the bell again with a greater urgency.  It returned its
+shrill reply as though it mocked him.
+
+"I do not like this," said Hanaud.
+
+He seized the door-handle and leaned his shoulder against the panel
+and drove his weight against it.  But the door was strong and did not
+give.  Hanaud put his fingers to his mouth and whistled softly.  From
+the direction whence they had come they heard the sound of a man
+running swiftly.  They saw him pass within the light of the one
+street lamp at the corner and out of it again; and then he stood at
+their side.  Jim recognised Nicolas Moreau, the little agent who had
+been sent this very morning by Hanaud to make sure that Jean Cladel
+existed.
+
+"Nicolas, I want you to wait here," said Hanaud.  "If the door is
+opened, whistle for us and keep it open."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Hanaud said in a low and troubled voice to Frobisher: "There is
+something here which alarms me."  He dived into a narrow alley at the
+side of the shop.
+
+"It was in this alley no doubt that Waberski meant us to believe that
+he hid on the morning of the 7th of May," Jim whispered as he hurried
+to keep with his companion.
+
+"No doubt."
+
+The alley led into a lane which ran parallel with the street of
+Gambetta.  Hanaud wheeled into it.  A wall five feet high, broken at
+intervals by rickety wooden doors, enclosed the yards at the backs of
+the houses.  Before the first of these breaks in the wall Hanaud
+stopped.  He raised himself upon the tips of his toes and peered over
+the wall, first downwards into the yard, and then upwards towards the
+back of the house.  There was no lamp in the lane, no light showing
+from any of the windows.  Though the night was clear of mist it was
+as dark as a cavern in this narrow lane behind the houses.  Jim
+Frobisher, though his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, knew that he
+could not have seen a man, even if he had moved, ten yards away.  Yet
+Hanaud still stood peering at the back of the house with the tips of
+his fingers on the top of the wall.  Finally he touched Jim on the
+sleeve.
+
+"I believe the back window on the first floor is open," he whispered,
+and his voice was more troubled than ever.  "We will go in and see."
+
+He touched the wooden door and it swung inwards with a whine of its
+hinges.
+
+"Open," said Hanaud.  "Make no noise."
+
+Silently they crossed the yard.  The ground floor of the house was
+low.  Jim looking upwards could see now that the window above their
+heads yawned wide open.
+
+"You are right," he breathed in Hanaud's ear, and with a touch Hanaud
+asked for silence.
+
+The room beyond the window was black as pitch.  The two men stood
+below and listened.  Not a word came from it.  Hanaud drew Jim into
+the wall of the house.  At the end of the wall a door gave admission
+into the house.  Hanaud tried the door, turning the handle first and
+then gently pressing with his shoulder upon the panel.
+
+"It's locked, but not bolted like the door in front," he whispered.
+"I can manage this."
+
+Jim Frobisher heard the tiniest possible rattle of a bunch of keys as
+Hanaud drew it from his pocket, and then not a noise of any kind
+whilst Hanaud stooped above the lock.  Yet within half a minute the
+door slowly opened.  It opened upon a passage as black as that room
+above their heads.  Hanaud stepped noiselessly into the passage.  Jim
+Frobisher followed him with a heart beating high in excitement.  What
+had happened in that lighted room upstairs and in the dark room
+behind it?  Why didn't Jean Cladel come down and open the door upon
+the street of Gambetta?  Why didn't they hear Nicolas Moreau's soft
+whistle or the sound of his voice?  Hanaud stepped back past Jim
+Frobisher and shut the door behind them and locked it again.
+
+"You haven't an electric torch with you, of course?" Hanaud whispered.
+
+"No," replied Jim.
+
+"Nor I.  And I don't want to strike a match.  There's something
+upstairs which frightens me."
+
+You could hardly hear the words.  They were spoken as though the mere
+vibration of the air they caused would carry a message to the rooms
+above.
+
+"We'll move very carefully.  Keep a hand upon my coat," and Hanaud
+went forward.  After he had gone a few paces he stopped.
+
+"There's a staircase here on my right.  It turns at once.  Mind not
+to knock your foot on the first step," he whispered over his
+shoulder; and a moment later, he reached down and, taking hold of
+Jim's right arm, laid his hand upon a balustrade.  Jim lifted his
+foot, felt for and found the first tread of the stairs, and mounted
+behind Hanaud.  They halted on a little landing just above the door
+by which they had entered the house.
+
+In front of them the darkness began to thin, to become opaque rather
+than a black, impenetrable hood drawn over their heads.  Jim
+understood that in front of him was an open door and that the faint
+glimmer came from that open window on their left hand beyond the door.
+
+Hanaud passed through the doorway into the room.  Jim followed and
+was already upon the threshold, when Hanaud stumbled and uttered a
+cry.  No doubt the cry was low, but coming so abruptly upon their
+long silence it startled Frobisher like the explosion of a pistol.
+It seemed that it must clash through Dijon like the striking of a
+clock.
+
+But nothing followed.  No one stirred, no one cried out a question.
+Silence descended upon the house again, impenetrable, like the
+darkness a hood upon the senses.  Jim was tempted to call out aloud
+himself, anything, however childish, so that he might hear a voice
+speaking words, if only his own voice.  The words came at last, from
+Hanaud and from the inner end of the room, but in an accent which Jim
+did not recognise.
+
+"Don't move! ... There is something....  I told you I was
+frightened....  Oh!" and his voice died away in a sigh.
+
+Jim could hear him moving very cautiously.  Then he almost screamed
+aloud.  For the shutters at the window slowly swung to and the room
+was once more shrouded in black.
+
+"Who's that?" Jim whispered violently, and Hanaud answered:
+
+"It's only me--Hanaud.  I don't want to show a light here yet with
+that window open.  God knows what dreadful thing has happened here.
+Come just inside the room and shut the door behind you."
+
+Jim obeyed, and having moved his position, could see a line of yellow
+light, straight and fine as if drawn by a pencil, at the other end of
+the room on the floor.  There was a door there, a door into the front
+room where they had seen the light go up from the street of Gambetta.
+
+Jim Frobisher had hardly realised that before the door was burst open
+with a crash.  In the doorway, outlined against the light beyond,
+appeared the bulky frame of Hanaud.
+
+"There is nothing here," he said, standing there blocking up the
+doorway with his hands in his pockets.  "The room is quite empty."
+
+That room, the front room--yes!  But between Hanaud's legs the light
+trickled out into the dark room behind, and here, on the floor
+illuminated by a little lane of light, Jim, with a shiver, saw a
+clenched hand and a forearm in a crumpled shirt-sleeve.
+
+"Turn round," he cried to Hanaud.  "Look!"
+
+Hanaud turned.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly.  "That is what I stumbled against."
+
+He found a switch in the wall close to the door and snapped it down.
+The dark room was flooded with light, and on the floor, in the midst
+of a scene of disorder, a table pushed back here, a chair overturned
+there, lay the body of a man.  He wore no coat.  He was in his
+waistcoat and his shirt sleeves, and he was crumpled up with a
+horrible suggestion of agony like a ball, his knees towards his chin,
+his head forward towards his knees.  One arm clutched the body close,
+the other, the one which Jim had seen, was flung out, his hand
+clenched in a spasm of intolerable pain.  And about the body there
+was such a pool of blood as Jim Frobisher thought no body could
+contain.
+
+Jim staggered back with his hands clasped over his eyes.  He felt
+physically sick.
+
+"Then he killed himself on our approach," he cried with a groan.
+
+"Who?" answered Hanaud steadily.
+
+"Jean Cladel.  The man who whispered to us from behind the window."
+
+Hanaud stunned him with a question.
+
+"What with?"
+
+Jim drew his hands slowly from before his face and forced his eyes to
+their service.  There was no gleam of a knife, or a pistol, anywhere
+against the dark background of the carpet.
+
+"You might think that he was a Japanese who had committed
+_hari-kari_," said Hanaud.  "But if he had, the knife would be at his
+side.  And there is no knife."
+
+He stooped over the body and felt it, and drew his hand back.
+
+"It is still warm," he said, and then a gasp, "Look!"  He pointed.
+The man was lying on his side in this dreadful pose of contracted
+sinews and unendurable pain.  And across the sleeve of his shirt
+there was a broad red mark.
+
+"That's where the knife was wiped clean," said Hanaud.
+
+Jim bent forward.
+
+"By God, that's true," he cried, and a little afterwards, in a voice
+of awe: "Then it's murder."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"Not a doubt."
+
+Jim Frobisher stood up.  He pointed a shaking finger at the grotesque
+image of pain crumpled upon the floor, death without dignity, an
+argument that there was something horribly wrong with the making of
+the human race--since such things could be.
+
+"Jean Cladel?" he asked.
+
+"We must make sure," answered Hanaud.  He went down the stairs to the
+front door and, unbolting it, called Moreau within the house.  From
+the top of the stairs Jim heard him ask:
+
+"Do you know Jean Cladel by sight?"
+
+"Yes," answered Moreau.
+
+"Then follow me."
+
+Hanaud led him up into the back room.  For a moment Moreau stopped
+upon the threshold with a blank look upon his face.
+
+"Is that the man?" Hanaud asked.
+
+Moreau stepped forward.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has been murdered," Hanaud explained.  "Will you fetch the
+Commissary of the district and a doctor?  We will wait here."
+
+Moreau turned on his heel and went downstairs.  Hanaud dropped into a
+chair and stared moodily at the dead body.
+
+"Jean Cladel," he said in a voice of discouragement.  "Just when he
+could have been of a little use in the world!  Just when he could
+have helped us to the truth!  It's my fault, too.  I oughtn't to have
+waited until to-night.  I ought to have foreseen that this might
+happen."
+
+"Who can have murdered him?" Jim Frobisher exclaimed.
+
+Hanaud roused himself out of his remorse.
+
+"The man who whispered to us from behind the window," answered Hanaud.
+
+Jim Frobisher felt his mind reeling.
+
+"That's impossible!" he cried.
+
+"Why?" Hanaud asked.  "It must have been he.  Think it out!"  And
+step by step he told the story as he read it, testing it by speaking
+it aloud.
+
+"At five minutes past ten a man of mine, still a little out of breath
+from his haste, comes to us in the Grande Taverne and tells us that
+Jean Cladel has just reached home.  He reached home then at five
+minutes to ten."
+
+"Yes," Jim agreed.
+
+"We were detained for a few minutes by Maurice Thevenet.  Yes."  He
+moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and said softly: "We
+shall have to consider that very modest and promising young gentleman
+rather carefully.  He detained us.  We heard the clock strike
+half-past ten as we waited in the street."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And all was over then.  For the house was as silent as what, indeed,
+it is--a grave.  And only just over, for the body is still warm.  If
+this--lying here, is Jean Cladel, some one else must have been
+waiting for him to come home to-night, waiting in the lane behind,
+since my man didn't see him.  And an acquaintance, a friend--for Jean
+Cladel lets him in and locks the door behind him."
+
+Jim interrupted.
+
+"He might have been here already, waiting for him with his knife
+bared in this dark room."
+
+Hanaud looked around the room.  It was furnished cheaply and
+stuffily, half office, half living-room.  An open bureau stood
+against the wall near the window.  A closed cabinet occupied the
+greater part of one side.
+
+"I wonder," he said.  "It is possible, no doubt----  But if so, why
+did the murderer stay so long?  No search has been made--no drawers
+are ransacked."  He tried the door of the cabinet.  "This is still
+locked.  No, I don't think that he was waiting.  I think that he was
+admitted as a friend or a client--I fancy Jean Cladel had not a few
+clients who preferred to call upon him by the back way in the dark of
+the night.  I think that his visitor came meaning to kill, and waited
+his time and killed, and that he had hardly killed before we rang the
+bell at the door."  Hanaud drew in his breath sharply.  "Imagine
+that, my friend!  He is standing here over the man he has murdered,
+and unexpectedly the shrill, clear sound of the bell goes through the
+house--as though God said, 'I saw you!'  Imagine it!  He turned out
+the light and stands holding his breath in the dark.  The bell rings
+again.  He must answer it or worse may befall.  He goes into the
+front room and throws open the window, and hears it is the police who
+are at the door."  Hanaud nodded his head in a reluctant admiration.
+"But that man had an iron nerve!  He doesn't lose his head.  He
+closes the shutter, he turns on the light, that we may think he is
+getting up, he runs back into this room.  He will not waste time by
+stumbling down the stairs and fumbling with the lock of the back
+door.  No, he opens these shutters and drops to the ground.  It is
+done in a second.  Another second, and he is in the lane; another,
+and he is safe, his dreadful mission ended.  Cladel will not speak.
+Cladel will not tell us the things we want to know."
+
+Hanaud went over to the cabinet and, using his skeleton keys, again
+opened its doors.  On the shelves were ranged a glass jar or two, a
+retort, the simplest utensils of a laboratory and a few bottles, one
+of which, larger than the rest, was half filled with a colourless
+liquid.
+
+"Alcohol," said Hanaud, pointing to the label.
+
+Jim Frobisher moved carefully round on the outskirts of the room,
+taking care not to alter the disarrangements of the furniture.  He
+looked the bottles over.  Not one of them held a drop of that pale
+lemon-coloured solution which the Professor, in his Treatise, had
+described.  Hanaud shut and locked the doors of the cabinet again and
+stepped carefully over to the bureau.  It stood open, and a few
+papers were strewn upon the flap.  He sat down at the bureau and
+began carefully to search it.  Jim sat down in a chair.  Somehow it
+had leaked out that, since this morning, Hanaud knew of Jean Cladel.
+Jean Cladel therefore must be stopped from any revelations; and he
+had been stopped.  Frobisher could no longer doubt that murder had
+been done on the night of April the 27th, in the Maison Crenelle.
+Development followed too logically upon development.  The case was
+building itself up--another storey had been added to the edifice with
+this new crime.  Yes, certainly and solidly it was building itself
+up--this case against some one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: _The White Tablet_
+
+Within the minute that case was to be immeasurably strengthened.  An
+exclamation broke from Hanaud.  He sprang to his feet and turned on
+the light of a green-shaded reading lamp, which stood upon the ledge
+of the bureau.  He was holding now under the light a small drawer,
+which he had removed from the front of the bureau.  Very gingerly he
+lifted some little thing out of it, something that looked like a
+badge that men wear in their buttonholes.  He laid it down upon the
+blotting paper; and in that room of death laughed harshly.
+
+He beckoned to Jim.
+
+"Come and look!"
+
+What Jim saw was a thin, small, barbed iron dart, with an iron stem.
+He had no need to ask its nature, for he had seen its likeness that
+morning in the Treatise of the Edinburgh Professor.  This was the
+actual head of Simon Harlowe's poison-arrow.
+
+"You have found it!" said Jim in a voice that shook.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hanaud gave it a little push, and said thoughtfully:
+
+"A negro thousands of miles away sits outside his hut in the Kombe
+country and pounds up his poison seed and mixes it with red clay, and
+smears it thick and slab over the shaft of his fine new arrow, and
+waits for his enemy.  But his enemy does not come.  So he barters it,
+or gives it to his white friend the trader on the Shire river.  And
+the trader brings it home and gives it to Simon Harlowe of the Maison
+Crenelle.  And Simon Harlowe lends it to a professor in Edinburgh,
+who writes about it in a printed book and sends it back again.  And
+in the end, after all its travels, it comes to the tenement of Jean
+Cladel in a slum of Dijon, and is made ready in a new way to do its
+deadly work."
+
+For how much longer Hanaud would have moralised over the arrow in
+this deplorable way, no man can tell.  Happily Jim Frobisher was
+reprieved from listening to him by the shutting of a door below and
+the noise of voices in the passage.
+
+"The Commissary!" said Hanaud, and he went quickly down the stairs.
+
+Jim heard him speaking in a low tone for quite a long while, and no
+doubt was explaining the position of affairs.  For when he brought
+the Commissary and the doctor up into the room he introduced Jim as
+one about whom they already knew.
+
+"This is that Monsieur Frobisher," he said.
+
+The Commissary, a younger and more vivacious man than Girardot, bowed
+briskly to Jim and looked towards the contorted figure of Jean Cladel.
+
+Even he could not restrain a little gesture of repulsion.  He clacked
+his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
+
+"He is not pretty, that one!" he said.  "Most certainly he is not
+pretty."
+
+Hanaud crossed again to the bureau and carefully folded the dart
+around with paper.
+
+"With your permission, Monsieur," he said ceremoniously to the
+Commissary, "I shall take this with me.  I will be responsible for
+it."  He put it away in his pocket and looked at the doctor, who was
+stooping by the side of Jean Cladel.  "I do not wish to interfere,
+but I should be glad to have a copy of the medical report.  I think
+that it might help me.  I think it will be found that this murder was
+committed in a way peculiar to one man."
+
+"Certainly you shall have a copy of the report, Monsieur Hanaud,"
+replied the young Commissary in a police and formal voice.
+
+Hanaud laid a hand on Jim's arm.
+
+"We are in the way, my friend.  Oh, yes, in spite of Monsieur le
+Commissaire's friendly protestations.  This is not our affair.  Let
+us go!"  He conducted Jim to the door and turned about.  "I do not
+wish to interfere," he repeated, "but it is possible that the
+shutters and the window will bear the traces of the murderer's
+fingers.  I don't think it probable, for that animal had taken his
+precautions.  But it is possible, for he left in a great hurry."
+
+The Commissary was overwhelmed with gratitude.
+
+"Most certainly we will give our attention to the shutters and the
+window-sill."
+
+"A copy of the finger-prints, if any are found?" Hanaud suggested.
+
+"Shall be at Monsieur Hanaud's disposal as early as possible," the
+Commissary agreed.
+
+Jim experienced a pang of regret that Monsieur Bex was not present at
+the little exchange of civilities.  The Commissary and Hanaud were so
+careful not to tread upon one another's toes and so politely
+determined that their own should not be trodden upon.  Monsieur Bex
+could not but have revelled in the correctness of their deportment.
+
+Hanaud and Frobisher went downstairs into the street The
+neighbourhood had not been aroused.  A couple of _sergents-de-ville_
+stood in front of the door.  The street of Gambetta was still asleep
+and indifferent to the crime which had taken place in one of its
+least respectable houses.
+
+"I shall go to the Prefecture," said Hanaud.  "They have given me a
+little office there with a sofa.  I want to put away the arrow head
+before I go to my hotel."
+
+"I shall come with you," said Jim.  "It will be a relief to walk for
+a little in the fresh air, after that room."
+
+The Prefecture lay the better part of a mile away across the city.
+Hanaud set off at a great pace, and reaching the building conducted
+Jim into an office with a safe set against the wall.
+
+"Will you sit down for a moment?  And smoke, please," he said.
+
+He was in a mood of such deep dejection; he was so changed from his
+mercurial self; that only now did Jim Frobisher understand the great
+store he had set upon his interview with Jean Cladel.  He unlocked
+the safe and brought over to the table a few envelopes of different
+sizes, the copy of the Treatise and his green file.  He seated
+himself in front of Jim and began to open his envelopes and range
+their contents in a row, when the door was opened and a gendarme
+saluted and advanced.  He carried a paper in his hand.
+
+"A reply came over the telephone from Paris at nine o'clock to-night,
+Monsieur Hanaud.  They say that this may be the name of the firm you
+want.  It was established in the Rue de Batignolles, but it ceased to
+exist seven years ago."
+
+"Yes, that would have happened," Hanaud answered glumly, as he took
+the paper.  He read what was written upon it.  "Yes--yes.  That's it.
+Not a doubt."
+
+He took an envelope from a rack upon the table and put the paper
+inside it and stuck down the flap.  On the front of the envelope, Jim
+saw him write an illuminating word.  "Address."
+
+Then he looked at Jim with smouldering eyes.
+
+"There is a fatality in all this," he cried.  "We become more and
+more certain that murder was committed and how it was committed.  We
+get a glimpse of possible reasons why.  But we are never an inch
+nearer to evidence--real convincing evidence--who committed it.
+Fatality?  I am a fool to use such words.  It's keen wits and
+audacity and nerve that stop us at the end of each lane and make an
+idiot of me!"
+
+He struck a match viciously and lit a cigarette.  Frobisher made an
+effort to console him.
+
+"Yes, but it's the keen wits and the audacity and the nerve of more
+than one person."
+
+Hanaud glanced at Frobisher sharply.
+
+"Explain, my friend."
+
+"I have been thinking over it ever since we left the street of
+Gambetta.  I no longer doubt that Mrs. Harlowe was murdered in the
+Maison Crenelle.  It is impossible to doubt it.  But her murder was
+part of the activities of a gang.  Else how comes it that Jean Cladel
+was murdered too to-night?"
+
+A smile drove for a moment the gloom from Hanaud's face.
+
+"Yes.  You have been quite fifteen minutes in the bull-ring," he said.
+
+"Then you agree with me?"
+
+"Yes!"  But Hanaud's gloom had returned.  "But we can't lay our hands
+upon the gang.  We are losing time, and I am afraid that we have no
+time to lose."  Hanaud shivered like a man suddenly chilled.  "Yes, I
+am very troubled now.  I am very--frightened."
+
+His fear peered out of him and entered into Frobisher.  Frobisher did
+not understand it, he had no clue to what it was that Hanaud feared,
+but sitting in that brightly-lit office in the silent building, he
+was conscious of evil presences thronging about the pair of them,
+presences grotesque and malevolent such as some old craftsman of
+Dijon might have carved on the pillars of a cathedral He, too,
+shivered.
+
+"Let us see, now!" said Hanaud.
+
+He took the end of the arrow shaft from one envelope, and the barb
+from his pocket, and fitted them together.  The iron barb was loose
+now because the hole to receive it at the top of the arrow shaft had
+been widened to take a nib.  But the spoke was just about the right
+length.  He laid the arrow down upon the table, and opened his green
+file.  A small square envelope, such as chemists use, attracted Jim's
+notice.  He took it up.  It seemed empty, but as he shook it out, a
+square tablet of some hard white substance rolled on to the table.
+It was soiled with dust, and there was a smear of green upon it; and
+as Jim turned it over, he noticed a cut or crack in its surface, as
+though something sharp had struck it.
+
+"What in the world has this to do with the affair?" he asked.
+
+Hanaud looked up from his file.  He reached out his hand swiftly to
+take the tablet away from Jim, and drew his hand in again.
+
+"A good deal perhaps.  Perhaps nothing," he said gravely.  "But it is
+interesting--that tablet.  I shall know more about it to-morrow."
+
+Jim could not for the life of him remember any occasion which had
+brought this tablet into notice.  It certainly had not been
+discovered in Jean Cladel's house, for it was already there in the
+safe in the office.  Jim had noticed the little square envelope as
+Hanaud fetched it out of the safe.  The tablet looked as if it had
+been picked up from the road like Monsieur Bex's famous match-box.
+Or--yes, there was that smear of green--from the grass.  Jim sat up
+straight in his chair.  They had all been together in the garden this
+morning.  Hanaud, himself, Betty and Ann Upcott.  But at that point
+Frobisher's conjectures halted.  Neither his memory nor deduction
+could connect that tablet with the half-hour the four of them had
+passed in the shade of the sycamores.  The only thing of which he was
+quite sure was the great importance which Hanaud attached to it.  For
+all the time that he handled and examined it Hanaud's eyes never left
+him, never once.  They followed each little movement of finger tip
+and thumb with an extraordinary alertness, and when Jim at last
+tilted it off his palm back into its little envelope, the detective
+undoubtedly drew a breath of relief.
+
+Jim Frobisher laughed good-humouredly.  He was getting to know his
+man.  He did not invite any "Aha's" and "Oho's" by vain questionings.
+He leaned across the table and took up his own memorandum which
+Hanaud had just laid aside out of his file.  He laid it on the table
+in front of him and added two new questions to those which he had
+already written out.  Thus:
+
+
+    (5) What was the exact message telephoned from Paris to the
+    Prefecture and hidden away in an envelope marked by Hanaud:
+    "Address"?
+
+
+
+    (6) When and where and why was the white tablet picked up, and
+    what, in the name of all the saints, does it mean?
+
+
+With another laugh Frobisher tossed the memorandum back to Hanaud.
+Hanaud, however, read them slowly and thoughtfully.  "I had hoped to
+answer all your questions to-night," he said dispiritedly.  "But you
+see!  We break down at every corner, and the question must wait."
+
+He was fitting methodically the memorandum back into the file when a
+look of extreme surprise came over Frobisher's face.  He pointed a
+finger at the file.
+
+"That telegram!"
+
+There was a telegram pinned to the three anonymous letters which
+Hanaud had in the file--the two which Hanaud had shown to Frobisher
+in Paris and the third which Betty Harlowe had given to him that very
+afternoon.  And the telegram was pieced together by two strips of
+stamp-paper in a cross.
+
+"That's our telegram.  The telegram sent to my firm by Miss Harlowe
+on Monday--yes, by George, this last Monday."
+
+It quite took Jim's breath away, so crowded had his days been with
+fears and reliefs, excitements and doubts, discoveries and
+disappointments, to realise that this was only the Friday night; that
+at so recent a date as Wednesday he had never seen or spoken with
+Betty Harlowe.  "The telegram announcing to us in London that you
+were engaged upon the case."
+
+Hanaud nodded in assent.
+
+"Yes.  You gave it to me."
+
+"And you tore it up."
+
+"I did.  But I picked it out of the waste-paper basket afterwards and
+stuck it together."  Hanaud explained, in no wise disconcerted by Jim
+Frobisher's attack of perspicacity.  "I meant to make some trouble
+here with the Police for letting out the secret.  I am very glad now
+that I did pick it out.  You yourself must have realised its
+importance the very next morning before I even arrived at the Maison
+Crenelle, when you told Mademoiselle that you had shown it to me."
+
+Jim cast his memory back.  He had a passion for precision and
+exactness which was very proper in one of his profession.
+
+"It was not until you came that I learnt Miss Harlowe had the news by
+an anonymous letter," he said.
+
+"Well, that doesn't matter," Hanaud interposed a trifle quickly.
+"The point of importance to me is that when the case is done with,
+and I have a little time to devote to these letters, the telegram may
+be of value."
+
+"Yes, I see," said Jim.  "I see that," he repeated, and he shifted
+uncomfortably in his chair; and opened his mouth and closed it again;
+and remained suspended between speech and silence, whilst Hanaud read
+through his file and contemplated his exhibits and found no hope in
+them.
+
+"They lead me nowhere!" he cried violently; and Jim Frobisher made up
+his mind.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud, you do not share your thoughts with me," he said
+rather formally, "but I will deal with you in a better way; apart
+from this crime in the Maison Crenelle, you have the mystery of these
+anonymous letters to solve.  I can help you to this extent.  Another
+of them has been received."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-night, whilst we sat at dinner."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Ann Upcott."
+
+"What!"
+
+Hanaud was out of his chair with a cry, towering up, his face white
+as the walls of the room, his eyes burning upon Frobisher.  Never
+could news have been so unexpected, so startling.
+
+"You are sure?" he asked.
+
+"Quite.  It came by the evening post--with others.  Gaston brought
+them into the dining-room.  There was one for me from my firm in
+London, a couple for Betty, and this one for Ann Upcott.  She opened
+it with a frown, as though she did not know from whom it came.  I saw
+it as she unfolded it.  It was on the same common paper--typewritten
+in the same way--with no address at the head of it.  She gasped as
+she looked at it, and then she read it again.  And then with a smile
+she folded it and put it away."
+
+"With a smile?" Hanaud insisted.
+
+"Yes.  She was pleased.  The colour came into her face.  The distress
+went out of it."
+
+"She didn't show it to you, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor to Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But she was pleased, eh?"  It seemed that to Hanaud this was the
+most extraordinary feature of the whole business.  "Did she say
+anything?"
+
+"Yes," answered Jim.  "She said 'He has been always right, hasn't
+he?'"
+
+"She said that!  'He has been always right, hasn't he?'" Hanaud
+slowly resumed his seat, and sat like a man turned into stone.  He
+looked up in a little while.
+
+"What happened then?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing until dinner was over.  Then she picked up her letter and
+beckoned with her head to Miss Betty, who said to me: 'We shall have
+to leave you to take your coffee alone.'  They went across the hall
+to Betty's room.  The treasure-room.  I was a little nettled.  Ever
+since I have been in Dijon one person after another has pushed me
+into a corner with orders to keep quiet and not interfere.  So I came
+to find you at the Grande Taverne."
+
+At another moment Jim's eruption of injured vanity would have
+provoked Hanaud to one of his lamentable exhibitions, but now he did
+not notice it at all.
+
+"They went away to talk that letter over together," said Hanaud.
+"And that young lady was pleased, she who was so distressed this
+afternoon.  A way out, then!"  Hanaud was discussing his problem with
+himself, his eyes upon the table.  "For once the Scourge is kind?  I
+wonder!  It baffles me!"  He rose to his feet and walked once or
+twice across the room.  "Yes, I the old bull of a hundred corridas,
+I, Hanaud, am baffled!"
+
+He was not posturing now.  He was frankly and simply amazed that he
+could be so utterly at a loss.  Then, with a swift change of mood, he
+came back to the table.
+
+"Meanwhile, Monsieur, until I can explain this strange new incident
+to myself, I beg of you your help," he pleaded very earnestly and
+even very humbly.  Fear had returned to his eyes and his voice.  He
+was disturbed beyond Jim's comprehension.  "There is nothing more
+important.  I want you--how shall I put it so that I may persuade
+you?  I want you to stay as much as you can in the Maison
+Crenelle--to--yes--to keep a little watch on this pretty Ann Upcott,
+to----"
+
+He got no further with his proposal.  Jim Frobisher interrupted him
+in a very passion of anger.
+
+"No, no, I won't," he cried.  "You go much too far, Monsieur.  I
+won't be your spy.  I am not here for that.  I am here for my client.
+As for Ann Upcott, she is my countrywoman.  I will not help you
+against her.  So help me God, I won't!"
+
+Hanaud looked across the table at the flushed and angry face of his
+"junior colleague," who now resigned his office and, without parley,
+accepted his defeat.
+
+"I don't blame you," he answered quietly.  "I could, indeed, hope for
+no other reply.  I must be quick, that's all.  I must be very quick!"
+
+Frobisher's anger fell away from him like a cloak one drops.  He saw
+Hanaud sitting over against him with a white, desperately troubled
+face and eyes in which there shone unmistakeably some gleam of terror.
+
+"Tell me!" he cried in an exasperation.  "Be frank with me for once!
+Is Ann Upcott guilty?  She's not alone, of course, anyway.  There's a
+gang.  We're agreed upon that.  Waberski's one of them, of course?
+Is Ann Upcott another?  Do you believe it?"
+
+Hanaud slowly put his exhibits together.  There was a struggle going
+on within him.  The strain of the night had told upon them both, and
+he was tempted for once to make a confidant, tempted intolerably.  On
+the other hand, Jim Frobisher read in him all the traditions of his
+service; to wait upon facts, not to utter suspicions; to be fair.  It
+was not until he had locked everything away again in the safe that
+Hanaud yielded to the temptation.  And even then he could not bring
+himself to be direct.
+
+"You want to know what I believe of Ann Upcott?" he cried
+reluctantly, as though the words were torn from him.  "Go to-morrow
+to the Church of Notre Dame and look at the façade.  There, since you
+are not blind, you will see."
+
+He would say no more; that was clear.  Nay, he stood moodily before
+Frobisher, already regretting that he had said so much.  Frobisher
+picked up his hat and stick.
+
+"Thank you," he said.  "Good night."
+
+Hanaud let him go to the door.  Then he said:
+
+"You are free to-morrow.  I shall not go to the Maison Crenelle.
+Have you any plans?"
+
+"Yes.  I am to be taken for a motor-drive round the neighbourhood."
+
+"Yes.  It is worth while," Hanaud answered listlessly.  "But remember
+to telephone to me before you go.  I shall be here.  I will tell you
+if I have any news.  Good night."
+
+Jim Frobisher left him standing in the middle of the room.  Before he
+had closed the door Hanaud had forgotten his presence.  For he was
+saying to himself over and over again, almost with an accent of
+despair: "I must be quick!  I must be very quick!"
+
+
+Frobisher walked briskly down to the Place Ernest Renan and the Rue
+de la Liberté, dwelling upon Hanaud's injunction to examine the
+façade of Notre Dame.  He must keep that in mind and obey it in the
+morning.  But that night was not yet over for him.
+
+As he reached the mouth of the little street of Charles-Robert he
+heard a light, quick step a little way behind him--a step that seemed
+familiar.  So when he turned into the street he sauntered and looked
+round.  He saw a tall man cross the entrance of the street very
+quickly and disappear between, the houses on the opposite side.  The
+man paused for a second under the light of a street lamp at the angle
+of the street, and Jim could have sworn that it was Hanaud.  There
+were no hotels, no lodgings in this quarter of the city.  It was a
+quarter of private houses.  What was Hanaud seeking there?
+
+Speculating upon this new question, he forgot the façade of Notre
+Dame; and upon his arrival at the Maison Crenelle a little incident
+occurred which made the probability that he would soon remember it
+remote.  He let himself into the house with a latchkey which had been
+given to him, and turned on the light in the hall by means of a
+switch at the side of the door.  He crossed the hall to the foot of
+the stairs, and was about to turn off the light, using the switch
+there to which Ann Upcott had referred, when the door of the
+treasure-room opened.  Betty appeared in the doorway.
+
+"You are still up?" he said in a low voice, half pleased to find her
+still afoot and half regretful that she was losing her hours of sleep.
+
+"Yes," and slowly her face softened to a smile.  "I waited up for my
+lodger."
+
+She held the door open, and he followed her back into the room.
+
+"Let me look at you," she said, and having looked, she added: "Jim,
+something has happened to-night."
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"What?" she asked.
+
+"Let it wait till to-morrow, Betty!"
+
+Betty smiled no longer.  The light died out of her dark, haunting
+eyes.  Lassitude and distress veiled them.
+
+"Something terrible, then?" she said in a whisper.
+
+"Yes," and she stretched out a hand to the back of a chair and
+steadied herself.
+
+"Please tell me, now, Jim!  I shall not sleep to-night unless you do;
+and oh, I am so tired!"
+
+There was so deep a longing in her voice, so utter a weariness in the
+pose of her young body that Jim could not but yield.
+
+"I'll tell you, Betty," he said gently.  "Hanaud and I went to find
+Jean Cladel to-night.  We found him dead.  He had been
+murdered--cruelly."
+
+Betty moaned and swayed upon her feet.  She would have fallen had not
+Jim caught her in his arms.
+
+"Betty!" he cried.
+
+Betty buried her face upon his shoulder.  He could feel the heave of
+her bosom against his heart.
+
+"It's appalling!" she moaned.  "Jean Cladel! ... No one ever had
+heard of him till this morning ... and now he's swept into this
+horror--like the rest of us!  Oh, where will it end?"
+
+Jim placed her in a chair and dropped on his knees beside her.
+
+She was sobbing now, and he tried to lift her face up to his.
+
+"My dear!" he whispered.
+
+But she would not raise her head.
+
+"No," she said in a stifled voice, "no," and she pressed her face
+deeper into the crook of his shoulder and clung to him with desperate
+hands.
+
+"Betty!" he repeated, "I am so sorry....  But it'll all come right.
+I'm sure it will.  Oh, Betty!"  And whilst he spoke he cursed himself
+for the banality of his words.  Why couldn't he find some ideas that
+were really fine with which to comfort her?  Something better than
+these stupid commonplaces of "I am sorry" and "It will all straighten
+out"?  But he couldn't, and it seemed that there was no necessity
+that he should.  For her arms crept round his neck and held him close.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN: _A Plan Frustrated_
+
+The road curled like a paper ribbon round the shoulder of a hill and
+dropped into a shallow valley.  To the left a little below the level
+of the road, a stream ran swiftly through a narrow meadow of lush
+green grass.  Beyond the meadow the wall of the valley rose rough
+with outcroppings of rock, and with every tuft of its herbage already
+brown from the sun.  On the right the northern wall rose almost from
+the road's edge.  The valley was long and curved slowly, and half-way
+along to the point where it disappeared a secondary road, the sort of
+road which is indicated in the motorist's hand-books by a dotted
+line, branched off to the left, crossed the stream by a stone bridge
+and vanished in a cleft of the southern wall.  Beyond this branching
+road grew trees.  The stream disappeared under them as though it ran
+into a cavern; the slopes on either side were hidden behind
+trees--trees so thick that here at this end the valley looked bare in
+the strong sunlight, but low trees, as if they had determined to
+harmonise with their environment.  Indeed, the whole valley had a
+sort of doll's-house effect--it was so shallow and narrow and
+stunted.  It tried to be a valley and succeeded in being a depression.
+
+When the little two-seater car swooped round the shoulder of the hill
+and descended, the white ribbon of road was empty but for one tiny
+speck at the far end, behind which a stream of dust spurted and
+spread like smoke from the funnel of an engine.
+
+"That motor dust is going to smother us when we pass," said Jim.
+
+"We shall do as much for him," said Betty, looking over her shoulder
+from the steering wheel.  "No, worse!"  Behind the car the dust was a
+screen.  "But I don't mind, do you, Jim?" she asked with a laugh, in
+which for the first time, with a heart of thankfulness, Jim heard a
+note of gaiety.  "To be free of that town if only for an hour!  Oh!"
+and Betty opened her lungs to the sunlight and the air.  "This is my
+first hour of liberty for a week!"
+
+Frobisher was glad, too, to be out upon the slopes of the Côte-d'Or.
+The city of Dijon was ringing that morning with the murder of Jean
+Cladel; you could not pass down a street but you heard his name
+mentioned and some sarcasms about the police.  He wished to forget
+that nightmare of a visit to the street of Gambetta and the dreadful
+twisted figure on the floor of the back room.
+
+"You'll be leaving it for good very soon, Betty," he said
+significantly.
+
+Betty made a little grimace at him, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
+
+"Jim!" she said, and the colour rose into her face, and the car
+swerved across the road.  "You mustn't speak like that to the girl at
+the wheel," she said with a laugh as she switched the car back into
+its course, "or I shall run down the motor-cyclist and that young
+lady in the side-car."
+
+"The young lady," said Jim, "happens to be a port-manteau!"
+
+The motor-cyclist, indeed, was slowing down as he came nearer to the
+branching road, like a tourist unacquainted with the country, and
+when he actually reached it he stopped altogether and dismounted.
+Betty brought her car to a standstill beside him, and glanced at the
+clock and the speedometer in front of her.
+
+"Can I help you?" she asked.
+
+The man standing beside the motor-cycle was a young man, slim, dark,
+and of a pleasant countenance.  He took off his helmet and bowed
+politely.
+
+"Madame, I am looking for Dijon," he said in a harsh accent which
+struck Frobisher as somehow familiar to his ears.
+
+"Monsieur, you can see the tip of it through that gap across the
+valley," Betty returned.  In the very centre of the cleft the point
+of the soaring spire of the cathedral stood up like a delicate lance.
+"But I warn you that that way, though short, is not good."
+
+Through the gradually thinning cloud of dust which hung behind the
+car they heard the jug-jug of another motor-cycle.
+
+"The road by which we have come is the better one," she continued.
+
+"But how far is it?" the young man asked.
+
+Betty once more consulted her speedometer.
+
+"Forty kilometres, and we have covered them in forty minutes, so that
+you can see the going is good.  We started at eleven punctually, and
+it is now twenty minutes to twelve."
+
+"Surely we started before eleven?" Jim interposed.
+
+"Yes, but we stopped for a minute or two to tighten the strap of the
+tool-box on the edge of the town.  And we started from there at
+eleven."
+
+The motor-cyclist consulted his wrist-watch.
+
+"Yes, it's twenty minutes to twelve now," he said.  "But forty
+kilometres!  I doubt if I have the essence.  I think I must try the
+nearer road."
+
+The second motor-cycle came out of the dust like a boat out of a sea
+mist and slowed down in turn at the side of them.  The rider jumped
+out of his saddle, pushed his goggles up on to his forehead and
+joined in the conversation.
+
+"That little road, Monsieur.  It is not one of the national highways.
+That shows itself at a glance.  But it is not so bad.  From the stone
+bridge one can be at the Hôtel de Ville of Dijon in twenty-five
+minutes."
+
+"I thank you," said the young man.  "You will pardon me.  I have been
+here for seven minutes, and I am expected."
+
+He replaced his helmet, mounted his machine, and with a splutter and
+half a dozen explosions ran down into the bed of the valley.
+
+The second cyclist readjusted his goggles.
+
+"Will you go first, Madame?" he suggested.  "Otherwise I give you my
+dust."
+
+"Thank you!" said Betty with a smile, and she slipped in the clutch
+and started.
+
+Beyond the little forest and the curve the ground rose and the valley
+flattened out.  Across their road a broad highway set with kilometre
+stones ran north and south.
+
+"The road to Paris," said Betty as she stopped the car in front of a
+little inn with a tangled garden at the angle.  She looked along the
+road Pariswards.  "Air!" she said, and drew a breath of longing,
+whilst her eyes kindled and her white strong teeth clicked as though
+she was biting a sweet fruit.
+
+"Soon, Betty," said Jim.  "Very soon!"
+
+Betty drove the car into a little yard at the side of the river.
+
+"We will lunch here, in the garden," she said, "all amongst the
+earwigs and the roses."
+
+An omelet, a cutlet perfectly cooked and piping hot, with a salad and
+a bottle of Clos du Prince of the 1904 vintage brought the glowing
+city of Paris immeasurably nearer to them.  They sat in the open
+under the shade of a tall hedge; they had the tangled garden to
+themselves; they laughed and made merry in the golden May, and
+visions of wonder trembled and opened before Jim Frobisher's eyes.
+
+Betty swept them away, however, when he had lit a cigar and she a
+cigarette; and their coffee steamed from the little cups in front of
+them.
+
+"Let us be practical, Jim," she said.  "I want to talk to you."
+
+The sparkle of gaiety had left her face.
+
+"Yes!" he asked.
+
+"About Ann."  Her eyes swept round and rested on Jim's face.  "She
+ought to go."
+
+"Run away!" cried Jim with a start.
+
+"Yes, at once and as secretly as possible."
+
+Jim turned the proposal over in his mind whilst Betty waited in
+suspense.
+
+"It couldn't be managed," he objected.
+
+"It could."
+
+"Even if it could, would she consent?"
+
+"She does."
+
+"Of course it's pleading guilty," he said slowly.
+
+"Oh, it isn't, Jim.  She wants time, that's all.  Time for my
+necklace to be traced, time for the murderer of Jean Cladel to be
+discovered.  You remember what I told you about Hanaud?  He must have
+his victim.  You wouldn't believe me, but it's true.  He has got to
+go back to Paris and say, 'You see, they sent from Dijon for me, and
+five minutes!  That's all I needed!  Five little minutes and there's
+your murderess, all tied up and safe!'  He tried to fix it on me
+first."
+
+"No."
+
+"He did, Jim.  And now that has failed he has turned on Ann.  She'll
+have to go.  Since he can't get me he'll take my friend--yes, and
+manufacture the evidence into the bargain."
+
+"Betty!  Hanaud wouldn't do that!" Frobisher protested.
+
+"But, Jim, he has done it," she said.
+
+"When?"
+
+"When he put that Edinburgh man's book about the arrow poison back
+upon the bookshelf in the library."
+
+Jim was utterly taken back.
+
+"Did you know that he had done that?"
+
+"I couldn't help knowing," she answered.  "The moment he took the
+book down it was clear to me.  He knew it from end to end, as if it
+was a primer.  He could put his finger on the plates, on the history
+of my uncle's arrow, on the effect of the poison, on the solution
+that could be made of it in an instant.  He pretended that he had
+learnt all that in the half-hour he waited for us.  It wasn't
+possible.  He had found that book the afternoon before somewhere and
+had taken it away with him secretly and sat up half the night over
+it.  That's what he had done."
+
+Jim Frobisher was sunk in confusion.  He had been guessing first this
+person, then that, and in the end had had to be told the truth;
+whereas Betty had reached it in a flash by using her wits.  He felt
+that he had been just one minute and a half in the bull-ring.
+
+Betty added in a hot scorn:
+
+"Then when he had learnt it all up by heart he puts it back secretly
+in the bookshelf and accuses us."
+
+"But he admits he put it back," said Jim slowly.
+
+Betty was startled.
+
+"When did he admit it?"
+
+"Last night.  To me," replied Jim, and Betty laughed bitterly.  She
+would hear no good of Hanaud.
+
+"Yes, now that he has something better to go upon."
+
+"Something better?"
+
+"The disappearance of my necklace.  Oh, Jim, Ann has got to go.  If
+she could get to England they couldn't bring her back, could they?
+They haven't evidence enough.  It's only suspicion and suspicion and
+suspicion.  But here in France it's different, isn't it?  They can
+hold people on suspicion, keep them shut up by themselves and
+question them again and again.  Oh, yesterday afternoon in the
+hall--don't you remember, Jim?--I thought Hanaud was going to arrest
+her there and then."
+
+Jim Frobisher nodded.
+
+"I thought so, too."
+
+He had been a little shocked by Betty's proposal, but the more
+familiar he became with it, the more it appealed to him.  There was
+an overpowering argument in its favour of which neither he nor Hanaud
+had told Betty a word.  The shaft of the arrow had been discovered in
+Ann Upcott's room, and the dart in the house of Jean Cladel.  These
+were overpowering facts.  On the whole, it was better that Ann should
+go, now, whilst there was still time--if, that is, Hanaud did
+undoubtedly believe her to be guilty.
+
+"But it is evident that he does," cried Betty.
+
+Jim answered slowly:
+
+"I suppose he does.  We can make sure, anyway.  I had a doubt last
+night.  So I asked him point-blank."
+
+"And he answered you?" Betty asked with a gasp.
+
+"Yes and no.  He gave me the strangest answer."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He told me to visit the Church of Notre Dame.  If I did, I should
+read upon the façade whether Ann was innocent or not."
+
+Slowly every tinge of colour ebbed out of Betty's face.  Her eyes
+stared at him horror-stricken.  She sat, a figure of ice--except for
+her eyes which blazed.
+
+"That's terrible," she said with a low voice, and again "That's
+terrible!"  Then with a cry she stood erect "You shall see!  Come!"
+and she ran towards the motorcar.
+
+The sunlit day was spoilt for both of them.  Betty drove homewards,
+bending over the wheel, her eyes fixed ahead.  But Frobisher wondered
+whether she saw anything at all of that white road which the car
+devoured.  Once as they dropped from the highland and the forests to
+the plains, she said:
+
+"We shall abide by what we see?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If Hanaud thinks her innocent, she should stay.  If he thinks her
+guilty, she must go."
+
+"Yes," said Frobisher.
+
+Betty guided the car through the streets of the city, and into a wide
+square.  A great church of the Renaissance type, with octagonal
+cupolas upon its two towers and another little cupola surmounted by a
+loggia above its porch, confronted them.  Betty stopped the car and
+led Frobisher into the porch.  Above the door was a great bas-relief
+of the Last Judgment, God amongst the clouds, angels blowing
+trumpets, and the damned rising from their graves to undergo their
+torments.  Both Betty and Frobisher gazed at the representation for a
+while in silence.  To Frobisher it was a cruel and brutal piece of
+work which well matched Hanaud's revelation of his true belief.
+
+"Yes, the message is easy to read," he said: and they drove back in a
+melancholy silence to the Maison Crenelle.
+
+The chauffeur, Georges, came forward from the garage to take charge
+of the car.  Betty ran inside the house and waited for Jim Frobisher
+to join her.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a broken voice.  "I kept a hope
+somewhere that we were all mistaken ... I mean as to the danger Ann
+was in....  I don't believe for a moment in her guilt, of course.
+But she must go--that's clear."
+
+She went slowly up the stairs, and Jim saw no more of her until
+dinner was served long after its usual hour.  Ann Upcott he had not
+seen at all that day, nor did he even see her then.  Betty came to
+him in the library a few minutes before nine.
+
+"We are very late, I am afraid.  There are just the two of us, Jim,"
+she said with a smile, and she led the way into the dining-room.
+
+Through the meal she was anxious and preoccupied, nodding her assent
+to anything that he said, with her thoughts far away and answering
+him at random, or not answering him at all.  She was listening,
+Frobisher fancied, for some sound in the hall, an expected sound
+which was overdue.  For her eyes went continually to the clock, and a
+flurry and agitation, very strange in one naturally so still, became
+more and more evident in her manner.  At length, just before ten
+o'clock, they both heard the horn of a motor-car in the quiet street.
+The car stopped, as it seemed to Frobisher, just outside the gates,
+and upon that there followed the sound for which Betty had so
+anxiously been listening--the closing of a heavy door by some one
+careful to close it quietly.  Betty shot a quick glance at Jim
+Frobisher and coloured when he intercepted it.  A few seconds
+afterwards the car moved on, and Betty drew a long breath.  Jim
+Frobisher leaned forward to Betty.  Though they were alone in the
+room, he spoke in a low voice of surprise:
+
+"Ann Upcott has gone then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So soon?  You had everything already arranged then?"
+
+"It was all arranged yesterday evening.  She should be in Paris
+to-morrow morning, England to-morrow night.  If only all goes well!"
+
+Even in the stress of her anxiety Betty had been sensitive to a tiny
+note of discontent in Jim Frobisher's questions.  He had been left
+out of the counsels of the two girls, their arrangements had been
+made without his participation, he had only been told of them at the
+last minute, just as if he was a babbler not to be trusted and an
+incompetent whose advice would only have been a waste of time.  Betty
+made her excuses.
+
+"It would have been better, of course, if we had got you to help us,
+Jim.  But Ann wouldn't have it.  She insisted that you had come out
+here on my account, and that you mustn't be dragged into such an
+affair as her flight and escape at all.  She made it a condition, so
+I had to give way.  But you can help me now tremendously."
+
+Jim was appeased.  Betty at all events had wanted him, was still
+alarmed lest their plan undertaken without his advice might miscarry.
+
+"How can I help?"
+
+"You can go to that cinema and keep Monsieur Hanaud engaged.  It's
+important that he should know nothing about Ann's flight until late
+to-morrow."
+
+Jim laughed at the futility of Hanaud's devices to hide himself.  It
+was obviously all over the town that he spent his evenings in the
+Grande Taverne.
+
+"Yes, I'll go," he returned.  "I'll go now."
+
+But Hanaud was not that night in his accustomed place, and Jim sat
+there alone until half-past ten.  Then a man strolled out from one of
+the billiard-rooms, and standing behind Jim with his eyes upon the
+screen, said in a whisper:
+
+"Do not look at me, Monsieur!  It is Moreau.  I go outside.  Will you
+please to follow."
+
+He strolled away.  Jim gave him a couple of minutes' grace.  He had
+remembered Hanaud's advice and had paid for his Bock when it had been
+brought to him.  The little saucer was turned upside down to show
+that he owed nothing.  When two minutes had elapsed he sauntered out
+and, looking neither to the right nor to the left, strolled
+indolently along the Rue de la Gare.  When he reached the Place Darcy
+Nicolas Moreau passed him without a sign of recognition and struck
+off to the right along the Rue de la Liberté.  Frobisher followed him
+with a sinking heart.  It was folly of course to imagine that Hanaud
+could be so easily eluded.  No doubt that motor-car had been stopped.
+No doubt Ann Upcott was already under lock and key!  Why, the last
+words he had heard Hanaud speak were "I must be quick!"
+
+Moreau turned off into the Boulevard Sevigne and, doubling back to
+the station square, slipped into one of the small hotels which
+cluster in that quarter.  The lobby was empty; a staircase narrow and
+steep led from it to the upper stories.  Moreau now ascended it with
+Frobisher at his heels, and opened a door.  Frobisher looked into a
+small and dingy sitting-room at the back of the house.  The windows
+were open, but the shutters were closed.  A single pendant in the
+centre of the room gave it light, and at a table under the pendant
+Hanaud sat poring over a map.
+
+The map was marked with red ink in a curious way.  A sort of hoop,
+very much the shape of a tennis racket without its handle, was
+described upon it and from the butt to the top of the hoop an
+irregular line was drawn, separating the hoop roughly into two
+semi-circles.  Moreau left Jim Frobisher standing there, and in a
+moment or two Hanaud looked up.
+
+"Did you know, my friend," he asked very gravely, "that Ann Upcott
+has gone to-night to Madame Le Vay's fancy dress ball?"
+
+Frobisher was taken completely by surprise.
+
+"No, I see that you didn't," Hanaud went on.  He took up his pen and
+placed a red spot at the edge of the hoop close by the butt.
+
+Jim recovered from his surprise.  Madame Le Vay's ball was the spot
+from which the start was to be made.  The plan after all was not so
+ill-devised, if only Ann could have got to the ball unnoticed.
+Masked and in fancy dress, amongst a throng of people similarly
+accoutred, in a house with a garden, no doubt thrown open upon this
+hot night and lit only by lanterns discreetly dim--she had thus her
+best chance of escape.  But the chance was already lost.  For Hanaud
+laid down his pen again and said in ominous tones:
+
+"The water-lily, eh?  That pretty water-lily, my friend, will not
+dance very gaily to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY: _Map and the Necklace_
+
+Hanaud turned his map round and pushed it across the table to Jim
+Frobisher.
+
+"What do you make of that?" he asked, and Jim drew up a chair and sat
+down to examine it.
+
+He made first of all a large scale map of Dijon and its environments,
+the town itself lying at the bottom of the red hoop and constituting
+the top of the handle of the tennis racket.  As to the red circle, it
+seemed to represent a tour which some one had made out from Dijon,
+round a good tract of outlying country and back again to the city.
+But there was more to it than that.  The wavy dividing line, for
+instance, from the top of the circle to the handle, that is to Dijon;
+and on the left-hand edge of the hoop, as he bent over the map, and
+just outside Dijon, the red mark, a little red square which Hanaud
+had just made.  Against this square an hour was marked.
+
+"Eleven a.m.," he read.
+
+He followed the red curve with his eyes and just where this dividing
+line touched the rim of the hoop, another period was inscribed.  Here
+Frobisher read:
+
+"Eleven forty."
+
+Frobisher looked up at Hanaud in astonishment.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, and he bent again over the map.  The point
+where the dividing line branched off was in a valley, as he could see
+by the contours--yes--he had found the name now--the Val Terzon.
+Just before eleven o'clock Betty had stopped the car just outside
+Dijon, opposite a park with a big house standing back, and had asked
+him to tighten the strap of the tool box.  They had started again
+exactly at eleven.  Betty had taken note of the exact time--and they
+had stopped where the secondary road branched off and doubled back to
+Dijon, at the top of the hoop, at the injunction of the rim and the
+dividing line, exactly at eleven forty.
+
+"This is a chart of the expedition we made to-day," he cried.  "We
+were followed then?"
+
+He remembered suddenly the second motor-cyclist who had come up from
+behind through the screen of their dust and had stopped by the side
+of their car to join in their conversation with the tourist.
+
+"The motor-cyclist?" he asked, and again he got no answer.
+
+But the motor-cyclist had not followed them all the way round.  On
+their homeward course they had stopped to lunch in the tangled
+garden.  There had been no sign of the man.  Jim looked at the map
+again.  He followed the red line from the junction of the two roads,
+round the curve of the valley, to the angle where the great National
+road to Paris cut across and where they had lunched.  After luncheon
+they had continued along the National road into Dijon, whereas the
+red line crossed it and came back by a longer and obviously a less
+frequented route.
+
+"I can't imagine why you had us followed this morning, Monsieur
+Hanaud," he exclaimed with some heat.  "But I can tell you this.  The
+chase was not very efficiently contrived.  We didn't come home that
+way at all."
+
+"I haven't an idea how you came home," Hanaud answered imperturbably.
+"The line on that side of the circle has nothing to do with you at
+all, as you can see for yourself by looking at the time marked where
+the line begins."
+
+The red hoop at the bottom was not complete; there was a space where
+the spliced handle of the racket would fit in, the space filled by
+the town of Dijon, and at the point on the right hand side where the
+line started Frobisher read in small but quite clear figures:
+
+"Ten twenty-five a.m."
+
+Jim was more bewildered than ever.
+
+"I don't understand one word of it," he cried.
+
+Hanaud reached over and touched the point with the tip of his pen.
+
+"This is where the motor-cyclist started, the cyclist who met you at
+the branch road at eleven-forty."
+
+"The tourist?" asked Jim.  A second ago it had seemed to him
+impossible that the fog could thicken about his wits any more.  And
+yet it had.
+
+"Let us say the man with the portmanteau on his trailer," Hanaud
+corrected.  "You see that he left his starting point in Dijon
+thirty-five minutes before you left yours.  The whole manoeuvre seems
+to have been admirably planned.  For you met precisely at the
+arranged spot at eleven-forty.  Neither the car nor the cycle had to
+wait one moment."
+
+"Manoeuvre!  Arranged spot!" Frobisher exclaimed, looking about him
+in a sort of despair.  "Has every one gone crazy?  Why in the world
+should a man start out with a portmanteau in a side-car from Dijon at
+ten twenty-five, run thirty or forty miles into the country by a
+roundabout road and then return by a bad straight track?  There's no
+sense in it!"
+
+"No doubt it's perplexing," Hanaud agreed.  He nodded to Moreau who
+went out of the room by a communicating door towards the front of the
+house.  "But I can help you," Hanaud continued.  "At the point where
+you started after tightening the strap of the tool-box, on the edge
+of the town, a big country house stands back in a park?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim.
+
+"That is the house of Madame Le Vay where this fancy dress ball takes
+place to-night."
+
+"Madame Le Vay's château!" Frobisher repeated.  "Where----" he began
+a question and caught it back.  But Hanaud completed it for him.
+
+"Yes, where Ann Upcott now is.  You started from it at precisely
+eleven in the morning."  He looked at his watch.  "It is not yet
+quite eleven at night.  So she is still there."
+
+Frobisher started back in his chair.  Hanaud's words were like the
+blade of silver light cutting through the darkness of the cinema hall
+and breaking into a sheet of radiance upon the screen.  The meaning
+of the red diagram upon Hanaud's map, the unsuspected motive of
+Betty's expedition this morning were revealed to him.
+
+"It was a rehearsal," he cried.
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"A time-rehearsal."
+
+"Yes, the sort of thing which takes place in theatres, without the
+principal members of the company," thought Frobisher.  But a moment
+later he was dissatisfied with that explanation.
+
+"Wait a moment!" he said.  "That won't do, I fancy."
+
+The motor-cyclist with the side-car had brought his arguments to a
+standstill.  His times were marked upon the map; they were therefore
+of importance.  What had he to do with Ann Upcott's escape?  But he
+visualised the motor-cyclist and his side-car and his connection with
+the affair became evident.  The big portmanteau gave Frobisher the
+clue.  Ann Upcott would be leaving Madame Le Vay's house in her
+ball-dress, just as if she was returning to the Maison Crenelle--and
+without any luggage at all.  She could not arrive in Paris in the
+morning like that if she were to avoid probably suspicion and
+certainly remark.  The motor-cyclist was to meet her in the Val
+Terzon, transfer her luggage rapidly to her car, and then return to
+Dijon by the straight quick road whilst Ann turned off at the end of
+the valley to Paris.  He remembered now that seven minutes had
+elapsed between the meeting of the cycle and the motor-car and their
+separation.  Seven minutes then were allowed for the transference of
+the luggage.  Another argument flashed into his thoughts.  Betty had
+told him nothing of this plan.  It had been presented to him as a
+mere excursion on a summer day, her first hours of liberty naturally
+employed.  Her silence was all of a piece with the determination of
+Betty and Ann Upcott to keep him altogether out of the conspiracy.
+Every detail fitted like the blocks in a picture puzzle.  Yes, there
+had been a time-rehearsal.  And Hanaud knew all about it!
+
+That was the disturbing certainty which first overwhelmed Frobisher
+when he had got the better of his surprise at the scheme itself.
+Hanaud knew! and Betty had so set her heart on Ann's escape.
+
+"Let her go!" he pleaded earnestly.  "Let Ann Upcott get away to
+Paris and to England!" and Hanaud leaned back in his chair with a
+little gasp.  The queerest smile broke over his face.
+
+"I see," he said.
+
+"Oh, I know," Frobisher exclaimed, hotly appealing.  "You are of the
+Sûrété and I am a lawyer, an officer of the High Court in my country
+and I have no right to make such a petition.  But I do without a
+scruple.  You can't get a conviction against Ann Upcott.  You haven't
+a chance of it.  But you can throw such a net of suspicion about her
+that she'll never get out of it.  You can ruin her--yes--but that's
+all you can do."
+
+"You speak very eagerly, my friend," Hanaud interposed.
+
+Jim could not explain that it was Betty's anxiety to save her friend
+which inspired his plea.  He fell back upon the scandal which such a
+trial would cause.
+
+"There has been enough publicity already owing to Boris Waberski," he
+continued.  "Surely Miss Harlowe has had distress enough.  Why must
+she stand in the witness-box and give evidence against her friend in
+a trial which can have no result?  That's what I want you to realise,
+Monsieur Hanaud.  I have had some experience of criminal trials"--O
+shade of Mr. Haslitt!  Why was that punctilious man not there in the
+flesh to wipe out with an indignant word the slur upon the firm of
+Frobisher and Haslitt?--"And I assure you that no jury could convict
+upon such evidence.  Why, even the pearl necklace has not been
+traced--and it never will be.  You can take that from me, Monsieur
+Hanaud!  It never will be!"
+
+Hanaud opened a drawer in the table and took out one of those little
+cedar-wood boxes made to hold a hundred cigarettes, which the better
+class of manufacturers use in England for their wares.  He pushed
+this across the table towards Jim.  Something which was more
+substantial than cigarettes rattled inside of it.  Jim seized upon it
+in a panic.  He had not a doubt that Betty would far sooner lose her
+necklace altogether than that her friend Ann Upcott should be
+destroyed by it.  He opened the lid of the box.  It was filled with
+cotton-wool.  From the cotton-wool he took a string of pearls
+perfectly graded in size, and gleaming softly with a pink lustre
+which, even to his untutored eyes, was indescribably lovely.
+
+"It would have been more correct if I had found them in a matchbox,"
+said Hanaud.  "But I shall point out to Monsieur Bex that after all
+matches and cigarettes are akin."
+
+Jim was still staring at the necklace in utter disappointment when
+Moreau knocked upon the other side of the communicating door.  Hanaud
+looked again at his watch.
+
+"Yes, it is eleven o'clock.  We must go.  The car has started from
+the house of Madame Le Vay."
+
+He rose from his chair, buried the necklace again within the layers
+of cotton-wool, and locked it up once more in the drawer.  The room
+had faded away from Jim Frobisher's eyes.  He was looking at a big,
+brilliantly illuminated house, and a girl who slipped from a window
+and, wrapping a dark cloak about her glistening dress, ran down the
+dark avenue in her dancing slippers to where a car waited hidden
+under trees.
+
+"The car may not have started," Jim said with sudden hopefulness.
+"There may have been an accident to it.  The chauffeur may be late.
+Oh, a hundred things may have happened!"
+
+"With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously rehearsed?  No,
+my friend."
+
+Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against the wall and
+placed it in his pocket.
+
+"You are going to leave that necklace just like that in a table
+drawer?" Jim asked.  "We ought to take it first to the Prefecture."
+
+"This room is not unwatched," replied Hanaud.  "It will be safe."
+
+Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.
+
+"We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch
+road," he argued.  "It is past eleven, as you say--well past eleven.
+And thirty-five minutes on a motor-cycle in the daytime means fifty
+minutes in a car at night, especially with a bad road to travel."
+
+"We don't intend to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road," Hanaud
+returned.  He folded up the map and put it aside upon the mantelshelf.
+
+"I take a big risk, you know," he said softly.  "But I must take it!
+And--no!  I can't be wrong!"  But he turned from the mantelshelf with
+a very anxious and troubled face.  Then, as he looked at Jim, a fresh
+idea came into his mind.
+
+"By the way," he said.  "The façade of Notre Dame?"
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"The bas-relief of The Last Judgment.  We went to see it.  We thought
+your way of saying what you believed a little brutal."
+
+Hanaud remained silent with his eyes upon the floor for a few
+seconds.  Then he said quietly: "I am sorry."  He tacked on a
+question.  "You say 'we'?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Harlowe and I," Jim explained.
+
+"Oh, yes--to be sure.  I should have thought of that," and once more
+his troubled cry broke from him.  "It must be that!--No, I can't be
+wrong....  Anyway, it's too late to change now."
+
+A second time Moreau rapped upon the communicating door.  Hanaud
+sprang to alertness.
+
+"That's it," he said.  "Take your hat and stick, Monsieur Frobisher!
+Good!  You are ready?" and the room was at once plunged into darkness.
+
+Hanaud opened the communicating door, and they passed into the front
+room--a bedroom looking out upon the big station square.  This room
+was in darkness too.  But the shutters were not closed, and there
+were patches of light upon the walls from the lamps in the square and
+the Grande Taverne at the corner.  The three men could see one
+another, and to Jim in this dusk the faces of his companions appeared
+of a ghastly pallor.
+
+"Daunay took his position when I first knocked," said Moreau.
+"Patinot has just joined him."
+
+He pointed across the square to the station buildings.  Some cabs
+were waiting for the Paris train, and in front of them two men
+dressed like artisans were talking.  One of them lit a cigarette from
+the stump of a cigarette held out to him by his companion.  The
+watchers in the room saw the end of the cigarette glow red.
+
+"The way is clear, Monsieur," said Moreau.  "We can go."  And he
+turned and went out of the inn to the staircase.  Jim started to
+follow him.  Whither they were going Jim had not a notion, not even a
+conjecture.  But he was gravely troubled.  All his hopes and Betty's
+hopes for the swift and complete suppression of the Waberski affair
+had seemingly fallen to the ground.  He was not reassured when
+Hanaud's hand was laid on his arm and detained him.
+
+"You understand, Monsieur Frobisher," said Hanaud with a quiet
+authority, his eyes shining very steadily in the darkness, his face
+glimmering very white, "that now the Law of France takes charge.
+There must not be a finger raised or a word spoken to hinder officers
+upon their duty.  On the other hand, I make you in return the promise
+you desire.  No one shall be arrested on suspicion.  Your own eyes
+shall bear me out."
+
+The two men followed Moreau down the stairs and into the street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: _The Secret House_
+
+It was a dark, clear night, the air very still and warm, and the sky
+bright with innumerable stars.  The small company penetrated into the
+town by the backways and narrow alleys.  Daunay going on ahead,
+Patinot the last by some thirty yards, and Moreau keeping upon the
+opposite side of the street.  Once they had left behind them the
+lights of the station square, they walked amongst closed doors and
+the blind faces of unlit houses.  Frobisher's heart raced within his
+bosom.  He strained his eyes and ears for some evidence of spies upon
+their heels.  But no one was concealed in any porch, and not the
+stealthiest sound of a pursuit was borne to their hearing.
+
+"On a night like this," he said in tones which, strive as he might to
+steady them, were still a little tremulous, "one could hear a
+footstep on the stones a quarter of a mile away, and we hear nothing.
+Yet, if there is a gang, it can hardly be that we are unwatched."
+
+Hanaud disagreed.  "This is a night for alibis," he returned,
+lowering his voice; "good, sound, incontestable alibis.  All but
+those engaged will be publicly with their friends, and those engaged
+do not know how near we are to their secrets."
+
+They turned into a narrow street and kept on its left-hand side.
+
+"Do you know where we are?" Hanaud asked.  "No?  Yet we are near to
+the Maison Crenelle.  On the other side of these houses to our left
+runs the street of Charles-Robert."
+
+Jim Frobisher stopped dead.
+
+"It was here, then, that you came last night after I left you at the
+Prefecture," he exclaimed.
+
+"Ah, you recognised me, then!" Hanaud returned imperturbably.  "I
+wondered whether you did when you turned at the gates of your house."
+
+On the opposite side of the street the houses were broken by a high
+wall, in which two great wooden doors were set.  Behind the wall, at
+the end of a courtyard, the upper storey and the roof of a
+considerable house rose in a steep ridge against the stars.
+
+Hanaud pointed towards it.
+
+"Look at that house, Monsieur!  There Madame Raviart came to live
+whilst she waited to be set free.  It belongs to the Maison Crenelle.
+After she married Simon Harlowe, they would never let it, they kept
+it just as it was, the shrine of their passion--that strange romantic
+couple.  But there was more romance in that, to be sure.  It has been
+unoccupied ever since."
+
+Jim Frobisher felt a chill close about his heart.  Was that house the
+goal to which Hanaud was leading him with so confident a step?  He
+looked at the gates and the house.  Even in the night it had a look
+of long neglect and decay, the paint peeling from the doors and not a
+light in any window.
+
+Some one in the street, however, was awake, for just above their
+heads, a window was raised with the utmost caution and a whisper
+floated down to them.
+
+"No one has appeared."
+
+Hanaud took no open notice of the whisper.  He did not pause in his
+walk, but he said to Frobisher:
+
+"And, as you hear, it is still unoccupied."
+
+At the end of the street Daunay melted away altogether.  Hanaud and
+Frobisher crossed the road and, with Moreau just ahead, turned down a
+passage between, the houses to the right.
+
+Beyond the passage they turned again to the right into a narrow lane
+between high walls; and when they had covered thirty yards or so,
+Frobisher saw the branches of leafy trees over the wall upon his
+right.  It was so dark here under the shade of the boughs that
+Frobisher could not even see his companions; and he knocked against
+Moreau before he understood that they had come to the end of their
+journey.  They were behind the garden of the house in which Madame
+Raviart had lived and loved.
+
+Hanaud's hand tightened upon Jim Frobisher's arm, constraining him to
+absolute immobility.  Patinot had vanished as completely and
+noiselessly as Daunay.  The three men left stood in the darkness and
+listened.  A sentence which Ann Upcott had spoken in the garden of
+the Maison Crenelle, when she had been describing the terror with
+which she had felt the face bending over her in the darkness, came
+back to him.  He had thought it false then.  He took back his
+criticism now.  For he too imagined that the beating of his heart
+must wake all Dijon.
+
+They stood there motionless for the space of a minute, and then, at a
+touch from Hanaud, Nicolas Moreau stooped.  Frobisher heard the palm
+of his hand sliding over wood and immediately after the tiniest
+little click as a key was fitted into a lock and turned.  A door in
+the wall swung silently open and let a glimmer of light into the
+lane.  The three men passed into a garden of weeds and rank grass and
+overgrown bushes.  Moreau closed and locked the door behind them.  As
+he locked the door the clocks of the city struck the half hour.
+
+Hanaud whispered in Frobisher's ear:
+
+"They have not yet reached the Val Terzon.  Come!"
+
+They crept over the mat of grass and weeds to the back of the house.
+A short flight of stone steps, patched with mould, descended from a
+terrace; at the back of the terrace were shuttered windows.  But in
+the corner of the house, on a level with the garden, there was a
+door.  Once more Moreau stooped, and once more a door swung inwards
+without a sound.  But whereas the garden door had let through some
+gleam of twilight, this door opened upon the blackness of the pit.
+Jim Frobisher shrank back from it, not in physical fear but in an
+appalling dread that some other man than he, wearing his clothes and
+his flesh, would come out of that door again.  His heart came to a
+standstill, and then Hanaud pushed him gently into the passage.  The
+door was closed behind them, an almost inaudible sound told him that
+now the door was locked.
+
+"Listen!" Hanaud whispered sharply.  His trained ear had caught a
+sound in the house above them.  And in a second Frobisher heard it
+too, a sound regular and continuous and very slight, but in that
+uninhabited house filled with uttermost blackness, very daunting.
+Gradually the explanation dawned upon Jim.
+
+"It's a clock ticking," he said under his breath.
+
+"Yes!  A clock ticking away in the empty house!" returned Hanaud.
+And though his answer was rather breathed than whispered, there was a
+queer thrill in it the sound of which Jim could not mistake.  The
+hunter had picked up his spoor.  Just beyond the quarry would come in
+view.
+
+Suddenly a thread of light gleamed along the passage, lit up a short
+flight of stairs and a door on the right at the head of them, and
+went out again.  Hanaud slipped his electric torch back into his
+pocket and, passing Moreau, took the lead.  The door at the head of
+the stairs opened with a startling whine of its hinges.  Frobisher
+stopped with his heart in his throat, though what he feared he could
+not have told even himself.  Again the thread of light shone, and
+this time it explored.  The three found themselves in a stone-flagged
+hall.
+
+Hanaud crossed it, extinguished his torch and opened a door.  A
+broken shutter, swinging upon a hinge, enabled them dimly to see a
+gallery which stretched away into the gloom.  The faint light
+penetrating from the window showed them a high double door leading to
+some room at the back of the house.  Hanaud stole over the boards and
+laid his ear to the panel.  In a little while he was satisfied; his
+hand dropped to the knob and a leaf of the door opened noiselessly.
+Once more the torch glowed.  Its beam played upon the high ceiling,
+the tall windows shrouded in heavy curtains of red silk brocade, and
+revealed to Frobisher's amazement a room which had a look of daily
+use.  All was orderly and clean, the furniture polished and in good
+repair; there were fresh flowers in the vases, whose perfume filled
+the air; and it was upon the marble chimney-piece of this room that
+the clock ticked.
+
+The room was furnished with lightness and elegance, except for one
+fine and massive press, with double doors in marquetry, which
+occupied a recess near to the fireplace.  Girandoles with mirrors and
+gilt frames, now fitted with electric lights, were fixed upon the
+walls, with a few pictures in water-colour.  A chandelier glittering
+with lustres hung from the ceiling, an Empire writing-table stood
+near the window, a deep-cushioned divan stretched along the wall
+opposite the fire-place.  So much had Frobisher noticed when the
+light again went out.  Hanaud closed the door upon the room again.
+
+"We shall be hidden in the embrasure of any of these windows," Hanaud
+whispered, when they were once more in the long gallery.  "No light
+will be shown here with that shutter hanging loose, we may be sure.
+Meanwhile let us watch and be very silent."
+
+They took their stations in the deep shadows by the side of the
+window with the broken shutter.  They could see dimly the courtyard
+and the great carriage doors in the wall at the end of it, and they
+waited; Jim Frobisher under such a strain of dread and expectancy
+that each second seemed an hour, and he wondered at the immobility of
+his companions.  The only sound of breathing that he heard came from
+his own lungs.
+
+In a while Hanaud laid a hand upon his sleeve, and the clasp of the
+hand tightened and tightened.  Motionless though he stood like a man
+in a seizure, Hanaud too was in the grip of an intense excitement.
+For one of the great leaves of the courtyard door was opening
+silently.  It opened just a little way and as silently closed again.
+But some one had slipped in--so vague and swift and noiseless a
+figure that Jim would have believed his imagination had misled him
+but for a thicker blot of darkness at the centre of the great door.
+There some one stood now who had not stood there a minute before, as
+silent and still as any of the watchers in the gallery, and more
+still than one.  For Hanaud moved suddenly away on the tips of his
+toes into the deepest of the gloom and, sinking down upon his heels,
+drew his watch from his pocket.  He drew his coat closely about it
+and for a fraction of a second flashed his torchlight on the dial.
+It was now five minutes past twelve.
+
+"It is the time," he breathed as he crept back to his place.  "Listen
+now!"
+
+A minute passed and another.  Frobisher found himself shivering as a
+man shivers at a photographer's when he is told by the operator to
+keep still.  He had a notion that he was going to fall.  Then a
+distant noise caught his ear, and at once his nerves grew steady.  It
+was the throb of a motor-cycle, and it grew louder and louder.  He
+felt Hanaud stiffen at his side.  Hanaud had been right, then!  The
+conviction deepened in his mind.  When all had been darkness and
+confusion to him, Hanaud from the first had seen clearly.  But what
+had he seen?  Frobisher was still unable to answer that question, and
+whilst he fumbled amongst conjectures a vast relief swept over him.
+For the noise of the cycle had ceased altogether.  It had roared
+through some contiguous street and gone upon its way into the open
+country.  Not the faintest pulsation of its engine was any longer
+audible.  That late-faring traveller had taken Dijon in his stride.
+
+In a revulsion of relief he pictured him devouring the road, the glow
+of his lamp putting the stars to shame, the miles leaping away behind
+him; and suddenly the pleasant picture was struck from before his
+vision and his heart fluttered up into his throat.  For the leaf of
+the great coach-door was swung wider, and closed again, and the
+motor-cycle with its side-car was within the courtyard.  The rider
+had slipped out his clutch and stopped his engine more than a hundred
+yards away in the other street.  His own impetus had been enough and
+more than enough to swing him round the corner along the road and
+into the courtyard.  The man who had closed the door moved to his
+side as he dismounted.  Between them they lifted something from the
+side-car and laid it on the ground.  The watchman held open the door
+again, the cyclist wheeled out his machine, the door was closed, a
+key turned in the lock.  Not a word had been spoken, not an
+unnecessary movement made.  It had all happened within the space of a
+few seconds.  The man waited by the gate, and in a little while from
+some other street the cyclist's engine was heard once more to throb.
+His work was done.
+
+Jim Frobisher wondered that Hanaud should let him go.  But Hanaud had
+eyes for no one but the man who was left behind and the big package
+upon the ground under the blank side wall.  The man moved to it,
+stooped, raised it with an appearance of effort, then stood upright
+holding it in his arms.  It was something shapeless and long and
+heavy.  So much the watchers in the gallery could see, but no more.
+
+The man in the courtyard moved towards the door without a sound; and
+Hanaud drew his companions back from the window of the broken
+shutter.  Quick as they were, they were only just in time to escape
+from that revealing twilight.  Already the intruder with his burden
+stood within the gallery.  The front door was unlatched, that was
+clear.  It had needed but a touch to open it.  The intruder moved
+without a sound to the double door, of which Hanaud had opened one
+leaf.  He stood in front of it, pushed it with his foot and both the
+leaves swung inwards.  He disappeared into the room.  But the faint
+misty light had fallen upon him for a second, and though none could
+imagine who he was, they all three saw that what he carried was a
+heavy sack.
+
+Now, at all events, Hanaud would move, thought Frobisher.  But he did
+not.  They all heard the man now, but not his footsteps.  It was just
+the brushing of his clothes against furniture: then came a soft,
+almost inaudible sound, as though he had laid his burden down upon
+the deep-cushioned couch: then he himself reappeared in the doorway,
+his arms empty, his hat pressed down upon his forehead, and a dim
+whiteness where his face should be.  But dark as it was, they saw the
+glitter of his eyes.
+
+"It will be now," Frobisher said to himself, expecting that Hanaud
+would leap from the gloom and bear the intruder to the ground.
+
+But this man, too, Hanaud let go.  He closed the doors again, drawing
+the two leaves together, and stole from the gallery.  No one heard
+the outer door close, but with a startling loudness some metal thing
+rang upon stone, and within the house.  Even Jim Frobisher understood
+that the outer door had been locked and the key dropped through the
+letter slot.  The three men crept back to their window.  They saw the
+intruder cross the courtyard, open one leaf of the coach door, peer
+this way and that and go.  Again a key tinkled upon stones.  The key
+of the great door had been pushed or kicked underneath it back into
+the courtyard.  The clocks suddenly chimed the quarter.  To
+Frobisher's amazement it was a quarter-past twelve.  Between the
+moment when the cyclist rode his car in at the doors and now, just
+five minutes had elapsed.  And again, but for the three men, the
+house was empty.
+
+Or was it empty?
+
+For Hanaud had slipped across to the door of the room and opened it;
+and a slight sound broke out of that black room, as of some living
+thing which moved uneasily.  At Jim Frobisher's elbow Hanaud breathed
+a sigh of relief.  Something, it seemed, had happened for which he
+had hardly dared to hope; some great dread he knew with certainty had
+not been fulfilled.  On the heels of that sigh a sharp loud click
+rang out, the release of a spring, the withdrawal of a bolt.  Hanaud
+drew the door swiftly to and the three men fell back.  Some one had
+somehow entered that room, some one was moving quietly about it.
+From the corner of the corridor in which they had taken refuge, the
+three men saw the leaves of the door swing very slowly in upon their
+hinges.  Some one appeared upon the threshold, and stood motionless,
+listening, and after a few seconds advanced across the gallery to the
+window.  It was a girl--so much they could determine from the contour
+of her head and the slim neck.  To the surprise of those three a
+second shadow flitted to her side.  Both of them peered from the
+window into the courtyard.  There was nothing to tell them there
+whether the midnight visitors had come and gone or not yet come at
+all.  One of them whispered:
+
+"The key!"
+
+And the other, the shorter one, crept into the hall and returned with
+the key which had been dropped through the letter slot in her hand.
+The taller of the two laughed, and the sound of it, so clear, so
+joyous like the trill of a bird, it was impossible for Jim Frobisher
+even for a second to mistake.  The second girl standing at the window
+of this dark and secret house, with the key in her hand to tell her
+that all that had been plotted had been done, was Betty Harlowe.  Jim
+Frobisher had never imagined a sound so sinister, so alarming, as
+that clear, joyous laughter lilting through the silent gallery.  It
+startled him, it set his whole faith in the world shuddering.
+
+"There must be some good explanation," he argued, but his heart was
+sinking amidst terrors.  Of what dreadful event was that laughter to
+be the prelude?
+
+The two figures at the window flitted back across the gallery.  It
+seemed that there was no further reason for precautions.
+
+"Shut the door, Francine," said Betty in her ordinary voice.  And
+when this was done, within the room the lights went on.  But time and
+disuse had warped the doors.  They did not quite close, and between
+them a golden strip of light showed like a wand.
+
+"Let us see now!" cried Betty.  "Let us see," and again she laughed;
+and under the cover of her laughter the three men crept forward and
+looked in: Moreau upon his knees, Frobisher stooping above him,
+Hanaud at his full height behind them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: _The Corona Machine_
+
+The detective's hand fell softly upon Frobisher's shoulder warning
+him to silence; and this warning was needed.  The lustres of the big
+glass chandelier were so many flashing jewels; the mirrors of the
+girandoles multiplied their candle-lamps; the small gay room was
+ablaze; and in the glare Betty stood and laughed.  Her white
+shoulders rose from a slim evening frock of black velvet; from her
+carefully dressed copper hair to her black satin shoes she was as
+trim as if she had just been unpacked from a bandbox; and she was
+laughing whole-heartedly at a closed sack on the divan, a sack which
+jerked and flapped grotesquely like a fish on a beach.  Some one was
+imprisoned within that sack.  Jim Frobisher could not doubt who that
+some one was, and it seemed to him that no sound more soulless and
+cruel had ever been heard in the world than Betty's merriment.  She
+threw her head back: Jim could see her slender white throat working,
+her shoulders flashing and shaking.  She clapped her hands with a
+horrible glee.  Something died within Frobisher's breast as he heard
+it.  Was it in his heart, he wondered?  It was, however, to be the
+last time that Betty Harlowe laughed.
+
+"You can get her out, Francine," she said, and whilst Francine with a
+pair of scissors cut the end of the sack loose, she sat down with her
+back to it at the writing-table and unlocked a drawer.  The sack was
+cut away and thrown upon the floor, and now on the divan Ann Upcott
+lay in her gleaming dancing-dress, her hands bound behind her back,
+and her ankles tied cruelly together.  Her hair was dishevelled, her
+face flushed, and she had the look of one quite dazed.  She drew in
+deep breaths of air, with her bosom labouring.  But she was unaware
+for the moment of her predicament or surroundings, and her eyes
+rested upon Francine and travelled from her to Betty's back without a
+gleam of recognition.  She wrenched a little at her wrists, but even
+that movement was instinctive; and then she closed her eyes and lay
+still, so still that but for her breathing the watchers at the door
+would hardly have believed that she still lived.
+
+Betty, meanwhile, lifted from the open drawer, first a small bottle
+half-filled with a pale yellow liquid, and next a small case of
+morocco leather.  From the case she took a hypodermic syringe and its
+needle, and screwed the two parts together.
+
+"Is she ready?" Betty asked as she removed the stopper from the
+bottle.
+
+"Quite, Mademoiselle," answered Francine.  She began with a giggle,
+but she looked at the prisoner as she spoke and she ended with a
+startled gasp.  For Ann was looking straight at her with the
+strangest, disconcerting stare.  It was impossible to say whether she
+knew Francine or knowing her would not admit her knowledge.  But her
+gaze never faltered, it was actually terrifying by its fixity, and in
+a sharp, hysterical voice Francine suddenly cried out:
+
+"Turn your eyes away from me, will you?" and she added with a shiver:
+"It's horrible, Mademoiselle!  It's like a dead person watching you
+as you move about the room."
+
+Betty turned curiously towards the divan and Ann's eyes wandered off
+to her.  It seemed as though it needed just that interchange of
+glances to awaken her.  For as Betty resumed her work of filling the
+hypodermic syringe from the bottle, a look of perplexity crept into
+Ann Upcott's face.  She tried to sit up, and finding that she could
+not, tore at the cords which bound her wrists.  Her feet kicked upon
+the divan.  A moan of pain broke from her lips, and with that
+consciousness returned to her.
+
+"Betty!" she whispered, and Betty turned with the needle ready in her
+hand.  She did not speak, but her face spoke for her.  Her upper lip
+was drawn back a little from her teeth, and there was a look in her
+great eyes which appalled Jim Frobisher outside the door.  Once
+before he had seen just that look--when Betty was lying on Mrs.
+Harlowe's bed for Hanaud's experiment and he had lingered in the
+treasure-room with Ann Upcott.  It had been inscrutable to him then,
+but it was as plain as print now.  It meant murder.  And so Ann
+Upcott understood it.  Helpless as she was, she shrank back upon the
+divan; in a panic she spoke with faltering lips and her eyes fixed
+upon Betty with a dreadful fascination.
+
+"Betty!  You had me taken and brought here!  You sent me to Madame Le
+Vay's--on purpose.  Oh!  The letter, then!  The anonymous
+letter!"--and a new light broke in upon Ann's mind, a new terror
+shook her.  "You wrote it!  Betty, you!  You--the Scourge!"
+
+She sank back and again struggled vainly with her bonds.  Betty rose
+from her chair and crossed the room towards her, the needle shining
+bright in her hand.  Her hapless prisoner saw it.
+
+"What's that?" she cried, and she screamed aloud.  The extremity of
+her horror lent to her an unnatural strength.  Somehow she dragged
+herself up and got her feet to the ground.  Somehow she stood
+upright, swaying as she stood.
+
+"You are going to----" she began, and broke off.  "Oh, no!  You
+couldn't!  You couldn't!"
+
+Betty put out a hand and laid it on Ann's shoulder and held her so
+for a moment, savouring her vengeance.
+
+"Whose face was it bending so close down over yours in the darkness?"
+she asked in a soft and dreadful voice.  "Whose face, Ann?  Guess!"
+She shook her swaying prisoner with a gentleness as dreadful as her
+quiet voice.  "You talk too much.  Your tongue's dangerous, Ann.  You
+are too curious, Ann!  What were you doing in the treasure-room
+yesterday evening with your watch in your hand?  Eh?  Can't you
+answer, you pretty fool?"  Then Betty's voice changed.  It remained
+low and quiet, but hatred crept into it, a deep, whole-hearted hatred.
+
+"You have been interfering with me too, haven't you, Ann?  Oh, we
+both understand very well!"  And Hanaud's hand tightened upon
+Frobisher's shoulder.  Here was the real key and explanation of
+Betty's hatred.  Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more,
+might at any moment light upon the whole truth.  Yes!  Ann Upcott's
+disappearance would look like a panic-stricken flight, would have the
+effect of a confession--no doubt!  But above all these
+considerations, paramount in Betty Harlowe's mind was the resolve at
+once to punish and rid herself of a rival.
+
+"All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my way!" she
+said.  "And here's your reward for it, Ann.  Yes.  I had you bound
+hand and foot and brought here.  The water-lily!"  She looked her
+victim over as she stood in her delicate bright frock, her white silk
+stockings and satin slippers, swaying in terror.  "Fifteen minutes,
+Ann!  That fool of a detective was right!  Fifteen minutes!  That's
+all the time the arrow-poison takes!"
+
+Ann's eyes opened wide.  The blood rushed into her white face and
+ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.
+
+"Arrow-poison!" she cried.  "Betty!  It was you, then!  Oh!" she
+would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe pushed her shoulder
+gently and she fell back upon the divan.  That Betty had been guilty
+of that last infamy--the murder of her benefactress--not until this
+moment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected.  It was clear to her,
+too, that there was not the slightest hope for her.  She burst
+suddenly into a storm of tears.
+
+Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and watched her
+closely and curiously with a devilish enjoyment.  The sound of the
+girl's sobbing was music in her ears.  She would not let it flag.
+
+"You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and alone," she said
+in a low voice, bending over her, "To-morrow Espinosa will put you
+under one of the stone flags in the kitchen.  But to-night you shall
+lie just as you are.  Come!"
+
+She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her arm with one
+hand and advancing the needle with the other; and a piercing scream
+burst from Francine Rollard.
+
+"Look!" she cried, and she pointed to the door.  It was open and
+Hanaud stood upon the threshold.
+
+Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from her face.  She
+sat like an image of wax, staring at the open doorway, and a moment
+afterwards with a gesture swift as lightning she drove the needle
+into the flesh of her own arm and emptied it.
+
+Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to prevent her, but
+Hanaud roughly thrust him back.
+
+"I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere," he said with a savage
+note in his voice, which Jim had not heard before; and Betty Harlowe
+dropped the needle on to the couch, whence it rolled to the floor.
+
+She sprang up now to her full height, her heels together, her arms
+outstretched from her sides.
+
+"Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud," she cried with bravado.  "I am
+safe from you."
+
+Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptuously in her face.
+
+"Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn't kill."
+
+Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself.
+
+"Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!" she said.
+
+"We shall see."
+
+The confidence of his tone convinced her.  She flashed across the
+room to her writing-table.  Swift as she was, Hanaud met her there.
+
+"Ah, no!" he cried.  "That's quite a different thing!"  He seized her
+wrists.  "Moreau!" he called, with a nod towards Francine.  "And you,
+Monsieur Frobisher, will you release that young lady, if you please!"
+
+Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and locked her safely
+away.  Jim seized upon the big scissors and cut the cords about Ann's
+wrists and ankles, and unwound them.  He was aware that Hanaud had
+flung the chair from the writing-table into an open space, that Betty
+was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had forced her into
+the chair and snatched up one of the cords which Frobisher had
+dropped upon the floor.  When he had finished his work, he saw that
+Betty was sitting with her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to
+one of the legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his
+handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled.  Betty had bitten him
+like a wild animal caught in a trap.
+
+"Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning I met you,"
+Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you didn't wear a wrist-watch,
+because you hated things on your wrists.  My apologies!  I had
+forgotten!"
+
+He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand into the
+drawer.  He drew out a small cardboard box and removed the lid.
+
+"Five!" he said.  "Yes!  Five!"
+
+He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who was standing
+against the wall with a face like death.
+
+"Look!"
+
+There were five white tablets in the box.
+
+"We know where the sixth is.  Or, rather, we know where it was.  For
+I had it analysed to-day.  Cyanide of potassium, my friend!  Crunch
+one of them between your teeth and--fifteen minutes?  Not a bit of
+it!  A fraction of a second!  That's all!"
+
+Frobisher leaned forward and whispered in Hanaud's ear.  "Leave them
+within her reach!"
+
+His first instinctive thought had been to hinder Betty from
+destroying herself.  Now he prayed that she might, and with so
+desperate a longing that a deep pity softened Hanaud's eyes.
+
+"I must not, Monsieur," he said gently.  He turned to Moreau.  "There
+is a cab waiting at the corner of the Maison Crenelle," and Moreau
+went in search of it.  Hanaud went over to Ann Upcott, who was
+sitting upon the divan her head bowed, her body shivering.  Every now
+and then she handled and eased one of her tortured wrists.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, standing in front of her, "I owe you an
+explanation and an apology.  I never from the beginning--no, not for
+one moment--believed that you were guilty of the murder of Madame
+Harlowe.  I was sure that you had never touched the necklace of pink
+pearls--oh, at once I was sure, long before I found it.  I believed
+every word of the story you told us in the garden.  But none of this
+dared I shew you.  For only by pretending that I was convinced of
+your guilt, could I protect you during this last week in the Maison
+Crenelle."
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied with a wan effort at a smile.
+
+"But, for to-night, I owe you an apology," he continued.  "I make it
+with shame.  That you were to be brought back here to the tender
+mercies of Mademoiselle Betty, I hadn't a doubt.  And I was here to
+make sure you should be spared them.  But I have never in my life had
+a more difficult case to deal with, so clear a conviction in my own
+mind, so little proof to put before a court.  I had to have the
+evidence which I was certain to find in this room to-night.  But I
+ask you to believe me that if I had imagined for a moment the cruelty
+with which you were to be handled, I should have sacrificed this
+evidence.  I beg you to forgive me."
+
+Ann Upcott held out her hand.
+
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she replied simply, "but for you I should not be
+now alive.  I should be lying here in the dark and alone, as it was
+promised to me, waiting for Espinosa--and his spade."  Her voice
+broke and she shuddered violently so that the divan shook on which
+she sat.
+
+"You must forget these miseries," he said gently.  "You have youth,
+as I told you once before.  A little time and----"
+
+The return of Nicolas Moreau interrupted him; and with Moreau came a
+couple of gendarmes and Girardot the Commissary.
+
+"You have Francine Rollard?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"You can hear her," Moreau returned dryly.
+
+In the corridor a commotion arose, the scuffling of feet and a
+woman's voice screaming abuse.  It died away.
+
+"Mademoiselle here will not give you so much trouble," said Hanaud.
+
+Betty was sitting huddled in her chair, her face averted and sullen,
+her lips muttering inaudible words.  She had not once looked at Jim
+Frobisher since he had entered the room; nor did she now.
+
+Moreau stooped and untied her ankles and a big gendarme raised her
+up.  But her knees failed beneath her; she could not stand; her
+strength and her spirit had left her.  The gendarme picked her up as
+if she had been a child; and as he moved to the door, Jim Frobisher
+planted himself in front of him.
+
+"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was strong and resonant.  "Monsieur
+Hanaud, you have said just now that you believed every word of
+Mademoiselle Ann's story."
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You believe then that Madame Harlowe was murdered at half-past ten
+on the night of the 27th of April.  And at half-past ten Mademoiselle
+here was at Monsieur de Pouillac's ball!  You will set her free."
+
+Hanaud did not argue the point.
+
+"And what of to-night?" he asked.  "Stand aside, if you please!"
+
+Jim held his ground for a moment or two, and then drew aside.  He
+stood with his eyes closed, and such a look of misery upon his face
+as Betty was carried out that Hanaud attempted some clumsy word of
+condolence:
+
+"This has been a bitter experience for you, Monsieur Frobisher," he
+began.
+
+"Would that you had taken me into your confidence at the first!" Jim
+cried volubly.
+
+"Would you have believed me if I had?" asked Hanaud, and Jim was
+silent.  "As it was, Monsieur Frobisher, I took a grave risk which I
+know now I had not the right to take and I told you more than you
+think."
+
+He turned away towards Moreau.
+
+"Lock the courtyard doors and the door of the house after they have
+gone and bring the keys here to me."
+
+Girardot had made a bundle of the solution, the hypodermic syringe,
+the tablets of cyanide, and the pieces of cord.
+
+"There is something here of importance," Hanaud observed and,
+stooping at the writing-table, he picked up a square, flat-topped
+black case.  "You will recognise this," he remarked to Jim as he
+handed it to Girardot.  It was the case of a Corona typewriting
+machine; and from its weight, the machine itself was clearly within
+the case.
+
+"Yes," Hanaud explained, as the door closed upon the Commissary.
+"This pretty room is the factory where all those abominable letters
+were prepared.  Here the information was filed away for use; here the
+letters were typed; from here they were issued."
+
+"Blackmailing letters!" cried Jim.  "Letters demanding money!"
+
+"Some of them," answered Hanaud.
+
+"But Betty Harlowe had money.  All that she needed, and more if she
+chose to ask for it."
+
+"All that she needed?  No," answered Hanaud with a shake of the head.
+"The blackmailer never has enough money.  For no one is so
+blackmailed."
+
+A sudden and irrational fury seized upon Frobisher.  They had agreed,
+he and Hanaud, that there was a gang involved in all these crimes.
+It might be that Betty was of them, yes, even led them, but were they
+all to go scot-free?
+
+"There are others," he exclaimed.  "The man who rode this
+motor-cycle----"
+
+"Young Espinosa," replied Hanaud.  "Did you notice his accent when
+you stopped at the fork of the roads in the Val Terzon?  He did not
+mount his cycle again.  No!"
+
+"And the man who carried in the--the sack?"
+
+"Maurice Thevenet," said Hanaud.  "That promising young novice.  He
+is now at the Depot.  He will never get that good word from me which
+was to unlock Paris for him."
+
+"And Espinosa himself--who was to come here to-morrow----" he stopped
+abruptly with his eyes on Ann.
+
+"And who murdered Jean Cladel, eh?" Hanaud went on.  "A fool that
+fellow!  Why use the Catalan's knife in the Catalan's way?"  Hanaud
+looked at his watch.  "It is over.  No doubt Espinosa is under lock
+and key by now.  And there are others, Monsieur, of whom you have
+never heard.  The net has been cast wide to-night.  Have no fear of
+that!"
+
+Moreau returned with the keys and handed them to Hanaud.  Hanaud put
+them into a pocket and went over to Ann Upcott.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I shall not trouble you with any questions to-night.
+To-morrow you will tell me why you went to Madame Le Vay's ball.  It
+was given out that you meant to run away.  That, of course, was not
+true.  You shall give me the real reason to-morrow and an account of
+what happened to you there."
+
+Ann shivered at the memories of that night, but she answered quietly.
+
+"Yes.  I will tell you everything."
+
+"Good.  Then we can go," said Hanaud cheerfully.
+
+"Go?" Ann Upcott asked in wonderment.  "But you have had us all
+locked in."
+
+Hanaud laughed.  He had a little surprise to spring on the girl, and
+he loved surprises so long as they were of his own contriving.
+
+"Monsieur Frobisher, I think, must have guessed the truth.  This
+house, Mademoiselle, the Hôtel de Brebizart is very close, as the
+crow flies, to the Maison Crenelle.  There is one row of houses, the
+houses of the street of Charles-Robert, between.  It was built by
+Etienne Bouchart de Crenelle, President of the Parliament during the
+reign of Louis the Fifteenth, a very dignified and important figure;
+and he built it, Mademoiselle--this is the point--at the same time
+that he built the Maison Crenelle.  Having built it, he installed in
+it a joyous lady of the province from which it takes its name--Madame
+de Brebizart.  There was no scandal.  For the President never came
+visiting Madame de Brebizart.  And for the best of reasons.  Between
+this house and the Maison Crenelle he had constructed a secret
+passage in that age of secret passages."
+
+Frobisher was startled.  Hanaud had given credit to him for an
+astuteness which he did not possess.  He had been occupied heart and
+brain by the events of the evening, so rapidly had they followed one
+upon the other, so little time had they allowed for speculations.
+
+"How in the world did you discover this?" he asked.
+
+"You shall know in due time.  For the moment let us content ourselves
+with the facts," Hanaud continued.  "After the death of Etienne de
+Crenelle, at some period or another the secret of this passage was
+lost.  It is clear, too, I think that it fell into disrepair and
+became blocked.  At all events at the end of the eighteenth century,
+the Hôtel de Brebizart passed into other hands than those of the
+owner of the Maison Crenelle.  Simon Harlowe, however, discovered the
+secret.  He bought back the Hôtel de Brebizart, restored the passage
+and put it to the same use as old Etienne de Crenelle had done.  For
+here Madame Raviart came to live during the years before the death of
+her husband set her free to marry Simon.  There!  My little lecture
+is over.  Let us go!"
+
+He bowed low to Ann like a lecturer to his audience and unlatched the
+double doors of the big buhl cabinet in the recess of the wall.  A
+cry of surprise broke from Ann, who had risen unsteadily to her feet.
+The cabinet was quite empty.  There was not so much as a shelf, and
+all could see that the floor of it was tilted up against one end and
+that a flight of steps ran downwards in the thickness of the wall.
+
+"Come," said Hanaud, producing his electric torch.  "Will you take
+this, Monsieur Frobisher, and go first with Mademoiselle.  I will
+turn out the lights and follow."
+
+But Ann with a little frown upon her forehead drew sharply back.  She
+put a hand to Hanaud's sleeve and steadied herself by it.  "I will
+come with you," she said.  "I am not very steady on my legs."
+
+She laughed her action off but both men understood it.  Jim Frobisher
+had thought her guilty--guilty of theft and murder.  She shrank from
+him to the man who had had no doubt that she was innocent.  And even
+that was not all.  She was wounded by Jim's distrust more deeply than
+any one else could have wounded her.  Frobisher inclined his head in
+acknowledgment and, pressing the button of the torch, descended five
+or six of the narrow steps.  Moreau followed him.
+
+"You are ready, Mademoiselle?  So!" said Hanaud.
+
+He put an arm about her to steady her and pressed up a switch by the
+open doors of the cabinet.  The room was plunged in darkness.  Guided
+by the beam of light, they followed Frobisher on to the steps.
+Hanaud closed the doors of the cabinet and fastened them together
+with the bolts.
+
+"Forward," he cried, "and you, Mademoiselle, be careful of your heels
+on these stone steps."
+
+When his head was just below the level of the first step he called
+upon Frobisher to halt and raise the torch.  Then he slid the floor
+board of the cabinet back into its place.  Beneath this a trap-door
+hung downwards.  Hanaud raised it and bolted it in place.
+
+"We can go on."
+
+Ten more steps brought them to a tiny vaulted hall.  From that a
+passage, bricked and paved, led into darkness.  Frobisher led the way
+along the passage until the foot of another flight of steps was
+reached.
+
+"Where do these steps lead, my friend?" Hanaud asked of Frobisher,
+his voice sounding with a strange hollowness in that tunnel.  "You
+shall tell me."
+
+Jim, with memories of that night when he and Ann and Betty had sat in
+the dark of the perfumed garden and Ann's eyes had searched this way
+and that amidst the gloom of the sycamores, answered promptly:
+
+"Into the garden of the Maison Crenelle."
+
+Hanaud chuckled.
+
+"And you, Mademoiselle, what do you say?"
+
+Ann's face clouded over.
+
+"I know now," she said gravely.  Then she shivered and drew her cloak
+slowly about her shoulders.  "Let us go up and see!"
+
+Hanaud took the lead.  He lowered a trap-door at the top of the
+steps, touched a spring and slid back a panel.
+
+"Wait," said he, and he sprang out and turned on a light.
+
+Ann Upcott, Jim Frobisher and Moreau climbed out of Simon Harlowe's
+Sedan chair into the treasure room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: _The Truth About the Clock on the Marquetry
+Cabinet_
+
+To the amazement of them all Moreau began to laugh.  Up till now he
+had been alert, competent and without expression.  Stolidity had been
+the mark of him.  And now he laughed in great gusts, holding his
+sides and then wringing his hands, as though the humour of things was
+altogether unbearable.  Once or twice he tried to speak, but laughter
+leapt upon the words and drowned them.
+
+"What in the world is the matter with you, Nicolas?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"But I beg your pardon," Moreau stammered, and again merriment seized
+and mastered him.  At last two intelligible words were heard.  "We,
+Girardot," he cried, settling an imaginary pair of glasses on the
+bridge of his nose, and went off into a fit.  Gradually the reason of
+his paroxysms was explained in broken phrases.
+
+"We, Girardot!--We fix the seals upon the doors--And all the time
+there is a way in and out under our nose!  These rooms must not be
+disturbed--No!  The great Monsieur Hanaud is coming from Paris to
+look at them.  So we seal them tight, we, Girardot.  My God! but we,
+Girardot look the fool!  So careful and pompous with our linen bands!
+We, Girardot shall make the laughter at the Assize Court!  Yes, yes,
+yes!  I think, we, Girardot shall hand in our resignation before the
+trial is over?"
+
+Perhaps Moreau's humour was a little too professional for his
+audience.  Perhaps, too, the circumstances of that night had dulled
+their appreciation; certainly Moreau had all the laughter to himself.
+Jim Frobisher was driven to the little Louis Quinze clock upon the
+marquetry cabinet.  He never could for a moment forget it.  So much
+hung for Betty Harlowe upon its existence.  Whatever wild words she
+might have used to-night, there was the incontrovertible testimony of
+the clock to prove that she had had no hand whatever in the murder of
+Mrs. Harlowe.  He drew his own watch from his pocket and compared it
+with the clock.
+
+"It is exact to the minute," he declared with a little accent of
+triumph.  "It is now twenty-three minutes past one----" and suddenly
+Hanaud was at his side with a curious air of alertness.
+
+"Is it so?" he asked, and he too made sure by a comparison with his
+own watch that Frobisher's statement was correct.  "Yes.
+Twenty-three minutes past one.  That is very fortunate."
+
+He called Ann Upcott and Moreau to him and they all now stood grouped
+about the cabinet.
+
+"The key to the mystery about this clock," he remarked, "is to be
+found in the words which Mademoiselle Ann used, when the seals were
+removed from the doors and she saw this clock again, in the light of
+day.  She was perplexed.  Isn't that so, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes," Ann returned.  "It seemed to me--it seems to me still--that
+the clock was somehow placed higher than it actually is----"
+
+"Exactly.  Let us put it to the test!"
+
+He looked at the clock and saw that the hands now reached twenty-six
+minutes past one.
+
+"I will ask you all to go out of this room and wait in the hall in
+the dark.  For it was in the dark, you will remember, that
+Mademoiselle descended the stairs.  I shall turn the lights out here
+and call you in.  When I do, Mademoiselle will switch the lights on
+and off swiftly, just as she did it on the night of the 27th of
+April.  Then I think all will be clear to you."
+
+He crossed to the door leading into the hall, and found it locked
+with the key upon the inside.
+
+"Of course," he said, "when the passage is used to the Hôtel de
+Brebizart, this door would be locked."
+
+He turned the key and drew the door towards him.  The hall gaped
+before them black and silent.  Hanaud stood aside.
+
+"If you please!"
+
+Moreau and Frobisher went out; Ann Upcott hesitated and cast a look
+of appeal towards Hanaud.  Her perplexities were to be set at rest.
+She did not doubt that.  This man had saved her from death when it
+seemed that nothing could save her.  Her trust in him was absolute.
+But her perplexities were unimportant.  Some stroke was to be
+delivered upon Betty Harlowe from which there could be no recovery.
+Ann Upcott was not a good hater of Betty's stamp.  She shrank from
+the thought that it was to be her hand which would deliver that
+stroke.
+
+"Courage, Mademoiselle!"
+
+Hanaud exhorted her with a friendly smile and Ann joined the others
+in the dark hall.  Hanaud closed the door upon them and returned to
+the clock.  It was twenty-eight minutes past one.
+
+"I have two minutes," he said to himself.  "That will just do if I am
+quick."
+
+Outside the three witnesses waited in the darkness.  One of the three
+shivered suddenly so that her teeth rattled in her mouth.
+
+"Ann," Jim Frobisher whispered and he put his hand within her arm.
+Ann Upcott had come to the end of her strength.  She clung to his
+hand spasmodically.
+
+"Jim!" she answered under her breath.  "Oh, but you were cruel to me!"
+
+Hanaud's voice called to them from within the room.
+
+"Come!"
+
+Ann stepped forward, felt for and found the handle.  She threw open
+the door with a nervous violence.  The treasure-room was pitch dark
+like the hall.  Ann stepped through the doorway and her fingers
+reached for the switch.
+
+"Now," she warned them in a voice which shook.
+
+Suddenly the treasure-room blazed with light; as suddenly it was
+black again; and in the darkness rose a clamour of voices.
+
+"Half-past ten!  I saw the hour!" cried Jim.
+
+"And again the clock was higher!" exclaimed Ann.
+
+"That is true," Moreau agreed.
+
+Hanaud's voice, from the far corner of the room, joined in.
+
+"Is that exactly what you saw, Mademoiselle, on the night of the
+twenty-seventh?"
+
+"Exactly, Monsieur."
+
+"Then turn on the lights again and know the truth!"
+
+The injunction was uttered in tones so grave that it sounded like a
+knell.  For a second or two Ann's fingers refused their service.
+Once more the conviction forced itself into her mind.  Some
+irretrievable calamity waited upon the movement of her hand.
+
+"Courage, Mademoiselle!"
+
+Again the lights shone, and this time they remained burning.  The
+three witnesses advanced into the room, and as they looked again,
+from close at hand and with a longer gaze, a cry of surprise broke
+from all of them.
+
+There was no clock upon the marquetry cabinet at all.
+
+But high above it in the long mirror before which it stood there was
+the reflection of a clock, its white face so clear and bright that
+even now it was difficult to disbelieve that this was the clock
+itself.  And the position of the hands gave the hour as precisely
+half-past ten.
+
+"Now turn about and see!" said Hanaud.
+
+The clock itself stood upon the shelf of the Adam mantelpiece and
+there staring at them, the true hour was marked.  It was exactly
+half-past one; the long minute hand pointing to six, the shorter hour
+hand on the right-hand side of the figure twelve, half-way between
+the one and the two.  With a simultaneous movement they all turned
+again to the mirror; and the mystery was explained.  The shorter
+hour-hand seen in the mirror was on the left-hand side of the figure
+twelve, and just where it would have been if the hour had been
+half-past ten and the clock actually where its reflection was.  The
+figures on the dial were reversed and difficult at a first glance to
+read.
+
+"You see," Hanaud explained, "it is the law of nature to save itself
+from effort even in the smallest things.  We live with clocks and
+watches.  They are as customary as our daily bread.  And with the
+instinct to save ourselves from effort, we take our time from the
+position of the hands.  We take the actual figures of the hours for
+granted.  Mademoiselle comes out of the dark.  In the one swift flash
+of light she sees the hands upon the clock's face.  Half-past ten!
+She herself, you will remember, Monsieur Frobisher, was surprised
+that the hour was so early.  She was cold, as though she had slept
+long in her arm-chair.  She had the impression that she had slept
+long.  And Mademoiselle was right.  For the time was half-past one,
+and Betty Harlowe had been twenty minutes home from Monsieur de
+Pouillac's ball."
+
+Hanaud ended with a note of triumph in his voice which exasperated
+Frobisher.
+
+"Aren't you going a little too fast?" he asked.  "When the seals were
+removed and we entered this room for the first time, the clock was
+not upon the mantelshelf but upon the marquetry cabinet."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"Mademoiselle Upcott told us her story before luncheon.  We entered
+this room after luncheon.  During the luncheon hours the position of
+the clock was changed."  He pointed to the Sedan chair.  "You know
+now with what ease that could be done."
+
+"'Could, could!'" Frobisher repeated impatiently.  "It doesn't follow
+that it was done."
+
+"That is true," Hanaud replied.  "So I will answer now one of the
+questions in your memorandum.  What was it that I saw from the top of
+the Terrace Tower?  I saw the smoke rising from this chimney into the
+air.  Oh, Monsieur, I had paid attention to this house, its windows,
+and its doors, and its chimney-stacks.  And there at midday, in all
+the warmth of late May, the smoke was rising from the chimney of the
+sealed room.  There was an entrance then of which we knew nothing!
+And somebody had just made use of it.  Who?  Ask yourself that!  Who
+went straight out from the Maison Crenelle the moment I had gone, and
+went alone?  That clock had to be changed.  Apparently some letters
+also had to be burnt."
+
+Jim hardly heard the last sentence.  The clock still occupied his
+thoughts.  His great argument had been riddled; his one dream of
+establishing Betty's innocence in despite of every presumption and
+fact which could be brought against her had been dispelled.  He
+dropped on to a chair.
+
+"You understood it all so quickly," he said with bitterness.
+
+"Oh, I was not quick!" Hanaud answered.  "Ascribe to me no gifts out
+of the ordinary run, Monsieur.  I am trained--that is all.  I have
+been my twenty minutes in the bull-ring.  Listen how it came about!"
+He looked at Frobisher with a comical smile.  "It is a pity our eager
+young friend, Maurice Thevenet, is not here to profit by the lesson.
+First of all, then!  I knew that Mademoiselle Betty was here doing
+something of great importance.  It may be only burning those letters
+in the hearth.  It may be more.  I must wait and see.  Good!  There,
+standing before the mirror, Mademoiselle Ann makes her little remark
+that the clock seemed higher.  Do I understand yet?  No, no!  But I
+am interested.  Then I notice a curious thing, a beautiful specimen
+of Benvenuto Cellini's work set up high and flat on that mantelshelf
+where no one can see it.  So I take it down, and I carry it to the
+window, and I admire it very much and I carry it back to the
+mantelshelf; and then I notice four little marks upon the wood which
+had been concealed by the flat case of the jewel; and those four
+little marks are just the marks which the feet of that very pretty
+Louis Quinze clock might have made, had it stood regularly there--in
+its natural place.  Yes, and the top of that marquetry cabinet so
+much lower than the mantelshelf is too the natural place for the
+Cellini jewel.  Every one can see it there.  So I say to myself: 'My
+good Hanaud, this young lady has been rearranging her ornaments.'
+But do I guess why?  No, my friend.  I told you once, and I tell you
+again very humbly, that we are the servants of Chance.  Chance is a
+good mistress if her servants do not go to sleep; and she treated me
+well that afternoon.  See!  I am standing in the hall, in great
+trouble about this case.  For nothing leads me anywhere.  There is a
+big old-fashioned barometer like a frying-pan on the wall behind me
+and a mirror on the opposite wall in front of me.  I raise my eyes
+from the floor and by chance I see in the mirror the barometer behind
+me.  By chance my attention is arrested.  For I see that the
+indicator in the barometer points to stormy weather--which is
+ridiculous.  I turn me about so.  It is to fine weather that the
+indicator points.  And in a flash I see.  I look at the position of
+the hand without looking at the letters.  If I look the barometer in
+the face the hand points to the fair weather.  If I turn my back and
+look into the mirror the hand points to the stormy weather.  Now
+indeed I have it!  I run into the treasure-room.  I lock the door,
+for I do not wish to be caught.  I do not move the clock.  No, no,
+for nothing in the world will I move that clock.  But I take out my
+watch.  I face the mirror.  I hold my watch facing the mirror, I open
+the glass and I move the hands until in the mirror they seem to mark
+half-past ten.  Then I look at my watch itself.  It is half-past one.
+So now I know!  Do I want more proof?  Monsieur, I get it.  For as I
+unlock the door and open it again, there is Mademoiselle Betty face
+to face with me!  That young girl!  Even though already I suspect her
+I get a shock, I can tell you.  The good God knows that I am hardened
+enough against surprises.  But for a moment the mask had slipped from
+her face.  I felt a trickle of ice down my spine.  For out of her
+beautiful great eyes murder looked."
+
+He stood held in a spell by the memory of that fierce look.  "Ugh,"
+he grunted; and he shook himself like a great dog coming up out of
+the water.
+
+"But you are talking too much, Monsieur Frobisher," he cried in a
+different voice, "and you are keeping Mademoiselle from her bed,
+where she should have been an hour ago.  Come!"
+
+He drove his companions out into the hall, turned on the lights,
+locked the door of the treasure-room and pocketed the key.
+
+"Mademoiselle, we will leave these lights burning," he said gently to
+Ann, "and Moreau will keep watch in the house.  You have nothing to
+fear.  He will not be far from your door.  Good night."
+
+Ann gave him her hand with a wan smile.
+
+"I shall thank you to-morrow," she said, and she mounted the stairs
+slowly, her feet dragging, her body swaying with her fatigue.
+
+Hanaud watched her go.  Then he turned to Frobisher with a whimsical
+smile.
+
+"What a pity!" he said.  "You--she!  No?  After all, perhaps----" and
+he broke off hurriedly.  Frobisher was growing red and beginning to
+look "proper"; and the last thing which Hanaud wished to do was to
+offend him in this particular.
+
+"I make my apologies," he said.  "I am impertinent and a gossip.  If
+I err, it is because I wish you very well.  You understand that?
+Good!  Then a further proof.  To-morrow Mademoiselle will tell us
+what happened to her to-night, how she came to go to the house of
+Madame Le Vay--everything.  I wish you to be present.  You shall know
+everything.  I shall tell you myself step by step, how my conclusions
+were reached.  All your questions shall be answered.  I shall give
+you every help, every opportunity.  I shall see to it that you are
+not even called as a witness of what you have seen to-night.  And
+when all is over, Monsieur, you will see with me that whatever there
+may be of pain and distress, the Law must take its course."
+
+It was a new Hanaud whom Frobisher was contemplating now.  The
+tricks, the Gasconnades, the buffooneries had gone.  He did not even
+triumph.  A dignity shone out of the man like a strong light, and
+with it he was gentle and considerate.
+
+"Good night, Monsieur!" he said, and bowed; and Jim on an impulse
+thrust out his hand.
+
+"Good night!" he returned.
+
+Hanaud took it with a smile of recognition and went away.
+
+Jim Frobisher locked the front door and with a sense of desolation
+turned back to the hall.  He heard the big iron gates swing to.  They
+had been left open, of course, he recognised, in the usual way when
+one of the household was going to be late.  Yes, everything had been
+planned with the care of a commander planning a battle.  Here in this
+house, the servants were all tucked up in their beds.  But for
+Hanaud, Betty Harlowe might at this very moment have been stealing up
+these stairs noiselessly to her own room, her dreadful work
+accomplished.  The servants would have waked to-morrow to the
+knowledge that Ann Upcott had fled rather than face a trial.
+Sometime in the evening, Espinosa would have called, would have been
+received in the treasure-room, would have found the spade waiting for
+him in the great stone-vaulted kitchen of the Hôtel de Brebizart.
+Oh, yes, all dangers had been foreseen--except Hanaud.  Nay, even he
+in a measure had been foreseen!  For a panic-stricken telegram had
+reached Frobisher and Haslitt before Hanaud had started upon his work.
+
+"I shall be on the stairs, Monsieur, below Mademoiselle's door, if
+you should want me," said Moreau.
+
+Jim Frobisher roused himself from his reflections.
+
+"Thank you," he answered, and he went up the stairs to his room.  A
+lot of use to Betty that telegram had been, he reflected bitterly!
+"Where was she to-night?" he asked, and shut up his mind against the
+question.
+
+He was to know that it was precisely that panic-stricken telegram and
+nothing else which had brought Betty Harlowe's plans crashing about
+her ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: _Ann Upcott's Story_
+
+Early the next morning Hanaud rang up the Maison Crenelle and made
+his appointment for the afternoon.  Jim accordingly spent the morning
+with Monsieur Bex, who was quite overwhelmed with the story which was
+told to him.
+
+"Prisoners have their rights nowadays," he said.  "They can claim the
+presence of their legal adviser when they are being examined by the
+Judge.  I will go round at once to the Prefecture"; with his head
+erect and his little chest puffed out like a bantam cock, he hurried
+to do battle for his client.  There was no battle to be waged,
+however.  Certainly Monsieur Bex's unhappy client was for the moment
+_au secret_.  She would not come before the Judge for a couple of
+days.  It was the turn of Francine Rollard.  Every opportunity was to
+be given to the defence, and Monsieur Bex would certainly be granted
+an interview with Betty Harlowe, if she so wished, before she was
+brought up in the Judge's office.
+
+Monsieur Bex returned to the Place Etienne Dolet to find Jim
+Frobisher restlessly pacing his office.  Jim looked up eagerly, but
+Monsieur Bex had no words of comfort.
+
+"I don't like it!" he cried.  "It displeases me.  I am not happy.
+They are all very polite--yes.  But they examine the maid first.
+That's bad, I tell you," and he tapped upon the table.  "That is
+Hanaud.  He knows his affair.  The servants.  They can be made to
+talk, and this Francine Rollard----"  He shook his head.  "I shall
+get the best advocate in France."
+
+Jim left him to his work and returned to the Maison Crenelle.  It was
+obvious that nothing of these new and terrible developments of the
+"Affaire Waberski" had yet leaked out.  There was not a whisper of it
+in the streets, not a loiterer about the gates of the Maison
+Crenelle.  The "Affaire Waberski" had, in the general view, become a
+stale joke.  Jim sent up word to Ann Upcott in her room that he was
+removing his luggage to the hotel in the Place Darcy, and leaving the
+house to her where he prayed her to remain.  Even at that moment
+Ann's lips twitched a little with humour as she read the embarrassed
+note.
+
+"He is very correct, as Monsieur Bex would say," she reflected, "and
+proper enough to make every nerve of Monsieur Hanaud thrill with
+delight."
+
+Jim returned in the afternoon and once more in the shade of the
+sycamores whilst the sunlight dappled the lawn and the bees hummed
+amongst the roses, Ann Upcott told a story of terror and darkness,
+though to a smaller audience.  Certain additions were made to the
+story by Hanaud.
+
+"I should never have dreamed of going to Madame Le Vay's Ball," she
+began, "except for the anonymous letter," and Hanaud leaned forward
+alertly.
+
+The anonymous letter had arrived whilst she, Betty and Jim Frobisher
+were sitting at dinner.  It had been posted therefore in the middle
+of the day and very soon after Ann had told her first story in the
+garden.  Ann opened the envelope expecting a bill, and was amazed and
+a little terrified to read the signature, "The Scourge."  She was
+more annoyed than ever when she read the contents, but her terror had
+decreased.  "The Scourge" bade her attend the Ball.  He gave her
+explicit instructions that she should leave the ball-room at
+half-past ten, follow a particular corridor leading to a wing away
+from the reception-rooms, and hide behind the curtains in a small
+library.  If she kept very still she would overhear in a little while
+the truth about the death of Mrs. Harlowe.  She was warned to tell no
+one of her plan.
+
+"I told no one then," Ann declared.  "I thought the letter just a
+malicious joke quite in accord with 'The Scourge's' character.  I put
+it back into its envelope.  But I couldn't forget it.  Suppose that
+by any chance there was something in it--and I didn't go!  Why should
+'The Scourge' play a trick on me, who had no money and was of no
+importance?  And all the while the sort of hope which no amount of
+reasoning can crush, kept growing and growing!"
+
+After dinner Ann took the letter up to her sitting-room and believed
+it and scorned herself for believing it, and believed it again.  That
+afternoon she had almost felt the handcuffs on her wrists.  There was
+no chance which she ought to refuse of clearing herself from
+suspicion, however wild it seemed!
+
+Ann made up her mind to consult Betty, and ran down to the
+treasure-room, which was lit up but empty.  It was half-past nine
+o'clock.  Ann determined to wait for Betty's return, and was once
+more perplexed by the low position of the clock upon the marquetry
+cabinet.  She stood in front of it, staring at it.  She took her own
+watch in her hand, with a sort of vague idea that it might help her.
+And indeed it was very likely to.  Had she turned its dial to the
+mirror behind the clock, the truth would have leapt at her.  But she
+had not the time.  For a slight movement in the room behind her
+arrested her attention.
+
+She turned abruptly.  The room was empty.  Yet without doubt it was
+from within the room that the faint noise had come.  And there was
+only one place from which it could have come.  Some one was hiding
+within the elaborate Sedan chair with its shining grey panels, its
+delicate gold beading.  Ann was uneasy rather than frightened.  Her
+first thought was to ring the bell by the fire-place--she could do
+that well out of view of the Sedan chair--and carry on until Gaston
+answered it.  There were treasures enough in the room to repay a
+hundred thieves.  Then, without arguing at all, she took the bolder
+line.  She went quietly towards the chair, advancing from the back,
+and then with a rush planted herself in front of the glass doors.
+
+She started back with a cry of surprise.  The rail in front of the
+doors was down, the doors were open, and leaning back upon the
+billowy cushions sat Betty Harlowe.  She sat quite still, still as an
+image even after Ann had appeared and uttered a cry of surprise; but
+she was not asleep.  Her great eyes were blazing steadily out of the
+darkness of the chair in a way which gave Ann a curious shock.
+
+"I have been watching you," said Betty very slowly; and if ever there
+had been a chance that she would relent, that chance was gone for
+ever now.  She had come up out of the secret passage to find Ann
+playing with her watch in front of the mirror, seeking for an
+explanation of the doubt which troubled her and so near to it--so
+very near to it!  Ann heard her own death sentence pronounced in
+those words, "I have been watching you."  And though she did not
+understand the menace they conveyed, there was something in the slow,
+steady utterance of them which a little unnerved her.
+
+"Betty," she cried, "I want your advice."
+
+Betty came out of the chair and took the anonymous letter from her
+hand.
+
+"Ought I to go?" Ann Upcott asked.
+
+"It's your affair," Betty replied.  "In your place I should.  I
+shouldn't hesitate.  No one knows yet that there's any suspicion upon
+you."
+
+Ann put forward her objection.  To go from this house of mourning
+might appear an outrage.
+
+"You're not a relation," Betty argued.  "You can go privately, just
+before the time.  I have no doubt we can arrange it all.  But of
+course it's your affair."
+
+"Why should the Scourge help me?"
+
+"I don't suppose that he is, except indirectly," Betty reasoned.  "I
+imagine that he's attacking other people, and using you."  She read
+through the letter again.  "He has always been right, hasn't he?
+That's what would determine me in your place.  But I don't want to
+interfere."
+
+Ann spun round on her heel.
+
+"Very well.  I shall go."
+
+"Then I should destroy that letter"; and she made as if to tear it.
+
+"No!" cried Ann, and she held out her hand for it "I don't know
+Madame Le Vay's house very well.  I might easily lose my way without
+the instructions.  I must take it with me."
+
+Betty agreed and handed the letter back.
+
+"You want to go quite quietly," she said, and she threw herself heart
+and soul into the necessary arrangements.
+
+She would give Francine Rollard a holiday and herself help Ann to
+dress in her fanciful and glistening frock.  She wrote a letter to
+Michel Le Vay, Madame Le Vay's second son and one of Betty's most
+indefatigable courtiers.  Fortunately for himself, Michel Le Vay kept
+that letter, and it saved him from any charge of complicity in her
+plot.  For Betty used to him the same argument which had persuaded
+Jim Frobisher.  She wrote frankly that suspicion had centred upon Ann
+Upcott and that it was necessary that she should get away secretly.
+
+"All the plans have been made, Michel," she wrote.  "Ann will come
+late.  She is to meet the friends who will help her--it is best that
+you should know as little as possible about them--in the little
+library.  If you will keep the corridor clear for a little while,
+they can get out by the library doors into the park and be in Paris
+the next morning."
+
+She sealed up this letter without showing it to Ann and said, "I will
+send this by a messenger to-morrow morning, with orders to deliver it
+into Michel's own hands.  Now how are you to go?"
+
+Over that point the two girls had some discussion.  It would be
+inviting Hanaud's interference if the big limousine were ordered out.
+What more likely than that he should imagine Ann meant to run away
+and that Betty was helping her?  That plan certainly would not do.
+
+"I know," Betty cried.  "Jeanne Leclerc shall call for you.  You will
+be ready to slip out.  She shall stop her car for a second outside
+the gates.  It will be quite dark.  You'll be away in a flash."
+
+"Jeanne Leclerc!" Ann exclaimed, drawing back.
+
+It had always perplexed Ann that Betty, so exquisite and fastidious
+in her own looks and bearing, should have found her friends amongst
+the flamboyant and the cheap.  But she would rather throne it amongst
+her inferiors than take her place amongst her equals.  Under her
+reserved demeanour she was insatiable of recognition.  The desire to
+be courted, admired, looked up to as a leader and a chief, burned
+within her like a raging flame.  Jeanne Leclerc was of her company of
+satellites--a big, red-haired woman of excessive manners, not without
+good looks of a kind, and certainly received in the society of the
+town.  Ann Upcott not merely disliked, but distrusted her.  She had a
+feeling that there was something indefinably wrong in her very nature.
+
+"She will do anything for me, Ann," said Betty.  "That's why I named
+her.  I know that she is going to Madame Le Vay's dance."
+
+Ann Upcott gave in, and a second letter was written to Jeanne
+Leclerc.  This second letter asked Jeanne to call at the Maison
+Crenelle at an early hour in the morning; and Jeanne Leclerc came and
+was closeted with Betty for an hour between nine and ten.  Thus all
+the arrangements were made.
+
+It was at this point that Frobisher interrupted Hanaud's explanations.
+
+"No," he said.  "There remain Espinosa and the young brother to be
+accounted for."
+
+"Mademoiselle has just told us that she heard a slight noise in the
+treasure-room and found Betty Harlowe seated in the Sedan chair,"
+Hanaud replied.  "Betty Harlowe had just returned from the Hôtel de
+Brebizart, whither Espinosa went that night after it had grown dark
+and about the time when dinner was over in the Maison Crenelle....
+From the Hôtel de Brebizart Espinosa went to the Rue Gambetta and
+waited for Jean Cladel.  It was a busy night, that one, my friends.
+That old wolf, the Law, was sniffing at the bottom of the door.  They
+could hear him.  They had no time to waste!"
+
+The next night came.  Dinner was very late, Jim remembered.  It was
+because Betty was helping Ann to dress, Francine having been given
+her holiday.  Jim and Betty dined alone, and whilst they dined Ann
+Upcott stole downstairs, a cloak of white ermine hiding her pretty
+dress.  She held the front door a little open, and the moment Jeanne
+Leclerc's car stopped before the gates, she flashed across the
+courtyard.  Jeanne had the door of her car open.  It had hardly
+stopped before it went on again.  Jim, as the story was told,
+remembered vividly Betty's preoccupation whilst dinner went on, and
+the immensity of her relief when the hall door so gently closed and
+the car moved forward out of the street of Charles-Robert.  Ann
+Upcott had gone for good from the Maison Crenelle.  She would not
+interfere with Betty Harlowe any more.
+
+Jeanne Leclerc and Ann Upcott reached Madame Le Vay's house a few
+minutes after ten.  Michel Le Vay came forward to meet them.
+
+"I am so glad that you came, Mademoiselle," he said to Ann, "but you
+are late.  Madame my mother has left her place at the door of the
+ball-room, but we shall find her later."
+
+He took them to the cloak-room, and coming away they were joined by
+Espinosa.
+
+"You are going to dance now?" Michel Le Vay asked.  "No, not yet!
+Then Señor Espinosa will take you to the buffet while I look after
+others of our guests."
+
+He hurried away towards the ball-room, where a clatter of high voices
+competed with the music of the band.  Espinosa conducted the two
+ladies to the buffet.  There was hardly anybody in the room.
+
+"We are still too early," said Jeanne Leclerc in a low voice.  "We
+shall take some coffee."
+
+But Ann would not.  Her eyes were on the door, her feet danced, her
+hands could not keep still.  Was the letter a trick?  Would she,
+indeed, within the next few minutes learn the truth?  At one moment
+her heart sank into her shoes, at another it soared.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you neglect your coffee," said Espinosa urgently.
+"And it is good."
+
+"No doubt," Ann replied.  She turned to Jeanne Leclerc.  "You will
+send me home, won't you?  I shall not wait--afterwards."
+
+"But of course," Jeanne Leclerc agreed.  "All that is arranged.  The
+chauffeur has his orders.  You will take your coffee, dear?"
+
+Again Ann would not
+
+"I want nothing," she declared.  "It is time that I went."  She
+caught a swift and curious interchange of glances between Jeanne
+Leclerc and Espinosa, but she was in no mood to seek an
+interpretation.  There could be no doubt that the coffee set before
+her had had some drug slipped into it by Espinosa when he fetched it
+from the buffet to the little table at which they sat; a drug which
+would have half stupefied her and made her easy to manage.  But she
+was not to be persuaded, and she rose to her feet.
+
+"I shall get my cloak," she said, and she fetched it, leaving her two
+companions together.  She did not return to the buffet.
+
+On the far side of the big central hall a long corridor stretched
+out.  At the mouth of the corridor, guarding it, stood Michel Le Vay.
+He made a sign to her, and when she joined him:
+
+"Turn down to the right into the wing," he said in a low voice.  "The
+small library is in front of you."
+
+Ann slipped past him.  She turned into a wing of the house which was
+quite deserted and silent.  At the end of it a shut door confronted
+her.  She opened it softly.  It was all dark within.  But enough
+light entered from the corridor to show her the high bookcases ranged
+against the walls, the position of the furniture, and some dark,
+heavy curtains at the end.  She was the first, then, to come to the
+tryst.  She closed the door behind her and moved slowly and
+cautiously forwards with her hands outstretched, until she felt the
+curtains yield.  She passed in between them into the recess of a
+great bow window opening on to the park; and a sound, a strange,
+creaking sound, brought her heart into her mouth.
+
+Some one was already in the room, then.  Somebody had been quietly
+watching as she came in from the lighted corridor.  The sound grew
+louder.  Ann peered between the curtains, holding them apart with
+shaking hands, and through that chink from behind her a vague
+twilight flowed into the room.  In the far corner, near to the door,
+high up on a tall bookcase, something was clinging--something was
+climbing down.  Whoever it was, had been hiding behind the ornamental
+top of the heavy mahogany book-case; was now using the shelves like
+the rungs of a ladder.
+
+Ann was seized with a panic.  A sob broke from her throat.  She ran
+for the door.  But she was too late.  A black figure dropped from the
+book-case to the ground and, as Ann reached out her hands to the
+door, a scarf was whipped about her mouth, stifling her cry.  She was
+jerked back into the room, but her fingers had touched the light
+switch by the door, and as she stumbled and fell, the room was
+lighted up.  Her assailant fell upon her, driving the breath out of
+her lungs, and knotted the scarf tightly at the back of her head.
+Ann tried to lift herself, and recognised with a gasp of amazement
+that the assailant who pinned her down by the weight of her body and
+the thrust of her knees was Francine Rollard.  Her panic gave place
+to anger and a burning humiliation.  She fought with all the strength
+of her supple body.  But the scarf about her mouth stifled and
+weakened her, and with a growing dismay she understood that she was
+no match for the hardy peasant girl.  She was the taller of the two,
+but her height did not avail her; she was like a child matched with a
+wildcat.  Francine's hands were made of steel.  She snatched Ann's
+arms behind her back and bound her wrists, as she lay face downwards,
+her bosom labouring, her heart racing so that she felt that it must
+burst.  Then, as Ann gave up the contest, she turned and tied her by
+the ankles.
+
+Francine was upon her feet again in a flash.  She ran to the door,
+opened it a little way and beckoned.  Then she dragged her prisoner
+up on to a couch, and Jeanne Leclerc and Espinosa slipped into the
+room.
+
+"It's done?" said Espinosa.
+
+Francine laughed.
+
+"Ah, but she fought, the pretty baby!  You should have given her the
+coffee.  Then she would have walked with us.  Now she must be
+carried.  She's wicked, I can tell you."
+
+Jeanne Leclerc twisted a lace scarf about the girl's face to hide the
+gag over her mouth, and, while Francine held her up, set her white
+cloak about her shoulders and fastened it in front.  Espinosa then
+turned out the light and drew back the curtains.
+
+The room was at the back of the house.  In the front of the window
+the park stretched away.  But it was the park of a French château,
+where the cattle feed up to the windows, and only a strip about the
+front terrace is devoted to pleasure-gardens and fine lawns.
+Espinosa looked out upon meadow-land thickly studded with trees, and
+cows dimly moving in the dusk of the summer night like ghosts.  He
+opened the window, and the throb of the music from the ball-room came
+faintly to their ears.
+
+"We must be quick," said Espinosa.
+
+He lifted the helpless girl in his arms and passed out into the park.
+They left the window open behind them, and between them they carried
+their prisoner across the grass, keeping where it was possible in the
+gloom of the trees, and aiming for a point in the drive where a
+motorcar waited half-way between the house and the gates.  A blur of
+light from the terrace and ornamental grounds in front of it became
+visible away upon their left, but here all was dark.  Once or twice
+they stopped and set Ann upon her feet, and held her so, while they
+rested.
+
+"A few more yards," Espinosa whispered and, stifling an oath, he
+stopped again.  They were on the edge of the drive now, and just
+ahead of him he saw the glimmer of a white dress and close to it the
+glow of a cigarette.  Swiftly he put Ann down again and propped her
+against a tree.  Jeanne Leclerc stood in front of her and, as the
+truants from the ball-room approached, she began to talk to Ann,
+nodding her head like one engrossed in a lively story.  Espinosa's
+heart stood still as he heard the man say:
+
+"Why, there are some others here!  That is curious.  Shall we see?"
+
+But even as he moved across the drive, the girl in the white dress
+caught him by the arm.
+
+"That would not be very tactful," she said with a laugh.  "Let us do
+as we would be done by," and the couple sauntered past.
+
+Espinosa waited until they had disappeared.  "Quick!  Let us go!" he
+whispered in a shaking voice.
+
+A few yards farther on they found Espinosa's closed car hidden in a
+little alley which led from the main drive.  They placed Ann in the
+car.  Jeanne Leclerc got in beside her, and Espinosa took the wheel.
+As they took the road to the Val Terzon a distant clock struck
+eleven.  Within the car Jeanne Leclerc removed the gag from Ann
+Upcott's mouth, drew the sack over her and fastened it underneath her
+feet.  At the branch road young Espinosa was waiting with his
+motor-cycle and side-car.
+
+"I can add a few words to that story, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud when
+she had ended.  "First, Michel Le Vay went later into the library,
+and bolted the window again, believing you to be well upon your way
+to Paris.  Second, Espinosa and Jeanne Leclerc were taken as they
+returned to Madame Le Vay's ball."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: _What Happened on the Night of the 27th_
+
+"We are not yet quite at the end," said Hanaud, as he sat with
+Frobisher for awhile upon the lawn after Ann Upcott had gone in.
+"But we are near to it.  There is still my question to be answered.
+'Why was the communicating door open between the bedroom of Madame
+Harlowe and the treasure-room on the night when Ann Upcott came down
+the stairs in the dark?'  When we know that, we shall know why
+Francine Rollard and Betty Harlowe between them murdered Madame
+Harlowe."
+
+"Then you believe Francine Rollard had a hand in that crime too?"
+asked Jim.
+
+"I am sure," returned Hanaud.  "Do you remember the experiment I
+made, the little scene of reconstruction?  Betty Harlowe stretched
+out upon the bed to represent Madame, and Francine whispering 'That
+will do now'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hanaud lit a cigarette and smiled.
+
+"Francine Rollard would not stand at the side of the bed.  No!  She
+would stand at the foot and whisper those simple but appalling words.
+But nowhere else.  That was significant, my friend.  She would not
+stand exactly where she had stood when the murder was committed."  He
+added softly, "I have great hopes of Francine Rollard.  A few days of
+a prison cell and that untamed little tiger-cat will talk."
+
+"And what of Waberski in all this?" Jim exclaimed.
+
+Hanaud laughed and rose from his chair.
+
+"Waberski?  He is for nothing in all this.  He brought a charge in
+which he didn't believe, and the charge happened to be true.  That is
+all."  He took a step or two away and returned.  "But I am wrong.
+That is not all.  Waberski is indeed for something in all this.  For
+when he was pressed to make good his charge and must rake up some
+excuse for it somehow, by a piece of luck he thinks of a morning when
+he saw Betty Harlowe in the street of Gambetta near to the shop of
+Jean Cladel.  And so he leads us to the truth.  Yes, we owe something
+to that animal Boris Waberski.  Did I not tell you, Monsieur, that we
+are all the servants of Chance?"
+
+Hanaud went from the garden and for three days Jim Frobisher saw him
+no more.  But the development which Monsieur Bex feared and for which
+Hanaud hoped took place, and on the third day Hanaud invited Jim to
+his office in the Prefecture.
+
+He had Jim's memorandum in his hand.
+
+"Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked.  "See!"  He pushed the
+memorandum in front of Jim and pointed to a paragraph.
+
+
+"But in the absence of any trace of poison in the dead woman's body,
+it is difficult to see how the criminal can be brought to justice
+except by:
+
+"(_a_) A confession.
+
+"(_b_) The commission of another crime of a similar kind.
+
+"Hanaud's theory--once a poisoner, always a poisoner."
+
+
+Frobisher read it through.
+
+"Now that is very true," said Hanaud.  "Never have I come across a
+case more difficult.  At every step we break down.  I think I have my
+fingers on Jean Cladel.  I am five minutes too late.  I think that I
+shall get some useful evidence from a firm in Paris.  The firm has
+ceased to be for the last ten years.  All the time I strike at air.
+So I must take a risk--yes, and a serious one.  Shall I tell you what
+that risk was?  I have to assume that Mademoiselle Ann will be
+brought alive to the Hôtel de Brebizart on that night of Madame Le
+Vay's ball.  That she would be brought back I had no doubt.  For one
+thing, there could be no safer resting-place for her than under the
+stone flags of the kitchen there.  For another, there was the
+portmanteau in the side-car.  It was not light, the portmanteau.
+Some friends of mine watched it being put into the side-car before
+young Espinosa started for his rendezvous.  I have no doubt it
+weighed just as many kilos as Mademoiselle Ann."
+
+"I never understood the reason of that portmanteau," Frobisher
+interrupted.
+
+"It was a matter of timing.  There were twenty-five kilometres of a
+bad track, with many sharp little twists between the Val Terzon and
+the Hôtel de Brebizart.  And a motor-cycle with an empty side-car
+would take appreciably longer to cover the distance than a cycle with
+a side-car weighted, which could take the corners at its top speed.
+They were anxious to get the exact time the journey would take with
+Ann Upcott in the side-car, so that there might be no needless
+hanging about waiting for its arrival.  But they were a little too
+careful.  Our friend Boris said a shrewd thing, didn't he?  Some
+crimes are discovered because the alibis are too unnaturally perfect.
+Oh, there was no doubt they meant to bring back Mademoiselle Ann!
+But suppose they brought her back dead!  It wasn't likely--no!  It
+would be so much easier to finish her off with a dose of the
+arrow-poison.  No struggle, no blood, no trouble at all.  I reckoned
+that they would dope her at Madame Le Vay's ball and bring her back
+half conscious, as indeed they meant to do.  But I shivered all that
+evening at the risk I had taken, and when that cycle shut off its
+engine, as we stood in the darkness of the gallery, I was in despair."
+
+He shook his shoulders uncomfortably as though the danger was not yet
+passed.
+
+"Anyway, I took the risk," he resumed, "and so we got fulfilled your
+condition (_b_).  The commission or, in this case, the attempted
+commission of another crime of the same kind."
+
+Frobisher nodded.
+
+"But now," said Hanaud, leaning forward, "we have got your condition
+(_a_) fulfilled--a confession; a clear and complete confession from
+Francine Rollard, and so many admissions from the Espinosas, and
+Jeanne Leclerc and Maurice Thevenet, that they amount to confessions.
+We have put them all together, and here is the new part of the case
+with which Monsieur Bex and you will have to deal--the charge not of
+murder attempted but of murder committed--the murder of Madame
+Harlowe."
+
+Jim Frobisher was upon the point of interrupting, but he thought
+better of it.
+
+"Go on!" he contented himself with saying.
+
+"Why Betty Harlowe took to writing anonymous letters, Monsieur--who
+shall say?  The dulness of life for a girl young and beautiful and
+passionate in a provincial town, as our friend Boris suggests?  The
+craving for excitement?  Something bad and vicious and abnormal born
+in her, part of her, and craving more and more expression as she grew
+in years?  The exacting attendance upon Madame?  Probably all of
+these elements combined to suggest the notion to her.  And suddenly
+it became easy for her.  She discovered a bill in that box in Madame
+Harlowe's bedroom, a receipted bill ten years old from the firm of
+Chapperon, builders, of the Rue de Batignolles in Paris.  You, by the
+way, saw an unburnt fragment of the bill in the ashes upon the hearth
+of the treasure-room.  This bill disclosed to her the existence of
+the hidden passage between the treasure-room and the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  For it was the bill of the builders who had repaired it
+at the order of Simon Harlowe.  An old typewriting machine belonging
+to Simon Harlowe and the absolute privacy of the Hôtel de Brebizart
+made the game easy and safe.  But as the opportunity grew, so did the
+desire.  Betty Harlowe tasted power.  She took one or two people into
+her confidence--her maid Francine, Maurice Thevenet, Jeanne Leclerc,
+and Jean Cladel, a very useful personage--and once started the circle
+grew; blackmail followed.  Blackmail of Betty Harlowe, you
+understand!  She, the little queen, became the big slave.  She must
+provide Thevenet with his mistress, Espinosa with his car and his
+house, Jeanne Leclerc with her luxuries.  So the anonymous letters
+become themselves blackmailing letters.  Maurice Thevenet knows the
+police side of Dijon and the province.  Jeanne Leclerc has a--friend,
+shall we say?--in the Director of an Insurance Company, and, believe
+me, for a blackmailer nothing is more important than to know
+accurately the financial resources of one's--let us say, clients.
+Thus the game went merrily on until money was wanted and it couldn't
+be raised.  Betty Harlowe looked around Dijon.  There was no one for
+the moment to exploit.  Yes, one person!  Let us do Betty Harlowe the
+justice to believe that the suggestion came from that promising young
+novice, Maurice Thevenet!  Who was that person, Monsieur Frobisher?"
+
+Even now Jim Frobisher was unable to guess the truth, led up to it
+though he had been by Hanaud's exposition.
+
+"Why, Madame Harlowe herself," Hanaud explained, and, as Jim
+Frobisher started back in a horror of disbelief, he continued: "Yes,
+it is so!  Madame Harlowe received a letter at dinner-time, just as
+Ann Upcott did, on the night of Monsieur de Pouillac's ball.  She
+took her dinner in bed, you may remember, that night.  That letter
+was shown to Jeanne Baudin the nurse, who remembers it very well.  It
+demanded a large sum of money, and something was said about a number
+of passionate letters which Madame Harlowe might not care to have
+published--not too much, you understand, but enough to make it clear
+that the liaison of Madame Raviart and Simon Harlowe was not a secret
+from the Scourge.  I'll tell you something else which will astonish
+you, Monsieur Frobisher.  That letter was shown not only to Jeanne
+Baudin, but to Betty Harlowe herself when she came to say good night
+and show herself in her new dance frock of silver tissue and her
+silver slippers.  It was no wonder that Betty Harlowe lost her head a
+little when I set my little trap for her in the library and pretended
+that I did not want to read what Madame had said to Jeanne Baudin
+after Betty Harlowe had gone off to her ball.  I hadn't one idea what
+a very unpleasant little trap it was!"
+
+"But wait a moment!" Frobisher interrupted.  "If Madame Harlowe
+showed this letter first of all to Jeanne Baudin, and afterwards to
+Betty Harlowe in Jeanne Baudin's presence, why didn't Jeanne Baudin
+speak of it at once to the examining magistrate when Waberski brought
+his accusation?  She kept silent!  Yes, she kept silent!"
+
+"Why shouldn't she?" returned Hanaud.  "Jeanne Baudin is a good and
+decent girl.  For her, Madame Harlowe had died a natural death in her
+sleep, the very form in which death might be expected to come for
+her.  Jeanne Baudin didn't believe a word of Waberski's accusation.
+Why should she rake up old scandals?  She herself proposed to Betty
+Harlowe to say nothing about the anonymous letter."
+
+Jim Frobisher thought over the argument and accepted it.  "Yes, I see
+her point of view," he admitted, and Hanaud continued his narrative.
+
+"Well, then, Betty Harlowe is off to her ball on the Boulevard
+Thiers.  Ann Upcott is in her sitting-room.  Jeanne Baudin has
+finished her offices for the night.  Madame Harlowe is alone.  What
+does she do?  Drink?  For that night--no!  She sits and thinks.  Were
+there any of the letters which passed between her and Simon Harlowe,
+before she was Simon Harlowe's wife, still existing?  She had thought
+to have destroyed them all.  But she was a woman, she might have
+clutched some back.  If there were any, where would they be?  Why in
+that house at the end of the secret passage.  Some such thoughts must
+have passed through her mind.  For she rose from her bed, slipped on
+her dressing-gown and shoes, unlocked the communicating door between
+her and the treasure-room and passed by the secret way into the empty
+Hôtel de Brebizart.  And what does she find there, Monsieur?  A room
+in daily use, a bundle of her letters ready in the top drawer of her
+Empire writing-table, and on the writing-table Simon's Corona
+machine, and the paper and envelopes of the anonymous letters.
+Monsieur, there is only one person who can have access to that room,
+the girl whom she has befriended, whom in her exacting way she no
+doubt loved.  And at eleven o'clock that night Francine Rollard is
+startled by the entrance of Madame Harlowe into her bedroom.  For a
+moment Francine fancied that Madame had been drinking.  She was very
+quickly better informed.  She was told to get up, to watch for Betty
+Harlowe's return and to bring her immediately to Madame Harlowe's
+bedroom.  At one o'clock Francine Rollard is waiting in the dark
+hall.  As Betty comes in from her party, Francine Rollard gives her
+the message.  Neither of these two girls know as yet how much of
+their villainies has been discovered.  But something at all events.
+Betty Harlowe bade Francine wait and ran upstairs silently to her
+room.  Betty Harlowe was prepared against discovery.  She had been
+playing with fire, and she didn't mean to be burnt.  She had the
+arrow-poison ready--yes, ready for herself.  She filled her
+hypodermic needle, and with that concealed in the palm of her glove
+she went to confront her benefactress.
+
+"You can imagine that scene, the outraged woman whose romance and
+tragedy were to be exploited blurting out her fury in front of
+Francine Rollard.  It wasn't Waberski who was to be stripped to the
+skin--no, but the girl in the pretty silver frock and the silver
+slippers.  You can imagine the girl, too, her purpose changing under
+the torrent of abuse.  Why should she use the arrow-poison to destroy
+herself when she can save everything--fortune, liberty, position--by
+murder?  Only she must be quick.  Madame's voice is rising in gusts
+of violence.  Even in that house of the old thick walls, Jeanne
+Baudin, some one, might be wakened by the clamour.  And in a moment
+the brutal thing is done.  Madame Harlowe is flung back upon her bed.
+Her mouth is covered and held by Francine Rollard.  The needle does
+its work.  'That will do now,' whispers Betty Harlowe.  But at the
+door of the treasure-room in the darkness Ann Upcott is standing,
+unable to identify the voice which whispered, just as you and I were
+unable, Monsieur, to identify a voice which whispered to us from the
+window of Jean Cladel's house, but taking deep into her memory the
+terrible words.  And neither of the murderesses knew it.
+
+"They go calmly about their search for the letters.  They cannot find
+them, because Madame had pushed them into the coffer of old bills and
+papers.  They rearrange the bed, they compose their victim in it as
+if she were asleep, they pass into the treasure-room, and they forget
+to lock the door behind them.  Very likely they visit the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  Betty Harlowe has the rest of the arrow-poison and the
+needle to put in some safe place, and where else is safe?  In the end
+when every care has been taken that not a scrap of incriminating
+evidence is left to shout 'Murder' the next morning, Betty creeps up
+the stairs to make sure that Ann Upcott is asleep; and Ann Upcott
+waking, stretches up her hands and touches her face.
+
+"That, Monsieur," and Hanaud rose to his feet, "is what you would
+call the case for the Crown.  It is the case which you and Monsieur
+Bex have to meet."
+
+Jim Frobisher made up his mind to say the things which he had almost
+said at the beginning of this interview.
+
+"I shall tell Monsieur Bex exactly what you have told me.  I shall
+give him every assistance that I personally or my firm can give.  But
+I have no longer any formal connection with the defence."
+
+Hanaud looked at Frobisher in perplexity.
+
+"I don't understand, Monsieur.  This is not the moment to renounce a
+client."
+
+"Nor do I," rejoined Frobisher.  "It is the other way about.
+Monsieur Bex put it to me very--how shall I say?"
+
+Hanaud supplied the missing word with a twitch of his lips.
+
+"Very correctly."
+
+"He told me that Mademoiselle did not wish to see me again."
+
+Hanaud walked over to the window.  The humiliation evident in
+Frobisher's voice and face moved him.  He said very gently, "I can
+understand that, can't you?  She has fought for a great stake all
+this last week, her liberty, her fortune, her good name--and you.
+Oh, yes," he continued, as Jim stirred at the table.  "Let us be
+frank!  And you, Monsieur!  You were a little different from her
+friends.  From the earliest moment she set her passions upon you.  Do
+you remember the first morning I came to the Maison Crenelle?  You
+promised Ann Upcott to put up there though you had just refused the
+same invitation from Betty Harlowe.  Such a fury of jealousy blazed
+in her eyes, that I had to drop my stick with a clatter in the hall
+lest she should recognise that I could not but have discovered her
+secret.  Well, having fought for this stake and lost, she would not
+wish to see you.  You had seen her, too, in her handcuffs and tied by
+the legs like a sheep.  I understand her very well."
+
+Jim Frobisher remembered that from the moment Hanaud burst into the
+room at the Hôtel de Brebizart, Betty had never once even looked at
+him.  He got up from his chair and took up his hat and stick.
+
+"I must go back to my partner in London with this story as soon as I
+have told it to Monsieur Bex," he said.  "I should like it complete.
+When did you first suspect Betty Harlowe?"
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"That, too, I shall tell you.  Oh, don't thank me!  I am not so sure
+that I should be so ready with all these confidences, if I was not
+certain what the verdict in the Assize Court must be.  I shall gather
+up for you the threads which are still loose, but not here."
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"See, it is past noon!  We shall once more have Philippe Le Bon's
+Terrace Tower to ourselves.  It may be, too, that we shall see Mont
+Blanc across all the leagues of France.  Come!  Let us take your
+memorandum and go there."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: _The Façade of Notre Dame_
+
+For a second time they were fortunate.  It was a day without mist or
+clouds, and the towering silver ridge hung in the blue sky distinct
+and magical.  Hanaud lit one of his black cigarettes and reluctantly
+turned away from it.
+
+"There were two great mistakes made," he said.  "One at the very
+beginning by Betty Harlowe.  One at the very end by me, and of the
+two mine was the least excusable.  Let us begin, therefore, at the
+beginning.  Madame Harlowe has died a natural death.  She is buried;
+Betty Harlowe inherits the Harlowe fortune.  Boris Waberski asks her
+for money and she snaps her the fingers.  Why should she not?  Ah,
+but she must have been very sorry a week later that she snapped her
+the fingers!  For suddenly he flings his bomb.  Madame Harlowe was
+poisoned by her niece Betty.  Imagine Betty Harlowe's feelings when
+she heard of that!  The charge is preposterous.  No doubt!  But it is
+also true.  A minute back she is safe.  Nothing can touch her.  Now
+suddenly her head is loose upon her neck.  She is frightened.  She is
+questioned in the examining magistrate's room.  The magistrate has
+nothing against her.  All will be well if she does not make a slip.
+But there is a good chance she may make a slip.  For she has done the
+murder.  Her danger is not any evidence which Waberski can bring, but
+just herself.  In two days she is still more frightened, for she
+hears that Hanaud is called in from Paris.  So she makes her mistake.
+She sends a telegram to you in London."
+
+"Why was that a mistake?" Frobisher asked quickly.
+
+"Because I begin to ask myself at once: 'How does Betty Harlowe know
+that Hanaud has been called in?' Oh, to be sure, I made a great
+fluster in my office about the treachery of my colleagues in Dijon.
+But I did not believe a word of that.  No!  I am at once curious
+about Betty Harlowe.  That is all.  Still, I am curious.  Well, we
+come to Dijon and you tell her that you have shown me that telegram."
+
+"Yes," Jim admitted.  "I did.  I remember, too," he added slowly,
+"that she put out her hand on the window sill--yes, as if to steady
+herself."
+
+"But she was quick to recover," returned Hanaud with a nod of
+appreciation.  "She must account for that telegram.  She cannot tell
+me that Maurice Thevenet sent a hurried word to her.  No!  So when I
+ask her if she has ever received one of these anonymous
+letters--which, remember, were my real business in Dijon--she says at
+once 'Yes, I received one on the Sunday morning which told me that
+Monsieur Hanaud was coming from Paris to make an end of me.'  That
+was quick, eh?  Yes, but I know it is a lie.  For it was not until
+the Sunday evening that any question of my being sent for arose at
+all.  You see Mademoiselle Betty was in a corner.  I had asked her
+for the letter.  She does not say that she has destroyed it, lest I
+should at once believe that she never received any such letter at
+all.  On the contrary she says that it is in the treasure-room which
+is sealed up, knowing quite well that she can write it and place it
+there by way of the Hôtel de Brebizart before the seals are removed.
+But for the letter to be in the treasure-room she must have received
+it on the Sunday morning, since it was on the Sunday morning that the
+seals were affixed.  She did not know when it was first proposed to
+call me in.  She draws a bow at a venture, and I know that she is
+lying; and I am more curious than ever about Betty Harlowe."
+
+He stopped.  For Jim Frobisher was staring at him with a look of
+horror in his eyes.
+
+"It was I then who put you on her track?--I who came out to defend
+her!" he cried.  "For it was I who showed you the telegram."
+
+"Monsieur Frobisher, that would not have mattered if Betty Harlowe
+had been, as you believed her, innocent," Hanaud replied gravely; and
+Frobisher was silent.
+
+"Well, then, after my first interview with Betty Harlowe, I went over
+the house whilst you and Betty talked together in the library!"
+
+"Yes," said Jim.
+
+"And in Mademoiselle Ann's sitting-room I found something which
+interested me at the first glance.  Now tell me what it was!" and he
+cocked his head at Jim with the hope that his riddle would divert him
+from his self-reproaches.  And in that to some extent he succeeded.
+
+"That I can guess," Frobisher answered with the ghost of a smile.
+"It was the treatise on Sporanthus."
+
+"Yes!  The arrow-poison!  The poison which leaves no trace!
+Monsieur, that poison has been my nightmare.  Who would be the first
+poisoner to use it?  How should I cope with him and prove that it
+brought no more security than arsenic or prussic-acid?  These are
+questions which have terrified me.  And suddenly, unexpectedly, in a
+house where a death from heart failure has just occurred, I find a
+dry-as-dust treatise upon the poison tucked away under a pile of
+magazines in a young lady's sitting-room.  I tell you I was
+staggered.  What was it doing there?  How did it come there?  I see a
+note upon the cover, indicating a page.  I turn to the page and
+there, staring at me, is an account of Simon Harlowe's perfect
+specimen of a poison-arrow.  The anonymous letters?  They are at once
+forgotten.  What if that animal Waberski, without knowing it, were
+right, and Madame Harlowe was murdered in the Maison Crenelle?  I
+must find that out.  I tuck the treatise up my back beneath my
+waistcoat and I go downstairs again, asking myself some questions.
+Is Mademoiselle Ann interested in such matters as Sporanthus
+Hispidus?  Or had she anything to hope for from Madame Harlowe's
+death?  Or did she perhaps not know at all that the treatise was
+under that pile of magazines upon the table at the side?  I do not
+know, and my head is rather in a whirl.  Then I catch that wicked
+look of Betty Harlowe at her friend--Monsieur, a revealing look!  I
+have not the demure and simple young lady of convention to deal with
+at all.  No.  I go away from the Maison Crenelle, still more curious
+about Betty Harlowe."
+
+Jim Frobisher sat quickly down at Hanaud's side.
+
+"Are you sure of that?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"Quite," Hanaud replied in wonder.
+
+"You have forgotten, haven't you, that immediately after you left the
+Maison Crenelle that day you had the _sergent-de-ville_ removed from
+its gates?"
+
+"No, I don't forget that at all," Hanaud answered imperturbably.
+"The _sergent-de-ville_ in his white trousers was an absurdity--worse
+than that, an actual hindrance.  There is little use in watching
+people who know that they are being watched.  So I remove the
+_sergent-de-ville_ and now I can begin really to watch those young
+ladies of the Maison Crenelle.  And that afternoon, whilst Monsieur
+Frobisher is removing his luggage from his hotel, Betty Harlowe goes
+out for a walk, is discreetly followed by Nicolas Moreau--and
+vanishes.  I don't blame Nicolas.  He must not press too close upon
+her heels.  She was in that place of small lanes about the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  No doubt it was through the little postern in the wall
+which we ourselves used a few days afterwards that she vanished.
+There was the anonymous letter to be written, ready for me to receive
+when the seals of the treasure-room were broken.  But I don't know
+that yet.  No!  All that I know is that Betty Harlowe goes out for a
+walk and is lost, and after an hour reappears in another street.
+Meanwhile I pass my afternoon examining so far as I can how these
+young ladies pass their lives and who are their friends.  An
+examination not very productive, and not altogether futile.  For I
+find some curious friends in Betty Harlowe's circle.  Now, observe
+this, Monsieur!  Young girls with advanced ideas, social, political,
+literary, what you will--in their case curious friends mean nothing!
+They are to be expected.  But with a young girl who is to all
+appearance leading the normal life of her class, the case is
+different.  In her case curious friends are--curious.  The Espinosas,
+Maurice Thevenet, Jeanne Leclerc--flashy cheap people of that
+type--how shall we account for them as friends of that delicate piece
+of china, Betty Harlowe?"
+
+Jim Frobisher nodded his head.  He, too, had been a trifle
+disconcerted by the familiarity between Espinosa and Betty Harlowe.
+
+"The evening," Hanaud continued, "which you spent so pleasantly in
+the cool of the garden with the young ladies, I spent with the
+Edinburgh Professor.  And I prepared a little trap.  Yes, and the
+next morning I came early to the Maison Crenelle and I set my little
+trap.  I replace the book about the arrows on the bookshelf in its
+obvious place."
+
+Hanaud paused in his explanation to take another black cigarette from
+his eternal blue bundle, and to offer one to Jim.
+
+"Then comes our interview with the animal Waberski; and he tells me
+that queer story about Betty Harlowe in the street of Gambetta close
+to the shop of Jean Cladel.  He may be lying.  He may be speaking the
+truth and what he saw might be an accident.  Yes!  But also it fits
+in with this theory of Madame Harlowe's murder which is now taking
+hold of me.  For if that poison was used, then some one who
+understood the composition of drugs must have made the solution from
+the paste upon the arrow.  I am more curious than ever about Betty
+Harlowe!  And the moment that animal has left me, I spring my trap;
+and I have a success beyond all my expectations.  I point to the
+treatise of the Edinburgh Professor.  It was not in its place
+yesterday.  It is to-day.  Who then replaced it?  I ask that question
+and Mademoiselle Ann is utterly at sea.  She knows nothing about that
+book.  That is evident as Mont Blanc over there in the sky.  On the
+other hand Betty Harlowe knows at once who has replaced that book;
+and in a most unwise moment of sarcasm, she allows me to see that she
+knows.  She knows that I found it yesterday, that I have studied it
+since and replaced it.  And she is not surprised.  No, for she knows
+where I found it.  I am at once like Waberski.  I know it in my heart
+that she put it under those magazines in Ann Upcott's room, although
+I do not yet know it in my head.  Betty Harlowe had prepared to
+divert suspicion from herself upon Ann Upcott, should suspicion
+arise.  But innocent people do not do that, Monsieur.
+
+"Then we go into the garden and Mademoiselle Ann tells us her story.
+Monsieur Frobisher, I said to you immediately afterwards that all
+great criminals who are women are great actresses.  But never in my
+life have I seen one who acted so superbly as Betty Harlowe while
+that story was being unfolded.  Imagine it!  A cruel murder has been
+secretly committed and suddenly the murderess has to listen to a true
+account of that murder in the presence of the detective who is there
+to fix the guilt!  There was some one at hand all the time--almost an
+eye-witness--perhaps an actual eye-witness.  For she cannot know that
+she is safe until the last word of the story is told.  Picture to
+yourself Betty Harlowe's feelings during that hour in the pleasant
+garden, if you can!  The questions which must have been racing
+through her mind!  Did Ann Upcott in the end creep forward and peer
+through the lighted doorway?  Does she know the truth--and has she
+kept it hidden until this moment when Hanaud and Frobisher are
+present and she can speak it safely?  Will her next words be 'And
+here at my side sits the murderess'?  Those must have been terrible
+moments for Betty Harlowe!"
+
+"Yet she gave no sign of any distress," Frobisher added.
+
+"But she took a precaution," Hanaud remarked.  "She ran suddenly and
+very swiftly into the house."
+
+"Yes.  You seemed to me on the point of stopping her."
+
+"And I was," continued Hanaud.  "But I let her go and she
+returned----"
+
+"With the photographs of Mrs. Harlowe," Frobisher interrupted.
+
+"Oh, with more than those photographs," Hanaud exclaimed.  "She
+turned her chair towards Mademoiselle Ann.  She sat with her
+handkerchief in her hand and her face against her handkerchief,
+listening--the tender, sympathetic friend.  But when Mademoiselle Ann
+told us that the hour of the murder was half-past ten, a weakness
+overtook her--could not but overtake her.  And in that moment of
+weakness she dropped her handkerchief.  Oh, she picked it up again at
+once.  Yes, but where the handkerchief had fallen her foot now
+rested, and when the story was all ended, and we got up from our
+chairs, she spun round upon her heel with a certain violence so that
+there was left a hole in that well-watered turf.  I was anxious to
+discover what it was that she had brought out from the house in her
+handkerchief, and had dropped with her handkerchief and had driven
+with all the weight of her body into the turf so that no one might
+see it.  In fact I left my gloves behind in order that I might come
+back and discover it.  But she was too quick for me.  She fetched my
+gloves herself, much to my shame that I, Hanaud, should be waited on
+by so exquisite a young lady.  However, I found it afterwards when
+you and Girardot and the others were all waiting for me in the
+library.  It was that tablet of cyanide of potassium which I showed
+to you in the Prefecture.  She did not know how much Ann Upcott was
+going to reveal.  The arrow-poison had been hidden away in the Hôtel
+de Brebizart.  But she had something else at hand--more rapid--death
+like a thunderbolt.  So she ran into the house for it.  I tell you,
+Monsieur, it wanted nerve to sit there with that tablet close to her
+mouth.  She grew very pale.  I do not wonder.  What I do wonder is
+that she did not topple straight off her chair in a dead faint before
+us all.  But no!  She sat ready to swallow that tablet at once if
+there were need, before my hand could stop her.  Once more I say to
+you, people who are innocent do not do that."
+
+Jim had no argument wherewith to answer.
+
+"Yes," he was forced to admit.  "She could have got the tablets no
+doubt from Jean Cladel."
+
+"Very well, then," Hanaud resumed.  "We have separated for luncheon
+and in the afternoon the seals are to be removed.  Before that takes
+place, certain things must be done.  The clock must be moved from the
+mantelshelf in the treasure-room on to the marquetry cabinet.  Some
+letters too must be burnt."
+
+"Yes.  Why?" Frobisher asked eagerly.
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The letters were burned.  It is difficult to say.  For my part I
+think those old letters between Simon Harlowe and Madame Raviart
+alluded too often to the secret passage.  But here I am guessing.
+What I learnt for certain during that luncheon hour is that there is
+a secret passage and that it runs from the treasure-room to the Hôtel
+de Brebizart.  For this time Nicolas Moreau makes no mistake.  He
+follows her to the Hôtel de Brebizart and I from this tower see the
+smoke rising from the chimney.  Look, Monsieur, there it is!  But no
+smoke rises from it to-day."
+
+He rose to his feet and turned his back upon Mont Blanc.  The trees
+in the garden, the steep yellow-patterned roof, and the chimneys of
+the Maison Crenelle stood out above the lesser buildings which
+surrounded them.  Only from one of the chimneys did the smoke rise
+to-day, and that one at the extreme end of the building where the
+kitchens were.
+
+"We are back then in the afternoon.  The seals are removed.  We are
+in Madame Harlowe's bedroom and something I cannot explain occurs."
+
+"The disappearance of the necklace," Frobisher exclaimed confidently;
+and Hanaud grinned joyfully.
+
+"See, I set a trap for you and at once you are caught!" he cried.
+"The necklace?  Oh, no, no!  I am prepared for that.  The guilt is
+being transferred to Mademoiselle Ann.  Good!  But it is not enough
+to hide the book about the arrow in her room.  No, we must provide
+her also with a motive.  Mademoiselle is poor; Mademoiselle inherits
+nothing.  Therefore the necklace worth a hundred thousand pounds
+vanishes, and you must draw from its vanishing what conclusion you
+will.  No, the little matter I cannot explain is different.  Betty
+Harlowe and our good Girardot pay a visit to Jeanne Baudin's bedroom
+to make sure that a cry from Madame's room could not be heard there."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Our good Girardot comes back."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But he comes alone.  That is the little thing I cannot explain.
+Where is Betty Harlowe?  I ask for her before I go into the
+treasure-room, and lo! very modestly and quietly she has slipped in
+amongst us again.  I am very curious about that, my friend, and I
+keep my eyes open for an explanation, I assure you."
+
+"I remember," said Frobisher.  "You stopped with your hand upon the
+door and asked for Mademoiselle Harlowe.  I wondered why you stopped.
+I attached no importance to her absence."
+
+Hanaud flourished his hand.  He was happy.  He was in the artist's
+mood.  The work was over, the long strain and pain of it.  Now let
+those outside admire!
+
+"Of all that the treasure-room had to tell us, you know, Monsieur
+Frobisher.  But I answer a question in your memorandum.  The instant
+I am in the room, I look for the mouth of that secret passage from
+the Hôtel de Brebizart.  At once I see.  There is only one place.
+The elegant Sedan chair framed so prettily in a recess of the wall.
+So I am very careful not to pry amongst its cushions for the poison
+arrow; just as I am very careful not to ask for the envelope with the
+post mark in which the anonymous letter was sent.  If Betty Harlowe
+thinks that she has overreached the old fox Hanaud--good!  Let her
+think so.  So we go upstairs and I find the explanation of that
+little matter of Betty Harlowe's absence which has been so troubling
+me."
+
+Jim Frobisher stared at him.
+
+"No," he said.  "I haven't got that.  We went into Ann Upcott's
+sitting-room.  I write my memorandum with the shaft of the poison
+arrow and you notice it Yes!  But the matter of Betty Harlowe's
+absence!  No, I haven't got that."
+
+"But you have," cried Hanaud.  "That pen!  It was not there in the
+pen-tray on the day before, when I found the book.  There was just
+one pen--the foolish thing young ladies use, a great goose-quill dyed
+red--and nothing else.  The arrow shaft had been placed there since.
+When?  Why, just now.  It is clear, that.  Where was that shaft of
+the poison-arrow before?  In one of two places.  Either in the
+treasure-room or in the Hôtel de Brebizart.  Betty Harlowe has
+fetched it away during that hour of freedom; she carries it in her
+dress; she seizes her moment when we are all in Madame Harlowe's
+bedroom and--pau, pau!--there it is in the pen-tray of Mademoiselle
+Ann, to make suspicion still more convincing!  Monsieur, I walk away
+with Monsieur Bex, who has some admirable scheme that I should search
+the gutters for a match-box full of pearls.  I agree--oh yes, that is
+the only way.  Monsieur Bex has found it!  On the other hand I get
+some useful information about the Maison Crenelle and the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  I carry that information to a very erudite gentleman in
+the Palace of the Departmental Archives, and the next morning I know
+all about the severe Etienne de Crenelle and the joyous Madame de
+Brebizart.  So when you and Betty Harlowe are rehearsing in the Val
+Terzon, Nicolas Moreau and I are very busy in the Hôtel de
+Brebizart--with the results which now are clear to you, and one of
+which I have not told you.  For the pearl necklace was in the drawer
+of the writing-table."
+
+Jim Frobisher took a turn across the terrace.  Yes, the story was
+clear to him now--a story of dark passions and vanity, and greed of
+power with cruelties for its methods.  Was there no spark of hope and
+cheer in all this desolation?  He turned abruptly upon Hanaud.  He
+wished to know the last hidden detail.
+
+"You said that you had made the inexcusable mistake.  What was it?"
+
+"I bade you read my estimate of Ann Upcott on the façade of the
+Church of Notre Dame."
+
+"And I did," cried Jim Frobisher.  He was still looking towards the
+Maison Crenelle, and his arm swept to the left of the house.  His
+fingers pointed at the Renaissance church with its cupolas and its
+loggia, to which Betty Harlowe had driven him.
+
+"There it is and under its porch is that terrible relief of the Last
+Judgment."
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud quietly.  "But that is the Church of St. Michel,
+Monsieur."
+
+He turned Frobisher about.  Between him and Mont Blanc, close at his
+feet, rose the slender apse of a Gothic church, delicate in its
+structure like a jewel.
+
+"That is the Church of Notre Dame.  Let us go down and look at the
+façade."
+
+Hanaud led Frobisher to the wonderful church and pointed to the
+frieze.  There Frobisher saw such images of devils half beast, half
+human, such grinning hog-men, such tortured creatures with heads
+twisted round so that they looked backwards, such old and drunken and
+vicious horrors as imagination could hardly conceive; and amongst
+them one girl praying, her sweet face tormented, her hands tightly
+clasped, an image of terror and faith, a prisoner amongst all these
+monsters imploring the passers-by for their pity and their help.
+
+"That, Monsieur Frobisher, is what I sent you out to see," said
+Hanaud gravely.  "But you did not see it."
+
+His face changed as he spoke.  It shone with kindness.  He lifted his
+hat.
+
+Jim Frobisher, with his eyes fixed in wonder upon that frieze, heard
+Ann Upcott's voice behind him.
+
+"And how do you interpret that strange work, Monsieur Hanaud?"  She
+stopped beside the two men.
+
+"That, Mademoiselle, I shall leave Monsieur Frobisher to explain to
+you."
+
+Both Ann Upcott and Jim Frobisher turned hurriedly towards Hanaud.
+But already he was gone.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+by A. E. W. Mason
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+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House of the Arrow, by A. E. W. Mason</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The House of the Arrow</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: A. E. W. Mason</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 26, 2022 [eBook #67514]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Al Haines</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW ***</div>
+
+<h1>
+<br /><br />
+  <i>The<br />
+  House of the Arrow</i><br />
+</h1>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  <i>By</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+  A. E. W. MASON<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  <i>New York<br />
+  George H. Doran Company</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  COPYRIGHT, 1924,<br />
+  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  Books by A. E. W. MASON<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  THE WINDING STAIR<br />
+  THE FOUR FEATHERS<br />
+  THE SUMMONS<br />
+  THE BROKEN ROAD<br />
+  MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY<br />
+  CLEMENTINA<br />
+  THE TURNSTILE<br />
+  THE TRUANTS<br />
+  AT THE VILLA ROSE<br />
+  RUNNING WATER<br />
+  THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER<br />
+  THE PHILANDERERS<br />
+  LAWRENCE CLAVERING<br />
+  THE WATCHERS<br />
+  A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE<br />
+  ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER TALES<br />
+  FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  CONTENTS<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  CHAPTER<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  ONE: <a href="#chap01"><i>Letters of Mark</i></a><br />
+  TWO: <a href="#chap02"><i>A Cry for Help</i></a><br />
+  THREE: <a href="#chap03"><i>Servants of Chance</i></a><br />
+  FOUR: <a href="#chap04"><i>Betty Harlowe</i></a><br />
+  FIVE: <a href="#chap05"><i>Betty Harlowe Answers</i></a><br />
+  SIX: <a href="#chap06"><i>Jim Changes His Lodging</i></a><br />
+  SEVEN: <a href="#chap07"><i>Exit Waberski</i></a><br />
+  EIGHT: <a href="#chap08"><i>The Book</i></a><br />
+  NINE: <a href="#chap09"><i>The Secret</i></a><br />
+  TEN: <a href="#chap10"><i>The Clock upon the Cabinet</i></a><br />
+  ELEVEN: <a href="#chap11"><i>A New Suspect</i></a><br />
+  TWELVE: <a href="#chap12"><i>The Breaking of the Seals</i></a><br />
+  THIRTEEN: <a href="#chap13"><i>Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room</i></a><br />
+  FOURTEEN: <a href="#chap14"><i>An Experiment and a Discovery</i></a><br />
+  FIFTEEN: <a href="#chap15"><i>The Finding of the Arrow</i></a><br />
+  SIXTEEN: <a href="#chap16"><i>Hanaud Laughs</i></a><br />
+  SEVENTEEN: <a href="#chap17"><i>At Jean Cladel's</i></a><br />
+  EIGHTEEN: <a href="#chap18"><i>The White Tablet</i></a><br />
+  NINETEEN: <a href="#chap19"><i>A Plan Frustrated</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY: <a href="#chap20"><i>A Map and the Necklace</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-ONE: <a href="#chap21"><i>The Secret House</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-TWO: <a href="#chap22"><i>The Corona Machine</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-THREE: <a href="#chap23"><i>The Truth About the Clock on the Marquetry Cabinet</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-FOUR: <a href="#chap24"><i>Ann Upcott's Story</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-FIVE: <a href="#chap25"><i>What Happened on the Night of the 27th</i></a><br />
+  TWENTY-SIX: <a href="#chap26"><i>The Façade of Notre Dame</i></a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER ONE: <i>Letters of Mark</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Messrs. Frobisher &amp; Haslitt, the solicitors
+on the east side of Russell Square, counted amongst
+their clients a great many who had undertakings
+established in France; and the firm was very proud of this
+branch of its business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It gives us a place in history," Mr. Jeremy Haslitt
+used to say.  "For it dates from the year 1806, when
+Mr. James Frobisher, then our very energetic senior
+partner, organised the escape of hundreds of British
+subjects who were detained in France by the edict of the first
+Napoleon.  The firm received the thanks of His Majesty's
+Government and has been fortunate enough to retain the
+connection thus made.  I look after that side of our
+affairs myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt's daily batch of letters, therefore, contained
+as a rule a fair number bearing the dark-blue stamp of
+France upon their envelopes.  On this morning of early
+April, however, there was only one.  It was addressed in
+a spidery, uncontrolled hand with which Mr. Haslitt was
+unfamiliar.  But it bore the postmark of Dijon, and
+Mr. Haslitt tore it open rather quickly.  He had a client in
+Dijon, a widow, Mrs. Harlowe, of whose health he had
+had bad reports.  The letter was certainly written from
+her house, La Maison Crenelle, but not by her.  He
+turned to the signature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waberski?" he said, with a frown.  "Boris Waberski?"  And
+then, as he identified his correspondent, "Oh,
+yes, yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down in his chair and read.  The first part of
+the letter was merely flowers and compliments, but
+half-way down the second page its object was made clear as
+glass.  It was five hundred pounds.  Old Mr. Haslitt
+smiled and read on, keeping up, whilst he read, a
+one-sided conversation with the writer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a great necessity of that money," wrote Boris,
+"and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am quite sure of that," said Mr. Haslitt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My beloved sister, Jeanne-Marie&mdash;&mdash;" the letter
+continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sister-in-law," Mr. Haslitt corrected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"&mdash;cannot live for long, in spite of all the care and
+attention I give to her," Boris Waberski went on.  "She
+has left me, as no doubt you know, a large share of her
+fortune.  Already, then, it is mine&mdash;yes?  One may say
+so and be favourably understood.  We must look at the
+facts with the eyes.  Expedite me, then, by the
+recommended post a little of what is mine and agree my
+distinguished salutations."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Haslitt's smile became a broad grin.  He had in one
+of his tin boxes a copy of the will of Jeanne-Marie
+Harlowe drawn up in due form by her French notary at
+Dijon, by which every farthing she possessed was
+bequeathed without condition to her husband's niece and
+adopted daughter, Betty Harlowe.  Jeremy Haslitt almost
+destroyed that letter.  He folded it; his fingers twitched
+at it; there was already actually a tear at the edges of the
+sheets when he changed his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he said to himself.  "No!  With the Boris
+Waberskis one never knows," and he locked the letter
+away on a ledge of his private safe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was very glad that he had when three weeks later
+he read, in the obituary column of <i>The Times</i>, the
+announcement of Mrs. Harlowe's death, and received a big
+card with a very deep black border in the French style
+from Betty Harlowe inviting him to the funeral at Dijon.
+The invitation was merely formal.  He could hardly have
+reached Dijon in time for the ceremony had he started
+off that instant.  He contented himself with writing a few
+lines of sincere condolence to the girl, and a letter to the
+French notary in which he placed the services of the firm
+at Betty's disposal.  Then he waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall hear again from little Boris," he said, and he
+heard within the week.  The handwriting was more
+spidery and uncontrolled than ever; hysteria and indignation
+had played havoc with Waberski's English; also he
+had doubled his demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is outside belief," he wrote.  "Nothing has she left
+to her so attentive brother.  There is something here I
+do not much like.  It must be one thousand pounds now,
+by the recommended post.  'You have always had the
+world against you, my poor Boris,' she say with the tears
+all big in her dear eyes.  'But I make all right for you in
+my will.'  And now nothing!  I speak, of course, to my
+niece&mdash;ah, that hard one!  She snap her the fingers at
+me!  Is that a behaviour?  One thousand pounds, mister!
+Otherwise there will be awkwardnesses!  Yes!  People
+do not snap them the fingers at Boris Waberski without
+the payment.  So one thousand pounds by the recommended
+post or awkwardnesses"; and this time Boris
+Waberski did not invite Mr. Haslitt to agree any salutations,
+distinguished or otherwise, but simply signed his
+name with a straggling pen which shot all over the sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt did not smile over this letter.  He rubbed
+the palms of his hands softly together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we shall have to make some awkwardnesses
+too," he said hastily, and he locked this second letter
+away with the first.  But Mr. Haslitt found it a little
+difficult to settle to his work.  There was that girl out
+there in the big house at Dijon and no one of her race
+near her!  He got up from his chair abruptly and crossed
+the corridor to the offices of his junior partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim, you were at Monte Carlo this winter," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For a week," answered Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I asked you to call on a client of ours who
+has a villa there&mdash;Mrs. Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher nodded.  "I did.  But Mrs. Harlowe
+was ill.  There was a niece, but she was out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You saw no one, then?" Jeremy Haslitt asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, that's wrong," Jim corrected.  "I saw a strange
+creature who came to the door to make Mrs. Harlowe's
+excuses&mdash;a Russian."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Boris Waberski," said Mr. Haslitt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's the name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt sat down in a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me about him, Jim."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher stared at nothing for a few moments.
+He was a young man of twenty-six who had only during
+this last year succeeded to his partnership.  Though quick
+enough when action was imperative, he was naturally
+deliberate in his estimates of other people's characters; and
+a certain awe he had of old Jeremy Haslitt doubled that
+natural deliberation in any matters of the firm's business.
+He answered at length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is a tall, shambling fellow with a shock of grey
+hair standing up like wires above a narrow forehead and
+a pair of wild eyes.  He made me think of a marionette
+whose limbs have not been properly strung.  I should
+imagine that he was rather extravagant and emotional.
+He kept twitching at his moustache with very long,
+tobacco-stained fingers.  The sort of man who might go
+off at the deep end at any moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's just what I thought."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is he giving you any trouble?" asked Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt.  "But Mrs. Harlowe is
+dead, and I think it very likely that he will.  Did he play
+at the tables?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, rather high," said Jim.  "I suppose that he lived
+on Mrs. Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose so," said Mr. Haslitt, and he sat for a little
+while in silence.  Then: "It's a pity you didn't see Betty
+Harlowe.  I stopped at Dijon once on my way to the
+South of France five years ago when Simon Harlowe, the
+husband, was alive.  Betty was then a long-legged slip of
+a girl in black silk stockings with a pale, clear face and
+dark hair and big eyes&mdash;rather beautiful."  Mr. Haslitt
+moved in his chair uncomfortably.  That old house with
+its great garden of chestnuts and sycamores and that girl
+alone in it with an aggrieved and half-crazed man thinking
+out awkwardnesses for her&mdash;Mr. Haslitt did not like
+the picture!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim," he said suddenly, "could you arrange your work
+so that you could get away at short notice, if it becomes
+advisable?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked up in surprise.  Excursions and alarms, as
+the old stage directions have it, were not recognised as a
+rule by the firm of Frobisher &amp; Haslitt.  If its furniture
+was dingy, its methods were stately; clients might be
+urgent, but haste and hurry were words for which the
+firm had no use No doubt, somewhere round the corner,
+there would be an attorney who understood them.  Yet
+here was Mr. Haslitt himself, with his white hair and his
+curious round face, half-babyish, half-supremely intelligent,
+actually advocating that his junior partner should
+be prepared to skip to the Continent at a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt I could," said Jim, and Mr. Haslitt looked
+him over with approbation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher had an unusual quality of which his
+acquaintances, even his friends, knew only the outward
+signs.  He was a solitary person.  Very few people up
+till now had mattered to him at all, and even those he
+could do without.  It was his passion to feel that his life
+and the means of his life did not depend upon the
+purchased skill of other people; and he had spent the spare
+months of his life in the fulfilment of his passion.  A
+half-decked sailing-boat which one man could handle, an
+ice-axe, a rifle, an inexhaustible volume or two like <i>The
+Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;these with the stars and his own
+thoughts had been his companions on many lonely expeditions;
+and in consequence he had acquired a queer little
+look of aloofness which made him at once noticeable
+amongst his fellows.  A misleading look, since it
+encouraged a confidence for which there might not be
+sufficient justification.  It was just this look which persuaded
+Mr. Haslitt now.  "This is the very man to deal with
+creatures like Boris Waberski," he thought, but he did
+not say so aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What he did say was:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It may not be necessary after all.  Betty Harlowe has
+a French lawyer.  No doubt he is adequate.  Besides"&mdash;and
+he smiled as he recollected a phrase in Waberski's
+second letter&mdash;"Betty seems very capable of looking after
+herself.  We shall see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went back to his own office, and for a week he heard
+no more from Dijon.  His anxiety, indeed, was almost
+forgotten when suddenly startling news arrived and by the
+most unexpected channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher brought it.  He broke into Mr. Haslitt's
+office at the sacred moment when the senior partner was
+dictating to a clerk the answers to his morning letters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir!" cried Jim, and stopped short at the sight of the
+clerk.  Mr. Haslitt took a quick look at his young
+partner's face and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We will resume these answers, Godfrey, later on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clerk took his shorthand notebook out of the room,
+and Mr. Haslitt turned to Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, what's your bad news, Jim?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim blurted it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waberski accuses Betty Harlowe of murder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt sprang to his feet.  Jim Frobisher could
+not have said whether incredulity or anger had the upper
+hand with the old man, the one so creased his forehead,
+the other so blazed in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Little Betty Harlowe!" he said in a wondering voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Waberski has laid a formal charge with the
+Prefect of Police at Dijon.  He accuses Betty of
+poisoning Mrs. Harlowe on the night of April the
+twenty-seventh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Betty's not arrested?" Mr. Haslitt exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, but she's under surveillance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt sat heavily down in his arm-chair at his
+table.  Extravagant!  Uncontrolled!  These were very
+mild epithets for Boris Waberski.  Here was a devilish
+malignity at work in the rogue, a passion for revenge
+just as mean as could be imagined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know all this, Jim?" he asked suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have had a letter this morning from Dijon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You?" exclaimed Mr. Haslitt, and the question caught
+hold of Jim Frobisher and plunged him too among
+perplexities.  In the first shock of the news, the monstrous
+fact of the accusation had driven everything else out of
+his head.  Now he asked himself why, after all, had the
+news come to him and not to the partner who had the
+Harlowe estate in his charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is strange," he replied.  "And here's another
+queer thing.  The letter doesn't come from Betty
+Harlowe, but from a friend, a companion of hers, Ann
+Upcott."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt was a little relieved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty had a friend with her, then?  That's a good
+thing."  He reached out his hand across the table.  "Let
+me read the letter, Jim."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher had been carrying it in his hand, and he
+gave it now to Jeremy Haslitt.  It was a letter of many
+sheets, and Jeremy let the edges slip and flicker under the
+ball of his thumb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have I got to read all this?" he said ruefully, and
+he set himself to his task.  Boris Waberski had first of all
+accused Betty to her face.  Betty had contemptuously
+refused to answer the charge, and Waberski had gone
+straight off to the Prefect of Police.  He had returned
+in an hour's time, wildly gesticulating and talking aloud
+to himself.  He had actually asked Ann Upcott to back
+him up.  Then he had packed his bags and retired to an
+hotel in the town.  The story was set out in detail, with
+quotations from Waberski's violent, crazy talk; and as
+the old man read, Jim Frobisher became more and more
+uneasy, more and more troubled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was sitting by the tall, broad window which looked
+out upon the square, expecting some explosion of wrath
+and contempt.  But he saw anxiety peep out of Mr. Haslitt's
+face and stay there as he read.  More than once
+he stopped altogether in his reading, like a man seeking
+to remember or perhaps to discover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the whole thing's as clear as daylight," Jim said
+to himself impatiently.  And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;Mr. Haslitt
+had sat in that arm-chair during the better part of the
+day, during the better part of thirty years.  How many
+men and women during those years had crossed the
+roadway below this window and crept into this quiet oblong
+room with their grievances, their calamities, their
+confessions?  And had passed out again, each one contributing
+his little to complete the old man's knowledge and sharpen
+the edge of his wit?  Then, if Mr. Haslitt was troubled,
+there was something in that letter, or some mission from
+it, which he himself in his novitiate had overlooked.  He
+began to read it over again in his mind to the best of his
+recollection, but he had not got far before Mr. Haslitt
+put the letter down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely, sir," cried Jim, "it's an obvious case of blackmail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt awoke with a little shake of his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blackmail?  Oh! that of course, Jim."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt got up and unlocked his safe.  He took
+from it the two Waberski letters and brought them across
+the room to Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here's the evidence, as damning as any one could
+wish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim read the letters through and uttered a little cry of
+delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The rogue has delivered himself over to us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Mr. Haslitt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to him, at all events, that was not enough; he was
+still looking through the lines of the letter for something
+beyond, which he could not find.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then what's troubling you?" asked Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt took his stand upon the worn hearthrug
+with his back towards the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This, Jim," and he began to expound.  "In ninety-five
+of these cases out of a hundred, there is something else,
+something behind the actual charge, which isn't
+mentioned, but on which the blackmailer is really banking.
+As a rule it's some shameful little secret, some blot on
+the family honour, which any sort of public trial would
+bring to light.  And there must be something of that kind
+here.  The more preposterous Waberski's accusation is,
+the more certain it is that he knows something to the
+discredit of the Harlowe name, which any Harlowe would
+wish to keep dark.  Only, I haven't an idea what the
+wretched thing can be!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It might be some trifle," Jim suggested, "which a
+crazy person like Waberski would exaggerate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Mr. Haslitt agreed.  "That happens.  A man
+brooding over imagined wrongs, and flighty and
+extravagant besides&mdash;yes, that might well be, Jim."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeremy Haslitt spoke in a more cheerful voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us see exactly what we do know of the family,"
+he said, and he pulled up a chair to face Jim Frobisher
+and the window.  But he had not yet sat down in it, when
+there came a discreet knock upon the door, and a clerk
+entered to announce a visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt before the name of the
+visitor had been mentioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very good, sir," said the clerk, and he retired.  The
+firm of Frobisher &amp; Haslitt conducted its business in that
+way.  It was the real thing as a firm of solicitors, and
+clients who didn't like its methods were very welcome to
+take their affairs to the attorney round the corner.  Just
+as people who go to the real thing in the line of tailors
+must put up with the particular style in which he cuts
+their clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt turned back to Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us see what we know," he said, and he sat down
+in the chair.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWO: <i>A Cry for Help</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"Simon Harlow," he began, "was the owner of
+the famous Clos du Prince vineyards on the Côte-d'Or
+to the east of Dijon.  He had an estate in Norfolk,
+this big house, the Maison Crenelle in Dijon, and a villa
+at Monte Carlo.  But he spent most of his time in Dijon,
+where at the age of forty-five he married a French lady,
+Jeanne-Marie Raviart.  There was, I believe, quite a
+little romance about the affair.  Jeanne-Marie was
+married and separated from her husband, and Simon
+Harlowe waited, I think, for ten years until the husband
+Raviart died."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher moved quickly and Mr. Haslitt, who
+seemed to be reading off this history in the pattern of
+the carpet, looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I see what you mean," he said, replying to Jim's
+movement.  "Yes, there might have been some sort of
+affair between those two before they were free to marry.
+But nowadays, my dear Jim!  Opinion takes a more
+human view than it did in my youth.  Besides, don't you
+see, this little secret, to be of any value to Boris
+Waberski, must be near enough to Betty Harlowe&mdash;I don't say
+to affect her if published, but to make Waberski think
+that she would hate to have it published.  Now Betty
+Harlowe doesn't come into the picture at all until two
+years after Simon and Jeanne-Marie were married, when
+it became clear that they were not likely to have any
+children.  No, the love-affairs of Simon Harlowe are
+sufficiently remote for us to leave them aside."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher accepted the demolition of his idea with
+a flush of shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was a fool to think of it," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit," replied Mr. Haslitt cheerfully.  "Let us
+look at every possibility.  That's the only way which will
+help us to get a glimpse of the truth.  I resume, then.
+Simon Harlowe was a collector.  Yes, he had a passion
+for collecting and a very catholic one.  His one sitting-room
+at the Maison Crenelle was a perfect treasure-house,
+not only of beautiful things, but of out-of-the-way things
+too.  He liked to live amongst them and do his work
+amongst them.  His married life did not last long.  For
+he died five years ago at the age of fifty-one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt's eyes once more searched for recollections
+amongst the convolutions of the carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's really about all I know of him.  He was a
+pleasant fellow enough, but not very sociable.  No, there's
+nothing to light a candle for us there, I am afraid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt turned his thoughts to the widow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jeanne-Marie Harlowe," he said.  "It's extraordinary
+how little I know about her, now I come to count it up.
+Natural too, though.  For she sold the Norfolk estate
+and has since passed her whole time between Monte Carlo
+and Dijon and&mdash;oh, yes&mdash;a little summer-house on the
+Côte-d'Or amongst her vineyards."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was left rich, I suppose?" Frobisher asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well off, at all events," Mr. Haslitt replied.
+"The Clos du Prince Burgundy has a fine reputation, but
+there's not a great deal of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she come to England ever?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never," said Mr. Haslitt.  "She was content, it
+seems, with Dijon, though to my mind the smaller
+provincial towns of France are dull enough to make one
+scream.  However, she was used to it, and then her heart
+began to trouble her, and for the last two years she has
+been an invalid.  There's nothing to help us there."  And
+Mr. Haslitt looked across to Jim for confirmation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we are only left the child Betty Harlowe and&mdash;oh,
+yes, your correspondent, your voluminous correspondent,
+Ann Upcott.  Who is she, Jim?  Where did she
+spring from?  How does she find herself in the Maison
+Crenelle?  Come, confess, young man," and Mr. Haslitt
+archly looked at his junior partner.  "Why should Boris
+Waberski expect her support?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher threw his arms wide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't an idea," he said.  "I have never seen her.
+I have never heard of her.  I never knew of her existence
+until that letter came this morning with her name signed
+at the end of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt started up.  He crossed the room to his
+table and, fixing his folding glasses on the bridge of his
+nose, he bent over the letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she writes to you, Jim," he objected.  "'Dear
+Mr. Frobisher,' she writes.  She doesn't address the firm
+at all"; and he waited, looking at Jim, expecting him to
+withdraw this denial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim, however, only shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's the most bewildering thing," he replied.  "I can't
+make head or tail of it"; and Mr. Haslitt could not doubt
+now that he spoke the truth, so utterly and frankly baffled
+the young man was.  "Why should Ann Upcott write to
+me?  I have been asking myself that question for the last
+half-hour.  And why didn't Betty Harlowe write to you,
+who have had her affairs in your care?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That last question helped Mr. Haslitt to an explanation.
+His face took a livelier expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The answer to that is in Waberski's, the second letter.
+Betty&mdash;she snap her fingers at his awkwardnesses.  She
+doesn't take the charge seriously.  She will have left it
+to the French notary to dispose of it.  Yes&mdash;I think that
+makes Ann Upcott's letter to you intelligible, too.  The
+ceremonies of the Law in a foreign country would
+frighten a stranger, as this girl is apparently, more than
+they would Betty Harlowe, who has lived for four years
+in the midst of them.  So she writes to the first name in
+the title of the firm, and writes to him as a man.  That's
+it, Jim," and the old man rubbed his hands together in
+his satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A girl in terror wouldn't get any comfort out of writing
+to an abstraction.  She wants to know that she's in
+touch with a real person.  So she writes, 'Dear
+Mr. Frobisher.'  That's it!  You can take my word for it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt walked back to his chair.  But he did not
+sit down in it; he stood with his hands in his pockets,
+looking out of the window over Frobisher's head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that doesn't bring us any nearer to finding out
+what is Boris Waberski's strong suit, does it?  We
+haven't a clue to it," he said ruefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To both of the men, indeed, Mr. Haslitt's flat,
+unillumined narrative of facts, without a glimpse into the
+characters of any of the participants in the little drama,
+seemed the most unhelpful thing.  Yet the whole truth
+was written there&mdash;the truth not only of Waberski's
+move, but of all the strange terrors and mysteries into
+which the younger of the two men was now to be plunged.
+Jim Frobisher was to recognise that, when, shaken to the
+soul, he resumed his work in the office.  For it was
+interrupted now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt, looking out of the window over his partner's
+head, saw a telegraph-boy come swinging across the
+square and hesitate in the roadway below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I expect that's a telegram for us," he said, with the
+hopeful anticipation people in trouble have that
+something from outside will happen and set them right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim turned round quickly.  The boy was still upon the
+pavement examining the numbers of the houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We ought to have a brass plate upon the door," said
+Jim with a touch of impatience; and Mr. Haslitt's
+eyebrows rose half the height of his forehead towards his
+thick white hair.  He was really distressed by the Waberski
+incident, but this suggestion, and from a partner in
+the firm, shocked him like a sacrilege.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear boy, what are you thinking of?" he expostulated.
+"I hope I am not one of those obstinate old fogies
+who refuse to march with the times.  We have had, as
+you know, a telephone instrument recently installed in the
+junior clerks' office.  I believe that I myself proposed it.
+But a brass plate upon the door!  My dear Jim!  Let us
+leave that to Harley Street and Southampton Row!  But
+I see that telegram is for us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tiny Mercury with the shako and red cord to his
+uniform made up his mind and disappeared into the hall
+below.  The telegram was brought upstairs and Mr. Haslitt
+tore it open.  He stared at it blankly for a few
+seconds, then without a word, but with a very anxious
+look in his eyes, he handed it to Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+<i>Please, please, send some one to help me at once.
+The Prefect of Police has called in Hanaud, a great
+detective of the Sûrété in Paris.  They must think
+me guilty.&mdash;Betty Harlowe.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The telegram fluttered from Jim's fingers to the floor.
+It was like a cry for help at night coming from a great
+distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must go, sir, by the night boat," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure!" said Mr. Haslitt a little absently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim, however, had enthusiasm enough for both.  His
+chivalry was fired, as is the way with lonely men, by the
+picture his imagination drew.  The little girl, Betty
+Harlowe!  What age was she?  Twenty-one!  Not a day
+more.  She had been wandering with all the proud
+indifference of her sex and youth, until suddenly she found
+her feet caught in some trap set by a traitor, and looked
+about her; and terror came and with it a wild cry for
+help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Girls never notice danger signals," he said.  "No, they
+walk blindly into the very heart of catastrophe."  Who
+could tell what links of false and cunning evidence Boris
+Waberski had been hammering away at in the dark, to
+slip swiftly at the right moment over her wrist and ankle?
+And with that question he was seized with a great
+discouragement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We know very little of Criminal Procedure, even in
+our own country, in this office," he said regretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Happily," said Mr. Haslitt with some tartness.  With
+him it was the Firm first and last.  Messrs. Frobisher &amp;
+Haslitt never went in to the Criminal Courts.  Litigation,
+indeed, even of the purest kind was frowned upon.  It is
+true there was a small special staff, under the leadership
+of an old managing clerk, tucked away upon an upper
+floor, like an unpresentable relation in a great house,
+which did a little of that kind of work.  But it only did
+it for hereditary clients, and then as a favour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"However," said Mr. Haslitt as he noticed Jim's
+discomfort, "I haven't a doubt, my boy, that you will be
+equal to whatever is wanted.  But remember, there's
+something at the back of this which we here don't
+know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim shifted his position rather abruptly.  This cry of
+the old man was becoming parrot-like&mdash;a phrase, a
+formula.  Jim was thinking of the girl in Dijon and hearing
+her piteous cry for help.  She was not "snapping her
+the fingers" now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a matter of common sense," Mr. Haslitt insisted.
+"Take a comparison.  Bath, for instance, would never
+call in Scotland Yard over a case of this kind.  There
+would have to be the certainty of a crime first, and then
+grave doubt as to who was the criminal.  This is a case
+for an autopsy and the doctors.  If they call in this man
+Hanaud"&mdash;and he stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked the telegram up from the floor and read it
+through again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;Hanaud," he repeated, his face clouding and
+growing bright and clouding again like a man catching at
+and just missing a very elusive recollection.  He gave up
+the pursuit in the end.  "Well, Jim, you had better take
+the two letters of Waberski, and Ann Upcott's three-volume
+novel, and Betty's telegram"&mdash;he gathered the
+papers together and enclosed them in a long envelope&mdash;"and
+I shall expect you back again with a smiling face in
+a very few days.  I should like to see our little Boris when
+he is asked to explain those letters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Haslitt gave the envelope to Jim and rang his bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is some one waiting to see me, I think," he
+said to the clerk who answered it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clerk named a great landowner, who had been kicking
+his heels during the last half-hour in an undusted
+waiting-room with a few mouldy old Law books in a
+battered glass case to keep him company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can show him in now," said Mr. Haslitt as Jim
+retired to his own office; and when the great landowner
+entered, he merely welcomed him with a reproach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You didn't make an appointment, did you?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But all through that interview, though his advice was
+just the precise, clear advice for which the firm was
+quietly famous, Mr. Haslitt's mind was still playing
+hide-and-seek with a memory, catching glimpses of the fringes
+of its skirt as it gleamed and vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Memory is a woman," he said to himself.  "If I don't
+run after her she will come of her own accord."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was in the common case of men with women:
+he could not but run after her.  Towards the end of the
+interview, however, his shoulders and head moved with a
+little jerk, and he wrote a word down on a slip of paper.
+As soon as his client had gone, he wrote a note and sent
+it off by a messenger who had orders to wait for an
+answer.  The messenger returned within the hour and
+Mr. Haslitt hurried to Jim Frobisher's office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had just finished handing over his affairs to various
+clerks and was locking up the drawers of his desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim, I have remembered where I have heard the name
+of this man Hanaud before.  You have met Julius
+Ricardo?  He's one of our clients."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Frobisher.  "I remember him&mdash;a rather
+finnicking person in Grosvenor Square."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's the man.  He's a friend of Hanaud and
+absurdly proud of the friendship.  He and Hanaud were
+somehow mixed up in a rather scandalous crime some
+time ago&mdash;at Aix-les-Bains, I think.  Well, Ricardo will
+give you a letter of introduction to him, and tell you
+something about him, if you will go round to Grosvenor
+Square at five this afternoon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Capital!" said Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept the appointment, and was told how he must
+expect to be awed at one moment, leaped upon unpleasantly
+at the next, ridiculed at a third, and treated with
+great courtesy and friendship at the fourth.  Jim
+discounted Mr. Ricardo's enthusiasm, but he got the letter
+and crossed the Channel that night.  On the journey it
+occurred to him that if Hanaud was a man of such high
+mark, he would not be free, even at an urgent call, to
+pack his bags and leave for the provinces in an instant.
+Jim broke his journey, therefore, at Paris, and in the
+course of the morning found his way to the Direction of
+the Sûrété on the Quai d'Horloge just behind the Palais
+de Justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud?" he asked eagerly, and the porter
+took his card and his letter of introduction.  The great
+man was still in Paris, then, he thought with relief.  He
+was taken to a long dark corridor, lit with electric globes
+even on that bright morning of early summer.  There
+he rubbed elbows with malefactors and gendarmes for
+half an hour whilst his confidence in himself ebbed away.
+Then a bell rang and a policeman in plain clothes went
+up to him.  One side of the corridor was lined with a
+row of doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is for you, sir," said the policeman, and he led
+Frobisher to one of the doors and opened it, and
+stood aside.  Frobisher straightened his shoulders and
+marched in.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER THREE: <i>Servants of Chance</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher found himself at one end of an oblong
+room.  Opposite to him a couple of windows looked
+across the shining river to the big Théâtre du Chatelet
+On his left hand was a great table with a few neatly
+arranged piles of papers, at which a big, rather
+heavily-built man was sitting.  Frobisher looked at that man as
+a novice in a duelling field might look at the master
+swordsman whom he was committed to fight; with a little
+shock of surprise that after all he appeared to be just
+like other men.  Hanaud, on his side, could not have
+been said to have looked at Frobisher at all; yet when he
+spoke it was obvious that somehow he had looked and to
+very good purpose.  He rose with a little bow and apologised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have kept you waiting, Mr. Frobisher.  My dear
+friend Mr. Ricardo did not mention your object in his
+letter.  I had the idea that you came with the usual
+wish to see something of the underworld.  Now that
+I see you, I recognise your wish is more serious."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was a man of middle age with a head of
+thick dark hair, and the round face and shaven chin of
+a comedian.  A pair of remarkably light eyes under
+rather heavy lids alone gave a significance to him, at
+all events when seen for the first time in a mood of
+good-will.  He pointed to a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you take a seat?  I will tell you, Mr. Frobisher,
+I have a very soft place in my heart for Mr. Ricardo, and
+a friend of his&mdash;&mdash;  These are words, however.  What
+can I do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher laid down his hat and stick upon a side
+table and took the chair in front of Hanaud's table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am partner in a firm of lawyers which looks after
+the English interests of a family in Dijon," he said, and
+he saw all life and expression smoothed out of Hanaud's
+face.  A moment ago he had been in the company of a
+genial and friendly companion; now he was looking at
+a Chinaman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The family has the name of Harlowe," Jim continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho!" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ejaculation had no surprise in it, and hardly any
+interest.  Jim, however, persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the surviving member of it, a girl of twenty,
+Betty Harlowe, has been charged with murder by a
+Russian who is connected with the family by
+marriage&mdash;Boris Waberski."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  "And why do you come to me,
+Mr. Frobisher?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim stared at the detective.  The reason of his coming
+was obvious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet&mdash;he was no longer sure of his ground.
+Hanaud had pulled open a drawer in his table and was
+beginning to put away in it one of his files.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?" he said, as who should say, "I am listening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, perhaps I am under a mistake," said Jim.  "But
+my firm has been informed that you, Monsieur Hanaud,
+are in charge of the case," he said, and Hanaud's movements
+were at once arrested.  He sat with the file poised
+on the palm of his hand as though he was weighing it,
+extraordinarily still; and Jim had a swift impression that
+he was more than disconcerted.  Then Hanaud put the
+file into the drawer and closed the drawer softly.  As
+softly he spoke, but in a sleek voice which to Frobisher's
+ears had a note in it which was actually alarming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you have been informed of that, Mr. Frobisher!
+And in London!  And&mdash;yes&mdash;this is only Wednesday!
+News travels very quickly nowadays, to be sure!  Well,
+your firm has been correctly informed.  I congratulate
+you.  The first point is scored by you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher was quick to seize upon that word.  He
+had thought out upon his journey in what spirit he might
+most usefully approach the detective.  Hanaud's bitter
+little remark gave him the very opening which he needed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Monsieur Hanaud, I don't take that point of
+view at all," he argued earnestly.  "I am happy to believe
+that there is going to be no antagonism between us.  For,
+if there were, I should assuredly get the worst of it.
+No!  I am certain that the one wish you have in this
+matter is to get at the truth.  Whilst my wish is that
+you should just look upon me as a very second-rate
+colleague who by good fortune can give you a little help."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile flickered across Hanaud's face and restored it
+to some of its geniality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has always been a good rule to lay it on with a
+trowel," he observed.  "Now, what kind of help,
+Mr. Frobisher?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This kind of help, Monsieur Hanaud.  Two letters
+from Boris Waberski demanding money, the second one
+with threats.  Both were received by my firm before he
+brought this charge, and both of course remain
+unanswered."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the letters from the long envelope and handed
+them across the table to Hanaud, who read them through
+slowly, mentally translating the phrases into French as
+he read.  Frobisher watched his face for some expression
+of relief or satisfaction.  But to his utter disappointment
+no such change came; and it was with a deprecating and
+almost regretful air that Hanaud turned to him in the
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;no doubt these two letters have a certain
+importance.  But we mustn't exaggerate it.  The case is very
+difficult."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Difficult!" cried Jim in exasperation.  He seemed to
+be hammering and hammering in vain against some thick
+wall of stupidity.  Yet this man in front of him wasn't
+stupid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't understand it!" he exclaimed.  "Here's the
+clearest instance of blackmail that I can imagine&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blackmail's an ugly word, Mr. Frobisher," Hanaud
+warned him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And blackmail's an ugly thing," said Jim.  "Come,
+Monsieur Hanaud, Boris Waberski lives in France.  You
+will know something about him.  You will have a
+dossier."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud pounced upon the word with a little whoop
+of delight, his face broke into smiles, he shook a
+forefinger gleefully at his visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, ah, ah, ah!  A dossier!  Yes, I was waiting for
+that word!  The great legend of the dossiers!  You have
+that charming belief too, Mr. Frobisher.  France and her
+dossiers!  Yes.  If her coal-mines fail her, she can always
+keep warm by burning her dossiers!  The moment you
+land for the first time at Calais&mdash;bourn!  your dossier
+begins, eh?  You travel to Paris&mdash;so!  You dine at the
+Ritz Hotel&mdash;so!  Afterwards you go where you ought
+not to go&mdash;so-o-o!  And you go back late to the hotel
+very uncomfortable because you are quite sure that somewhere
+in the still night six little officials with black beards
+and green-shaded lamps are writing it all down in your
+dossier.  But&mdash;wait!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He suddenly rose from his chair with his finger to his
+lips, and his eyes opened wide.  Never was a man so
+mysterious, so important in his mystery.  He stole on
+tiptoe, with a lightness of step amazing in so bulky a man,
+to the door.  Noiselessly and very slowly, with an alert,
+bright eye cocked at Frobisher like a bird's, he turned the
+handle.  Then he jerked the door swiftly inwards towards
+him.  It was the classic detection of the eavesdropper,
+seen in a hundred comedies and farces; and carried out
+with so excellent a mimicry that Jim, even in this office of
+the Sûrété, almost expected to see a flustered chambermaid
+sprawl heavily forward on her knees.  He saw nothing,
+however, but a grimy corridor lit with artificial light
+in which men were patiently waiting.  Hanaud closed the
+door again, with an air of intense relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Prime Minister has not overheard us.  We are
+safe," he hissed, and he crept back to Frobisher's side.
+He stooped and whispered in the ear of that bewildered
+man:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can tell you about those dossiers.  They are for
+nine-tenths the gossip of the <i>concièrge</i> translated into the
+language of a policeman who thinks that everybody had
+better be in prison.  Thus, the <i>concièrge</i> says: This
+Mr. Frobisher&mdash;on Tuesday he came home at one in the
+morning and on Thursday at three in fancy dress; and in the
+policeman's report it becomes, 'Mr. Frobisher is of a loose
+and excessive life.'  And that goes into your dossier&mdash;yes,
+my friend, just so!  But here in the Sûrété&mdash;never
+breathe a word of it, or you ruin me!&mdash;here we are like
+your Miss Betty Harlowe, 'we snap us the fingers at those
+dossiers.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher's mind was of the deliberate order.  To
+change from one mood to another required a progression
+of ideas.  He hardly knew for the moment whether he
+was upon his head or his heels.  A minute ago Hanaud
+had been the grave agent of Justice; without a hint he
+had leaped to buffoonery, and with a huge enjoyment.
+He had become half urchin, half clown.  Jim could almost
+hear the bells of his cap still tinkling.  He simply stared,
+and Hanaud with a rueful smile resumed his seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If we work together at Dijon, Monsieur Frobisher,"
+he said with whimsical regret, "I shall not enjoy myself
+as I did with my dear little friend Mr. Ricardo at Aix.
+No, indeed!  Had I made this little pantomime for him,
+he would have sat with the eyes popping out of his head.
+He would have whispered, 'The Prime Minister comes
+in the morning to spy outside your door&mdash;oh!' and he
+would have been thrilled to the marrow of his bones.  But
+you&mdash;you look at me all cold and stony, and you say to
+yourself, 'This Hanaud, he is a comic!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Jim earnestly, and Hanaud interrupted the
+protest with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It does not matter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am glad," said Jim.  "For you just now said something
+which I am very anxious you should not withdraw.
+You held me out a hope that we should work together."  Hanaud
+leaned forward with his elbows on his desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Listen," he said genially.  "You have been frank and
+loyal with me.  So I relieve your mind.  This Waberski
+affair&mdash;the Prefect at Dijon does not take it very
+seriously; neither do I here.  It is, of course, a charge of
+murder, and that has to be examined with care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And equally, of course, there is some little thing
+behind it," Hanaud continued, surprising Frobisher with
+the very words which Mr. Haslitt had used the day
+before, though the one spoke in English and the other in
+French.  "As a lawyer you will know that.  Some little
+unpleasant fact which is best kept to ourselves.  But it is
+a simple affair, and with these two letters you have
+brought me, simpler than ever.  We shall ask Waberski
+to explain these letters and some other things too, if he
+can.  He is a type, that Boris Waberski!  The body of
+Madame Harlowe will be exhumed to-day and the evidence
+of the doctors taken, and afterwards, no doubt,
+the case will be dismissed and you can deal with Waberski
+as you please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And that little secret?" asked Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt it will come to light.  But what does that
+matter if it only comes to light in the office of the
+examining magistrate, and does not pass beyond the door?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing at all," Jim agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will see.  We are not so alarming after all, and
+your little client can put her pretty head upon the pillow
+without any fear that an injustice will be done to her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Monsieur Hanaud!" Jim Frobisher cried
+warmly.  He was conscious of so great a relief that he
+himself was surprised by it.  He had been quite captured
+by his pity for that unknown girl in the big house, set
+upon by a crazy rascal and with no champion but another
+girl of her own years.  "Yes, this is good news to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had hardly finished speaking before a doubt
+crept into his mind as to the sincerity of the man sitting
+opposite to him.  Jim did not mean to be played and
+landed like a silly fish, however inexperienced he might
+be.  He looked at Hanaud and wondered.  Was this
+present geniality of his any less assumed than his other
+moods?  Jim was unsettled in his estimate of the
+detective.  One moment a judge, and rather implacable, now
+an urchin, now a friend!  Which was travesty and which
+truth?  Luckily there was a test question which
+Mr. Haslitt had put only yesterday as he looked out from the
+window across Russell Square.  Jim now repeated it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The affair is simple, you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of the simplest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then how comes it, Monsieur Hanaud, that the examining
+judge at Dijon still finds it necessary to call in to
+his assistance one of the chiefs of the Sûrété of Paris?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question was obviously expected, and no less
+obviously difficult to answer.  Hanaud nodded his head once
+or twice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said, and again "Yes," like a man in doubt.
+He looked at Jim with appraising eyes.  Then with a
+rush, "I shall tell you everything, and when I have told
+you, you will give me your word that you will not betray
+my confidence to any one in this world.  For this is
+serious."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim could not doubt Hanaud's sincerity at this moment,
+nor his friendliness.  They shone in the man like a strong
+flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I give you my word now," he said, and he reached out
+his hand across the table.  Hanaud shook it.  "I can talk
+to you freely, then," he answered, and he produced a little
+blue bundle of very black cigarettes.  "You shall smoke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men lit their cigarettes and through the blue
+cloud Hanaud explained:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I go really to Dijon on quite another matter.  This
+Waberski affair, it is a pretence!  The examining judge
+who calls me in&mdash;see, now, you have a phrase for him,"
+and Hanaud proudly dropped into English more or less.
+"He excuse his face!  Yes, that is your expressive idiom.
+He excuse his face, and you will see, my friend, that it
+needs a lot of excusing, that face of his, yes.  Now listen!
+I get hot when I think of that examining judge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and, setting
+his sentence in order, resumed in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The little towns, my friend, where life is not very
+gay and people have the time to be interested in the affairs
+of their neighbours, have their own crimes, and perhaps
+the most pernicious of them all is the crime of anonymous
+letters.  Suddenly out of a clear sky they will come like
+a pestilence, full of vile charges difficult to refute
+and&mdash;who knows?&mdash;sometimes perhaps true.  For a while
+these abominations flow into the letter-boxes and not a
+word is said.  If money is demanded, money is paid.  If
+it is only sheer wickedness which drives that unknown
+pen, those who are lashed by it none the less hold their
+tongues.  But each one begins to suspect his neighbour.
+The social life of the town is poisoned.  A great canopy
+of terror hangs over it, until the postman's knock, a thing
+so welcome in the sane life of every day, becomes a thing
+to shiver at, and in the end dreadful things happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So grave and quiet was the tone which Hanaud used
+that Jim himself shivered, even in this room whence he
+could see the sunlight sparkling on the river and hear
+the pleasant murmur of the Paris streets.  Above that
+murmur he heard the sharp knock of the postman upon
+the door.  He saw a white face grow whiter and still
+eyes grow haggard with despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Such a plague has descended upon Dijon," Hanaud
+continued.  "For more than a year it has raged.  The
+police would not apply to Paris for help.  No, they did
+not need help, they would solve this pretty problem for
+themselves.  Yes, but the letters go on and the citizens
+complain.  The police say, 'Hush!  The examining
+magistrate, he has a clue.  Give him time!'  But the
+letters still go on.  Then after a year comes this godsend
+of the Waberski affair.  At once the Prefect of Police
+and the magistrate put their heads together.  'We will
+send for Hanaud over this simple affair, and he will find
+for us the author of the anonymous letters.  We will
+send for him very privately, and if any one recognises
+him in the street and cries "There is Hanaud," we can say
+he is investigating the Waberski affair.  Thus the writer
+of the letters will not be alarmed and we&mdash;we excuse our
+faces.'  Yes," concluded Hanaud heatedly, "but they
+should have sent for me a year ago.  They have lost a
+year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And during that year the dreadful things have
+happened?" asked Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An old, lonely man who lunches at the hotel and takes
+his coffee at the Grande Taverne and does no harm to any
+one, he flings himself in front of the Mediterranean
+express and is cut to pieces.  A pair of lovers shoot
+themselves in the Forêt des Moissonières.  A young girl comes
+home from a ball; she says good night to her friends gaily
+on the doorstep of her house, and in the morning she is
+found hanging in her ball dress from a rivet in the wall
+of her bedroom, whilst in the hearth there are the burnt
+fragments of one of these letters.  How many had she
+received, that poor girl, before this last one drove her to
+this madness?  Ah, the magistrate.  Did I not tell you?
+He has need to excuse his face."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud opened a drawer in his desk and took from it
+a green cover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See, here are two of those precious letters," and
+removing two typewritten sheets from the cover he handed
+them to Frobisher.  "Yes," he added, as he saw the disgust
+on the reader's face, "those do not make a nice sauce
+for your breakfast, do they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They are abominable," said Jim.  "I wouldn't have
+believed&mdash;&mdash;" he broke off with a little cry.  "One
+moment, Monsieur Hanaud!"  He bent his head again over
+the sheets of paper, comparing them, scrutinising each
+sentence.  No, there were only the two errors which he
+had noticed at once.  But what errors they were!  To
+any one, at all events, with eyes to see and some luck in
+the matter of experience.  Why, they limited the area of
+search at once!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud, I can give you some more help,"
+he cried enthusiastically.  He did not notice the broad
+grin of delight which suddenly transfigured the detective's
+face.  "Help which may lead you very quickly to the
+writer of these letters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can?" Hanaud exclaimed.  "Give it to me, my
+young friend.  Do not keep me shaking in excitement.
+And do not&mdash;oh! do not tell me that you have discovered
+that the letters were typed upon a Corona machine.  For
+that we know already."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher flushed scarlet.  That is just what he
+had noticed with so much pride in his perspicuity.  Where
+the text of a sentence required a capital D, there were
+instead the two noughts with the diagonal line separating
+them (thus, %), which are the symbol of "per cent.";
+and where there should have been a capital S lower down
+the page, there was the capital S with the transverse lines
+which stands for dollars.  Jim was familiar with the
+Corona machine himself, and he had remembered that if
+one used by error the stop for figures, instead of the stop
+for capital letters, those two mistakes would result.  He
+realised now, with Hanaud's delighted face in front of
+him&mdash;Hanaud was the urchin now&mdash;that the Sûrété was
+certain not to have overlooked those two indications even
+if the magistrate at Dijon had; and in a moment he began
+to laugh too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I fairly asked for it, didn't I?" he said as he
+handed the letter back.  "I said a wise thing to you,
+Monsieur, when I held it fortunate that we were not to be
+on opposite sides."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's face lost its urchin look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't make too much of me, my friend, lest you be
+disappointed," he said in all seriousness.  "We are the
+servants of Chance, the very best of us.  Our skill is to
+seize quickly the hem of her skirt, when it flashes for the
+fraction of a second before our eyes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replaced the two anonymous letters in the green
+cover and laid it again in the drawer.  Then he gathered
+together the two letters which Boris Waberski had
+written and gave them back to Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will want these to produce at Dijon.  You will
+go there to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This afternoon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!" said Hanaud.  "I shall take the night express."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can wait for that," said Jim.  But Hanaud shook
+his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is better that we should not go together, nor stay
+at the same hotel.  It will very quickly be known in Dijon
+that you are the English lawyer of Miss Harlowe, and
+those in your company will be marked men too.  By the
+way, how were you informed in London that I, Hanaud,
+had been put in charge of this case?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We had a telegram," replied Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?  And from whom?  I am curious!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From Miss Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment Hanaud was for the second time in that
+interview quite disconcerted.  Of that Jim Frobisher
+could have no doubt.  He sat for so long a time, his cigarette
+half-way to his lips, a man turned into stone.  Then
+he laughed rather bitterly, with his eyes alertly turned on
+Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know what I am doing, Monsieur Frobisher?"
+he asked.  "I am putting to myself a riddle.
+Answer it if you can!  What is the strongest passion in
+the world?  Avarice?  Love?  Hatred?  None of these
+things.  It is the passion of one public official to take a
+great big club and hit his brother official on the back of
+the head.  It is arranged that I shall go secretly to Dijon
+so that I may have some little chance of success.  Good!
+On Saturday it is so arranged, and already on Monday
+my colleagues have so spread the news that Miss Harlowe
+can telegraph it to you on Tuesday morning.  But that is
+kind, eh?  May I please see the telegram?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher took it from the long envelope and handed it
+to Hanaud, who received it with a curious eagerness and
+opened it out on the table in front of them.  He read it
+very slowly, so slowly that Jim wondered whether he too
+heard through the lines of the telegram, as through the
+receiver of a telephone, the same piteous cry for help
+which he himself had heard.  Indeed, when Hanaud
+raised his face all the bitterness had gone from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The poor little girl, she is afraid now, eh?  The
+slender fingers, they do not snap themselves any longer,
+eh?  Well, in a few days we make all right for her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim stoutly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Meanwhile I tear this, do I not?" and Hanaud held
+up the telegraph form.  "It mentions my name.  It will
+be safe with you, no doubt, but it serves no purpose.
+Everything which is torn up here is burnt in the evening.
+It is for you to say," and he dangled the telegram before
+Jim Frobisher's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By all means," said Jim, and Hanaud tore the telegram
+across.  Then he placed the torn pieces together and
+tore them through once again and dropped them into his
+waste-paper basket.  "So!  That is done!" he said.
+"Now tell me!  There is another young English girl in
+the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott," said Jim with a nod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, tell me about her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim made the same reply to Hanaud which he had made
+to Mr. Haslitt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have never seen her in my life.  I never heard of her
+until yesterday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But whereas Mr. Haslitt had received the answer with
+amazement, Hanaud accepted it without comment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we shall both make the acquaintance of that
+young lady at Dijon," he said with a smile, and he rose
+from his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher had a feeling that the interview which
+had begun badly and moved on to cordiality was turning
+back upon itself and ending not too well.  He was
+conscious of a subtle difference in Hanaud's manner, not a
+diminution in his friendliness, but&mdash;Jim could find
+nothing but Hanaud's own phrase to define the change.  He
+seemed to have caught the hem of the skirt of Chance as
+it flickered for a second within his range of vision.  But
+when it had flickered Jim could not even conjecture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked up his hat and stick.  Hanaud was already
+at the door with his hand upon the knob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, Monsieur Frobisher, and I thank you
+sincerely for your visit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall see you in Dijon," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely," Hanaud agreed with a smile.  "On many
+occasions.  In the office, perhaps, of the examining
+magistrate.  No doubt in the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jim was not satisfied.  It was a real collaboration
+which Hanaud had appeared a few minutes ago not
+merely to accept, but even to look forward to.  Now, on
+the contrary, he was evading it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But if we are to work together?" Jim suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You might want to reach me quickly," Hanaud
+continued.  "Yes.  And I might want to reach you, if not
+so quickly, still very secretly.  Yes."  He turned the
+question over in his mind.  "You will stay at the Maison
+Crenelle, I suppose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Jim, and he drew a little comfort from
+Hanaud's little start of disappointment.  "There will be
+no need for that," he explained.  "Boris Waberski can
+attempt nothing more.  Those two girls will be safe
+enough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's true," Hanaud agreed.  "You will go, then,
+to the big hotel in the Place Darcy.  For me I shall stay
+in one that is more obscure, and not under my own name.
+Whatever chance of secrecy is still left for me, that I
+shall cling to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not volunteer the name of the obscure hotel or
+the name under which he proposed to masquerade, and
+Jim was careful not to inquire.  Hanaud stood with his
+hand upon the knob of the door and his eyes thoughtfully
+resting upon Frobisher's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will trust you with a little trick of mine," he said,
+and a smile warmed and lit his face to good humour.
+"Do you like the pictures?  No&mdash;yes?  For me, I adore
+them.  Wherever I go I snatch an hour for the cinema.
+I behold wonderful things and I behold them in the
+dark&mdash;so that while I watch I can talk quietly with a
+friend, and when the lights go up we are both gone, and
+only our empty bocks are left to show where we were
+sitting.  The cinemas&mdash;yes!  With their audiences which
+constantly change and new people coming in who sit
+plump down upon your lap because they cannot see an
+inch beyond their noses, the cinemas are useful, I tell
+you.  But you will not betray my little secret?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ended with a laugh.  Jim Frobisher's spirits were
+quite revived by this renewal of Hanaud's confidence.  He
+felt with a curious elation that he had travelled a long
+way from the sedate dignities of Russell Square.  He
+could not project in his mind any picture of
+Messrs. Frobisher &amp; Haslitt meeting a client in a dark corner
+of a cinema theatre off the Marylebone Road.  Such
+manoeuvres were not amongst the firm's methods, and Jim
+began to find the change exhilarating.  Perhaps, after
+all, Messrs. Frobisher &amp; Haslitt were a little musty, he
+reflected.  They missed&mdash;and he coined a phrase, he, Jim
+Frobisher! ... they missed the ozone of police-work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I'll keep your secret," he said with a thrill
+in his voice.  "I should never have thought of so capital
+a meeting-place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good," said Hanaud.  "Then at nine o'clock each
+night, unless there is something serious to prevent me, I
+shall be sitting in the big hall of the Grande Taverne.
+The Grande Taverne is at the corner across the square
+from the railway station.  You can't mistake it.  I shall
+be on the left-hand side of the hall and close up to the
+screen and at the edge near the billiard-room.  Don't look
+for me when the lights are raised, and if I am talking to
+any one else, you will avoid me like poison.  Is that
+understood?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite," Jim returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you have now two secrets of mine to keep."  Hanaud's
+face lost its smile.  In some strange way it
+seemed to sharpen, the light-coloured eyes became very
+still and grave.  "That also is understood, Monsieur
+Frobisher," he said.  "For I begin to think that we may both
+of us see strange things before we leave Dijon again for
+Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment of gravity passed.  With a bow he held
+open the door.  But Jim Frobisher, as he passed out into
+the corridor, was once again convinced that at some
+definite point in the interview Hanaud had at all events
+caught a glimpse of the flickering skirts of Chance, even
+if he had not grasped them in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap04"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER FOUR: <i>Betty Harlowe</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher reached Dijon that night at an hour
+too late for any visit, but at half-past nine on the next
+morning he turned with a thrill of excitement into the
+little street of Charles-Robert.  This street was bordered
+upon one side, throughout its length, by a high garden
+wall above which great sycamores and chestnut trees
+rustled friendlily in a stir of wind.  Towards the farther
+mouth of the street the wall was broken, first by the end of
+a house with a florid observation-window of the
+Renaissance period which overhung the footway; and again a
+little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall iron gates.
+Before these gates Jim came to a standstill.  He gazed into
+the courtyard of the Maison Crenelle, and as he gazed
+his excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of
+it.  There seemed so little cause for excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning.  On the left-hand
+side of the court women-servants were busy in front
+of a row of offices; at the end Jim caught glimpses of a
+chauffeur moving between a couple of cars in a garage,
+and heard him whistling gaily as he moved; on the right
+stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out
+gaily with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow, taking
+in the sunlight through all its open windows.  The hall
+door under the horizontal glass fan stood open.  One
+of the iron gates, too, was ajar.  Even the <i>sergent-de-ville</i>
+in his white trousers out in the small street here seemed
+to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high
+wall rather than exercising any real vigilance.  It was
+impossible to believe, with all this pleasant evidence of
+normal life, that any threat was on that house or upon
+any of its inhabitants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And indeed there is no threat," Jim reflected.  "I
+have Hanaud's word for it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door.
+An old serving-man informed him that Mademoiselle
+Harlowe did not receive, but he took Jim's card nevertheless,
+and knocked upon a door on the right of the big
+square hall.  As he knocked, he opened the door; and
+from his position in the hall Jim looked right through a
+library to a window at the end and saw two figures
+silhouetted against the window, a man and a girl.  The man
+was protesting, rather extravagantly both in word and
+gesture, to Jim's Britannic mind, the girl laughing&mdash;a
+clear, ringing laugh, with just a touch of cruelty, at the
+man's protestations.  Jim even caught a word or two of
+the protest spoken in French, but with a curiously metallic
+accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have been your slave too long," the man cried, and
+the girl became aware that the door was open and that
+the old man stood inside of it with a card upon a silver
+salver.  She came quickly forward and took the card.
+Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running
+out into the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining.  "I had no
+right to expect you so soon.  Oh, thank you!" and she
+gave him both her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim did not need her words to recognise in her the
+"little girl" of Mr. Haslitt's description.  Little in actual
+height Betty Harlowe certainly was not, but she was such
+a slender trifle of a girl that the epithet seemed in place.
+Her hair was dark brown in colour, with a hint of copper
+where the light caught it, parted on one side and very
+neatly dressed about her small head.  The broad forehead
+and oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid
+the fresh scarlet of her lips; and the large pupils of her
+grey eyes gave to her a look which was at once haunting
+and wistful.  As she held out her hands in a warm
+gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of
+delicate flame and fragile as fair china.  She looked him
+over with one swift comprehensive glance and breathed
+a little sigh of relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now
+on," she said, with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure.  That's what I am here for," he
+answered.  "But don't take me for anything very choice
+and particular."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty laughed again and, holding him by the sleeve,
+drew him into the library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Espinosa," she said, presenting the stranger
+to Jim.  "He is from Cataluna, but he spends so much
+of his life in Dijon that we claim him as a citizen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong
+white teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I have the honour to represent a great Spanish
+firm of wine-growers.  We buy the wines here to mix
+with our better brands, and we sell wine here to mix with
+their cheaper ones."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mustn't give your trade secrets away to me," Jim
+replied shortly.  He disliked Espinosa on sight, as they
+say, and he was at no very great pains to conceal his
+dislike.  Espinosa was altogether too brilliant a personage.
+He was a big, broad-shouldered man with black shining
+hair and black shining eyes, a florid complexion, a curled
+moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on
+quite different business," Betty interposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?" said the Catalan a little defiantly, as though he
+meant to hold his ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him.
+Espinosa raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall see you when you return," said Betty, and she
+walked to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I go away," Espinosa replied stubbornly.  "It is not
+certain, Mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go"; and with
+a ceremonious bow to Jim he walked out of the room;
+but not so quickly but that Betty glanced swiftly from
+one man to the other with keen comparing eyes, and Jim
+detected the glance.  She closed the door and turned back
+to Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put
+him in a good humour.  He was being compared to another
+man to his advantage, and however modest one may
+be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant warmth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More trouble, Miss Harlowe," he said with a smile,
+"but this time the sort of trouble which you must expect
+for a good many years to come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two
+side windows which looked out upon the courtyard.
+Betty sat down in the window-seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really ought to be grateful to him," she said, "for
+he made me laugh.  And it seems to me ages since I
+laughed"; she looked out of the window and her eyes
+suddenly filled with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! don't, please," cried Jim in a voice of trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The smile trembled once more on Betty's lips deliciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't," she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was so glad to hear you laugh," he continued, "after
+your unhappy telegram to my partner and before I told
+you my good news."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty looked up at him eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good news?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope
+the two letters which Waberski had sent to his firm and
+handed them to Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Read them," he said, "and notice the dates."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty glanced at the handwriting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From Monsieur Boris," she cried, and she settled
+down in the window-seat to study them.  In her short
+black frock with her slim legs in their black silk stockings
+extended and her feet crossed, and her head and white
+neck bent over the sheets of Waberski's letters, she looked
+to Jim like a girl fresh from school.  She was quick
+enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I always knew that it was money that
+Monsieur Boris wanted," she said.  "And when my
+aunt's will was read and I found that everything had
+been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you and
+make some arrangement for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was no obligation upon you," Jim protested.
+"He wasn't really a relation at all.  He married
+Mrs. Harlowe's sister, that's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know," replied Betty, and she laughed.  "He always
+objected to me because I would call him 'Monsieur
+Boris' instead of 'uncle.'  But I meant to do something
+nevertheless.  Only he gave me no time.  He bullied me
+first of all, and I do hate being bullied&mdash;don't you,
+Mr. Frobisher?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty looked at the letters again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose,"
+she continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the
+phrase.  "Afterwards he brought this horrible charge
+against me, and to have suggested any arrangement would
+have been to plead guilty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were quite right.  It would indeed," Jim agreed
+cordially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the
+back of Jim Frobisher's mind that this girl had been a
+trifle hard in her treatment of Boris Waberski.  He was
+a sponger, a wastrel, with no real claim upon her, it was
+true.  On the other hand, he had no means of livelihood,
+and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune,
+had been content to endure and support him.  Now, however,
+the suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the
+girl removed and by her own frankness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then it is all over," Betty said, handing back the
+letters to Jim with a sigh of relief.  Then she smiled
+ruefully&mdash;"But just for a little while I was really
+frightened," she confessed.  "You see, I was sent for and
+questioned by the examining magistrate.  Oh!  I wasn't
+frightened by the questions, but by him, the man.  I've
+no doubt it's his business to look severe, but I couldn't
+help thinking that if any one looked as terrifically severe
+as he did, it must be because he hadn't any brains and
+wanted you not to know.  And people without brains are
+always dangerous, aren't they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, that wasn't encouraging," Jim agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he
+expected me to run away.  And to crown everything, when
+I came away from the Palais de Justice, I met some
+friends outside who gave me a long list of people who
+had been condemned and only found to be innocent when
+it was too late."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim stared at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The brutes!" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, we have all got friends like that," Betty returned
+philosophically.  "Mine, however, were particularly
+odious.  For they actually discussed, as a reason of
+course, why I should engage the very best advocate,
+whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the charge
+couldn't be made one of matricide.  In which case there
+could be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with
+a black veil over my head and naked feet."  She saw
+horror and indignation in Jim Frobisher's face and she
+reached out a hand to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt,
+though"&mdash;and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper
+and contemplated it whimsically&mdash;"I don't imagine that,
+given the circumstances, I should be bothering my head
+much as to whether I was wearing my best shoes and
+stockings or none at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never heard of so abominable a suggestion," cried Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a
+little rattled," continued Betty, "and why I sent off that
+silly panicky telegram.  I would have recalled it when I
+rose to the surface again.  But it was then too late.  The
+telegram had&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflexion and
+a sharp indraw of her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who is that?" she asked in a changed voice.  She
+had been speaking quietly and slowly, with an almost
+humorous appreciation of the causes of her fear.  Now
+her question was uttered quickly and anxiety was
+predominant in her voice.  "Yes, who is that?" she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A big, heavily built man sauntering past the great iron
+gates had suddenly whipped into the courtyard.  A
+fraction of a second before he was an idler strolling along
+the path, now he was already disappearing under the big
+glass fan of the porch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's Hanaud," Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet
+as though a spring in her had been released, and stood
+swaying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have nothing to fear from Hanaud," Jim Frobisher
+reassured her.  "I have shown him those two letters
+of Waberski.  From first to last he is your friend.
+Listen.  This is what he said to me only yesterday in
+Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yesterday, in Paris?" Betty asked suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I called upon him at the Sûrété.  These were
+his words.  I remembered them particularly so that I
+could repeat them to you just as they were spoken.  'Your
+little client can lay her pretty head upon her pillow
+confident that no injustice will be done to her.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bell of the front door shrilled through the house
+as Jim finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why is he in Dijon?  Why is he at the door
+now?" Betty asked stubbornly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was the one question which Jim must not
+answer.  He had received a confidence from Hanaud.
+He had pledged his word not to betray it.  For a little
+while longer Betty must believe that Waberski's accusation
+against her was the true reason of Hanaud's presence
+in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud acts under orders," Jim returned.  "He is
+here because he was bidden to come"; and to his relief
+the answer sufficed.  In truth, Betty's thoughts were
+diverted to some problem to which he had not the key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you called upon Monsieur Hanaud in Paris," she
+said, with a warm smile.  "You have forgotten nothing
+which could help me."  She laid a hand upon the sill of
+the open window.  "I hope that he felt all the flattery
+of my panic-stricken telegram to London."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was simply regretful that you should have been
+so distressed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you showed him the telegram?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And he destroyed it.  It was my excuse for calling
+upon him with the letters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty sat down again on the window-seat and lifted a
+finger for silence.  Outside the door voices were speaking.
+Then the door was opened and the old man-servant entered.
+He carried this time no card upon a salver, but
+he was obviously impressed and a trifle flustered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle," he began, and Betty interrupted him.
+All trace of anxiety had gone from her manner.  She
+was once more mistress of herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know, Gaston.  Show Monsieur Hanaud in at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Monsieur Hanaud was already in.  He bowed
+with a pleasant ceremony to Betty Harlowe and shook
+hands cordially with Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was delighted as I came through the court, Mademoiselle,
+to see that my friend here was already with you.
+For he will have told you that I am not, after all, the ogre
+of the fairy-books."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you never looked up at the windows once," cried
+Betty in perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade never
+to look up at windows and yet to know what is going on
+behind them.  With your permission?"  And he laid his
+hat and cane upon a big writing-table in the middle of the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap05"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER FIVE: <i>Betty Harlowe Answers</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"But we cannot see even through the widest of
+windows," Hanaud continued, "what happened behind
+them a fortnight ago.  In those cases, Mademoiselle, we
+have to make ourselves the nuisance and ask the questions."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am ready to answer you," returned Betty quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, of that&mdash;not a doubt," Hanaud cried genially.
+"Is it permitted to me to seat myself?  Yes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty jumped up, the pallor of her face flushed to pink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon.  Of course, Monsieur Hanaud."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That little omission in her manners alone showed Jim
+Frobisher that she was nervous.  But for it, he would
+have credited her with a self-command almost unnatural
+in her years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is nothing," said Hanaud with a smile.  "After all,
+we are&mdash;the gentlest of us&mdash;disturbing guests."  He took
+a chair from the side of the table and drew it up close so
+that he faced Betty.  But whatever advantage was to be
+gained from the positions he yielded to her.  For the
+light from the window fell in all its morning strength
+upon his face, whilst hers was turned to the interior of
+the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So!" he said as he sat down.  "Mademoiselle, I will
+first give you a plan of our simple procedure, as at present
+I see it.  The body of Madame Harlowe was exhumed
+the night before last in the presence of your notary."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty moved suddenly with a little shiver of revolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know," he continued quickly.  "These necessities
+are distressing.  But we do Madame Harlowe no hurt,
+and we have to think of the living one, you, Miss Betty
+Harlowe, and make sure that no suspicion shall rest upon
+you&mdash;no, not even amongst your most loyal friends.
+Isn't that so?  Well, next, I put my questions to you
+here.  Then we wait for the analyst's report.  Then the
+Examining Magistrate will no doubt make you his
+compliments, and I, Hanaud, will, if I am lucky, carry back
+with me to that dull Paris, a signed portrait of the
+beautiful Miss Harlowe against my heart."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And that will be all?" cried Betty, clasping her hands
+together in her gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For you, Mademoiselle, yes.  But for our little
+Boris&mdash;no!"  Hanaud grinned with a mischievous anticipation.
+"I look forward to half an hour with that broken-kneed
+one.  I shall talk to him and I shall not be dignified&mdash;no,
+not at all.  I shall take care, too, that my good friend
+Monsieur Frobisher is not present.  He would take from
+me all my enjoyment.  He would look at me all prim like
+my maiden aunt and he would say to himself, 'Shocking!
+Oh, that comic!  What a fellow!  He is not proper.'  No,
+and I shall not be proper.  But, on the other hand, I
+will laugh all the way from Dijon to Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Hanaud had indeed begun to laugh already
+and Betty suddenly joined in with him.  Hers was a
+clear, ringing laugh of enjoyment, and Jim fancied
+himself once more in the hall hearing that laughter come
+pealing through the open door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, that is good!" exclaimed Hanaud.  "You can
+laugh, Mademoiselle, even at my foolishnesses.  You must
+keep Monsieur Frobisher here in Dijon and not let him
+return to London until he too has learnt that divinest of
+the arts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little nearer, and a most
+uncomfortable image sprang at once into Jim Frobisher's
+mind.  Just so, with light words and little jokes squeezed
+out to tenuity, did doctors hitch up their chairs to the
+bedsides of patients in a dangerous case.  It took quite a
+few minutes of Hanaud's questions before that image
+entirely vanished from his thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!" said Hanaud.  "Now let us to business and
+get the facts all clear and ordered!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Jim agreed, and he too hitched his chair a little
+closer.  It was curious, he reflected, how little he did
+know of the actual facts of the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now tell me, Mademoiselle!  Madame Harlowe died,
+so far as we know, quite peacefully in her bed during the
+night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," replied Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"During the night of April the 27th?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She slept alone in her room that night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That was her rule?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand Madame Harlowe's heart had given her
+trouble for some time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She had been an invalid for three years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And there was a trained nurse always in the house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now tell me, Mademoiselle, where did this nurse
+sleep?  Next door to Madame?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  A bedroom had been fitted up for her on the
+same floor but at the end of the passage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how far away was this bedroom?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There were two rooms separating it from my aunt's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Large rooms?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Betty explained.  "These rooms are on the
+ground-floor, and are what you would call reception-rooms.
+But, since Madame's heart made the stairs dangerous
+for her, some of them were fitted up especially for
+her use."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I see," said Hanaud.  "Two big reception-rooms
+between, eh?  And the walls of the house are thick.  It is
+not difficult to see that it was not built in these days.  I
+ask you this, Mademoiselle.  Would a cry from Madame
+Harlowe at night, when all the house was silent, be heard
+in the nurse's room?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am very sure that it would not," Betty returned.
+"But there was a bell by Madame's bed which rang in
+the nurse's room.  She had hardly to lift her arm to press
+the button."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!" said Hanaud.  "A bell specially fitted up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the button within reach of the fingers.  Yes.
+That is all very well, if one does not faint, Mademoiselle.
+But suppose one does!  Then the bell is not very useful.
+Was there no room nearer which could have been set
+aside for the nurse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was one next to my aunt's room, Monsieur
+Hanaud, with a communicating door."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was puzzled and sat back in his chair.  Jim
+Frobisher thought the time had come for him to interpose.
+He had been growing more and more restless as the
+catechism progressed.  He could not see any reason why
+Betty, however readily and easily she answered, should
+be needlessly pestered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely, Monsieur Hanaud," he said, "it would save a
+deal of time if we paid a visit to these rooms and saw
+them for ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud swung round like a thing on a swivel.  Admiration
+beamed in his eyes.  He gazed at his junior colleague
+in wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what an idea!" he cried enthusiastically.  "What
+a fine idea!  How ingenious!  How difficult to conceive!
+And it is you, Monsieur Frobisher, who have thought of
+it!  I make you my distinguished compliments!"  Then
+all his enthusiasm declined into lassitude.  "But what a
+pity!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud waited intently for Jim to ask for an explanation
+of that sigh, but Jim simply got red in the face and
+refused to oblige.  He had obviously made an asinine
+suggestion and was being rallied for it in front of the
+beautiful Betty Harlowe, who looked to him for her
+salvation; and on the whole he thought Hanaud to be a rather
+insufferable person as he sat there brightly watching for
+some second inanity.  Hanaud in the end had to explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We should have visited those rooms before now,
+Monsieur Frobisher.  But the Commissaire of Police has
+sealed them up and without his presence we must not
+break the seals."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An almost imperceptible movement was made by Betty
+Harlowe in the window; an almost imperceptible smile
+flickered for the space of a lightning-flash upon her lips;
+and Jim saw Hanaud stiffen like a watch-dog when he
+hears a sound at night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are amused, Mademoiselle?" he asked sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the contrary, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the smile reappeared upon her face and was seen
+to be what it was, pure wistfulness.  "I had a hope those
+great seals with their linen bands across the doors were
+all now to be removed.  It is fanciful, no doubt, but I
+have a horror of them.  They seem to me like an interdict
+upon the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's manner changed in an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I can very well understand, Mademoiselle," he
+said, "and I will make it my business to see that those
+seals are broken.  Indeed, there was no great use in
+affixing them, since they were only affixed when the charge
+was brought and ten days after Madame Harlowe died."  He
+turned to Jim.  "But we in France are all tied up in
+red tape, too.  However, the question at which I am
+driving does not depend upon any aspect of the rooms.  It
+is this, Mademoiselle," and he turned back to Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madame Harlowe was an invalid with a nurse in constant
+attendance.  How is it that the nurse did not sleep
+in that suitable room with the communicating-door?
+Why must she be where she could hear no cry, no sudden
+call?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty nodded her head.  Here was a question which
+demanded an answer.  She leaned forward, choosing her
+words with care.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but for that, Monsieur, you must understand
+something of Madame my aunt and put yourself for a
+moment in her place.  She would have it so.  She was, as
+you say, an invalid.  For three years she had not gone
+beyond the garden except in a private saloon once a year
+to Monte Carlo.  But she would not admit her malady.
+No, she was in her mind strong and a fighter.  She was
+going to get well, it was always a question of a few weeks
+with her, and a nurse in her uniform always near with
+the door open, as though she were in the last stages of
+illness&mdash;that distressed her."  Betty paused and went on
+again.  "Of course, when she had some critical attack,
+the nurse was moved.  I myself gave the order.  But as
+soon as the attack subsided, the nurse must go.  Madame
+would not endure it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim understood that speech.  Its very sincerity gave
+him a glimpse of the dead woman, made him appreciate
+her tough vitality.  She would not give in.  She did not
+want the paraphernalia of malady always about her.  No,
+she would sleep in her own room, and by herself, like
+other women of her age.  Yes, Jim understood that and
+believed every word that Betty spoke.  Only&mdash;only&mdash;she
+was keeping something back.  It was that which troubled
+him.  What she said was true, but there was more to be
+said.  There had been hesitation in Betty's speech, too
+nice a choice of words and then suddenly a little rush of
+phrases to cover up the hesitations.  He looked at
+Hanaud, who was sitting without a movement and with his
+eyes fixed upon Betty's face, demanding more from her
+by his very impassivity.  They were both, Jim felt sure,
+upon the edge of that little secret which, according to
+Haslitt as to Hanaud was always at the back of such wild
+charges as Waberski brought&mdash;the little shameful family
+secret which must be buried deep from the world's eyes.
+And while Jim was pondering upon this explanation of
+Betty's manner, he was suddenly startled out of his wits
+by a passionate cry which broke from her lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you look at me like that?" she cried to Hanaud,
+her eyes suddenly ablaze in her white face and her
+lips shaking.  Her voice rose to a challenge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you disbelieve me, Monsieur Hanaud?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud raised his hands in protest.  He leaned back
+in his chair.  The vigilance of his eyes, of his whole
+attitude, was relaxed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle," he said with a
+good deal of self-reproach.  "I do not disbelieve you.  I
+was listening with both my ears to what you said, so that
+I might never again have to trouble you with my
+questions.  But I should have remembered, what I forgot,
+that for a number of days you have been living under a
+heavy strain.  My manner was at fault."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small tornado of passion passed.  Betty sank back
+in the corner of the window-seat, her head resting against
+the side of the sash and her face a little upturned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are really very considerate, Monsieur Hanaud,"
+she returned.  "It is I who should beg your pardon.  For
+I was behaving like a hysterical schoolgirl.  Will you go
+on with your questions?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Hanaud replied gently.  "It is better that we
+finish with them now.  Let us come back to the night of
+the twenty-seventh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madame was in her usual health that night&mdash;neither
+better nor worse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If anything a little better," returned Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So that you did not hesitate to go on that evening to a
+dance given by some friends of yours?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim started.  So Betty was actually out of the house
+on that fatal night.  Here was a new point in her favour.
+"A dance!" he cried, and Hanaud lifted his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you please, Monsieur Frobisher!" he said.  "Let
+Mademoiselle speak!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not hesitate," Betty explained.  "The life of the
+household had to go on normally.  It would never have
+done for me to do unusual things.  Madame was quick
+to notice.  I think that although she would not admit
+that she was dangerously ill, at the bottom of her mind
+she suspected that she was; and one had to be careful not
+to alarm her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By such acts, for instance, as staying away from a
+dance to which she knew that you had meant to go?" said
+Hanaud.  "Yes, Mademoiselle.  I quite understand that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cocked his head at Jim Frobisher, and added with
+a smile, "Ah, you did not know that, Monsieur Frobisher.
+No, nor our friend Boris Waberski, I think.  Or
+he would hardly have rushed to the Prefect of Police in
+such a hurry.  Yes, Mademoiselle was dancing with her
+friends on this night when she is supposed to be
+committing the most monstrous of crimes.  By the way,
+Mademoiselle, where was Boris Waberski on the night of the
+27th?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was away," returned Betty.  "He went away on
+the 25th to fish for trout at a village on the River Ouche,
+and he did not come back until the morning of the 28th."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly," said Hanaud.  "What a type that fellow!
+Let us hope he had a better landing-net for his trout than
+the one he prepared so hastily for Mademoiselle Harlowe.
+Otherwise his three days' sport cannot have amounted to
+much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His laugh and his words called up a faint smile upon
+Betty's face and then he swept back to his questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you went to a dance, Mademoiselle.  Where?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At the house of Monsieur de Pouillac on the
+Boulevard Thiers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And at what hour did you go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I left this house at five minutes to nine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are sure of the hour?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite," said Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you see Madame Harlowe before you went?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Betty answered.  "I went to her room just before
+I left.  She took her dinner in bed, as she often did.
+I was wearing for the dance a new frock which I had
+bought this winter at Monte Carlo, and I went to her
+room to show her how I looked in it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was Madame alone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; the nurse was with her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And upon that Hanaud smiled with a great appearance
+of cunning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew that, Mademoiselle," he declared with a
+friendly grin.  "See, I set a little trap for you.  For I
+have here the evidence of the nurse herself, Jeanne
+Baudin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took out from his pocket a sheet of paper upon
+which a paragraph was typed.  "Yes, the examining
+magistrate sent for her and took her statement."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't know that," said Betty.  "Jeanne left us the
+day of the funeral and went home.  I have not seen her
+since."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded at Hanaud once or twice with a little smile
+of appreciation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I would not like to be a person with a secret to hide
+from you, Monsieur Hanaud," she said admiringly.  "I
+do not think that I should be able to hide it for long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud expanded under the flattery like a novice, and,
+to Jim Frobisher's thinking, rather like a very vulgar
+novice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are wise, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed.  "For,
+after all, I am Hanaud.  There is only one," and he
+thumped his chest and beamed delightedly.  "Heavens,
+these are politenesses!  Let us get on.  This is what the
+nurse declared," and he read aloud from his sheet of
+paper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle came to the bedroom, so that Madame
+might admire her in her new frock of silver tissue and
+her silver slippers.  Mademoiselle arranged the pillows
+and saw that Madame had her favourite books and her
+drink beside the bed.  Then she wished her good night,
+and with her pretty frock rustling and gleaming, she
+tripped out of the room.  As soon as the door was closed,
+Madame said to me&mdash;&mdash;" and Hanaud broke off abruptly.
+"But that does not matter," he said in a hurry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly and sharply Betty leaned forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does it not, Monsieur?" she asked, her eyes fixed
+upon his face, and the blood mounting slowly into her
+pale cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Hanaud, and he began to fold the sheet
+of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What does the nurse report that Madame said to her
+about me, as soon as the door was closed?" Betty asked,
+measuring out her words with a slow insistence.  "Come,
+Monsieur!  I have a right to know," and she held out
+her hand for the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall judge for yourself that it was of no
+importance," said Hanaud.  "Listen!" and once more he
+read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madame said to me, looking at her clock, 'It is well
+that Mademoiselle has gone early.  For Dijon is not
+Paris, and unless you go in time there are no partners
+for you to dance with.'  It was then ten minutes to nine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a smile Hanaud gave the paper into Betty's hand;
+and she bent her head over it swiftly, as though she
+doubted whether what he had recited was really written
+on that sheet, as if she rather trembled to think what
+Mrs. Harlowe had said of her after she had gone from
+the room.  She took only a second or two to glance over
+the page, but when she handed it back to him, her manner
+was quite changed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," she said with a note of bitterness, and
+her deep eyes gleamed with resentment.  Jim understood
+the change and sympathised with it.  Hanaud had spoken
+of setting a trap when he had set none.  For there was no
+conceivable reason why she should hesitate to admit that
+she had seen Mrs. Harlowe in the presence of the nurse,
+and wished her good night before she went to the party.
+But he had set a real trap a minute afterwards and into
+that Betty had straightway stumbled.  He had tricked
+her into admitting a dread that Mrs. Harlowe might have
+spoken of her in disparagement or even in horror after
+she had left the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must know, Monsieur Hanaud," she explained
+very coldly, "that women are not always very generous
+to one another, and sometimes have not the imagination&mdash;how
+shall I put it?&mdash;to visualise the possible consequences
+of things they may say with merely the intention
+to hurt and do a little harm.  Jeanne Baudin and I
+were, so far as I ever knew, good friends, but one is never
+sure, and when you folded up her statement in a hurry I
+was naturally very anxious to hear the rest of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I agree," Jim intervened.  "It did look as if the
+nurse might have added something malevolent, which
+could neither be proved nor disproved."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a misunderstanding, Mademoiselle," Hanaud
+replied in a voice of apology.  "We will take care that
+there shall not be any other."  He looked over the nurse's
+statement again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is said here that you saw that Madame had her
+favourite books and her drink beside the bed.  That is
+true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What was that drink?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A glass of lemonade."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was placed on a table, I suppose, ready for her every
+night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Every night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And there was no narcotic dissolved in it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None," Betty replied.  "If Mrs. Harlowe was restless,
+the nurse would give an opium pill and very
+occasionally a slight injection of morphia."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that was not done on this night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not to my knowledge.  If it was done, it was done
+after my departure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well," said Hanaud, and he folded the paper
+and put it away in his pocket.  "That is finished with.
+We have you now out of the house at five minutes to nine
+in the evening, and Madame in her bed with her health
+no worse than usual."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!"  Hanaud changed his attitude.  "Now let us
+go over your evening, Mademoiselle!  I take it that you
+stayed at the house of M. de Pouillac until you returned
+home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You remember with whom you danced?  If it was
+necessary, could you give me a list of your partners?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose and, crossing to the writing table, sat down
+in front of it.  She drew a sheet of paper towards her and
+took up a pencil.  Pausing now and again to jog her
+memory with the blunt end of the pencil at her lips, she
+wrote down a list of names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These are all, I think," she said, handing the list to
+Hanaud.  He put it in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you!"  He was all contentment now.  Although
+his questions followed without hesitation, one
+upon the other, it seemed to Jim that he was receiving
+just the answers which he expected.  He had the air of
+a man engaged upon an inevitable formality and anxious
+to get it completely accomplished, rather than of one
+pressing keenly a strict investigation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Mademoiselle, at what hour did you arrive home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At twenty minutes past one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are sure of that exact time?  You looked at your
+watch?  Or at the clock in the hall?  Or what?  How are
+you sure that you reached the Maison Crenelle exactly at
+twenty minutes past one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little more forward, but
+he had not to wait a second for the answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is no clock in the hall and I had no watch with
+me," Betty replied.  "I don't like those wrist-watches
+which some girls wear.  I hate things round my wrists,"
+and she shook her arm impatiently, as though she imagined
+the constriction of a bracelet.  "And I did not put
+my watch in my hand-bag because I am so liable to leave
+that behind.  So I had nothing to tell me the time when I
+reached home.  I was not sure that I had not kept Georges&mdash;the
+chauffeur&mdash;out a little later than he cared for.  So
+I made him my excuse, explaining that I didn't really
+know how late I was."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see.  It was Georges who told you the time at the
+actual moment of your arrival?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Georges is no doubt the chauffeur whom I saw
+at work as I crossed the courtyard?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  He told me that he was glad to see me have a
+little gaiety, and he took out his watch and showed it to
+me with a laugh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This happened at the front door, or at those big iron
+gates, Mademoiselle?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At the front door.  There is no lodge-keeper and the
+gates are left open when any one is out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how did you get into the house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I used my latch-key."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!  All this is very clear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty, however, was not mollified by Hanaud's
+satisfaction with her replies.  Although she answered him
+without delay, her answers were given mutinously.  Jim
+began to be a little troubled.  She should have met
+Hanaud half-way; she was imprudently petulant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She'll make an enemy of this man before she has
+done," he reflected uneasily.  But he glanced at the
+detective and was relieved.  For Hanaud was watching her
+with a smile which would have disarmed any less offended
+young lady&mdash;a smile half friendliness and half amusement.
+Jim took a turn upon himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all," he argued, "this very imprudence pleads
+for her better than any calculation.  The guilty don't
+behave like that."  And he waited for the next stage in the
+examination with an easy mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now we have got you back home and within the
+Maison Crenelle before half past one in the morning,"
+resumed Hanaud.  "What did you do then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I went straight upstairs to my bedroom," said Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was your maid waiting up for you, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; I had told her that I should be late and that I
+could undress myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are considerate, Mademoiselle.  No wonder that
+your servants were pleased that you should have a little
+gaiety."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even that advance did not appease the offended girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?" she asked with a sort of silky sweetness which
+was more hostile than any acid rejoinder.  But it did
+not stir Hanaud to any resentment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When, then, did you first hear of Madame Harlowe's
+death?" was asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The next morning my maid Francine came running
+into my room at seven o'clock.  The nurse Jeanne had
+just discovered it.  I slipped on my dressing-gown and
+ran downstairs.  As soon as I saw that it was true, I rang
+up the two doctors who were in the habit of attending
+here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you notice the glass of lemonade?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It was empty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your maid is still with you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;Francine Rollard.  She is at your disposal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders and smiled doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That, if it is necessary at all, can come later.  We
+have the story of your movements now from you,
+Mademoiselle, and that is what is important."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose from his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have been, I am afraid, a very troublesome person,
+Mademoiselle Harlowe," he said with a bow.  "But it is
+very necessary for your own sake that no obscurities
+should be left for the world's suspicions to play with.
+And we are very close to the end of this ordeal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had nursed a hope the moment Hanaud rose that
+this wearing interview had already ended.  Betty, for her
+part, was indifferent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is for you to say, Monsieur," she said implacably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just two points then, and I think, upon reflection,
+you will understand that I have asked you no question
+which is unfair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty bowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your two points, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"First, then.  You inherit, I believe, the whole fortune
+of Madame?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you expect to inherit it all?  Did you know of her
+will?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  I expected that a good deal of the money would
+be left to Monsieur Boris.  But I don't remember that she
+ever told me so.  I expected it, because Monsieur Boris
+so continually repeated that it was so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt," said Hanaud lightly.  "As to yourself,
+was Madame generous to you during her life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hard look disappeared from Betty's face.  It
+softened to sorrow and regret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very," she answered in a low voice.  "I had one
+thousand pounds a year as a regular allowance, and a
+thousand pounds goes a long way in Dijon.  Besides, if I
+wanted more, I had only to ask for it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty's voice broke in a sob suddenly and Hanaud
+turned away with a delicacy for which Jim was not
+prepared.  He began to look at the books upon the shelves,
+that she might have time to control her sorrow, taking
+down one here, one there, and speaking of them in a casual
+tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is easy to see that this was the library of Monsieur
+Simon Harlowe," he said, and was suddenly brought to a
+stop.  For the door was thrown open and a girl broke into
+the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty," she began, and stood staring from one to
+another of Betty's visitors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann, this is Monsieur Hanaud," said Betty with a
+careless wave of her hand, and Ann went white as a
+sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann!  Then this girl was Ann Upcott, thought Jim
+Frobisher, the girl who had written to him, the girl, all
+acquaintanceship with whom he had twice denied, and he
+had sat side by side with her, he had even spoken to her.
+She swept across the room to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you have come!" she cried.  "But I knew that you
+would!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was conscious of a mist of shining yellow hair, a
+pair of sapphire eyes, and of a face impertinently lovely
+and most delicate in its colour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I have come," he said feebly, and Hanaud
+looked on with a smile.  He had an eye on Betty Harlowe,
+and the smile said as clearly as words could say,
+"That young man is going to have a deal of trouble
+before he gets out of Dijon."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap06"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER SIX: <i>Jim Changes His Lodging</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The library was a big oblong room with two tall
+windows looking into the court, and the observation
+window thrown out at the end over the footway of the
+street.  A door in the inner wall close to this window led
+to a room behind, and a big open fire-place faced the
+windows on the court.  For the rest, the walls were lined with
+high book-shelves filled with books, except for a vacant
+space here and there where a volume had been removed.
+Hanaud put back in its place the book which he had been
+holding in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One can easily see that this is the library of Simon
+Harlowe, the collector," he said.  "I have always thought
+that if one only had the time to study and compare the
+books which a man buys and reads, one would more
+surely get the truth of him than in any other way.  But
+alas! one never has the time."  He turned towards Jim
+Frobisher regretfully.  "Come and stand with me, Monsieur
+Frobisher.  For even a glance at the backs of them
+tells one something."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim took his place by Hanaud's side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look, here is a book on Old English Gold Plate, and
+another&mdash;pronounce that title for me, if you please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim read the title of the book on which Hanaud's finger
+was placed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud repeated the inscription and moved along.
+From a shelf at the level of his breast and just to the
+left of the window in which Betty was sitting, he took a
+large, thinnish volume in a paper cover, and turned over
+the plates.  It was a brochure upon Battersea Enamel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There should be a second volume," said Jim Frobisher
+with a glance at the bookshelf.  It was the idlest of
+remarks.  He was not paying any attention to the
+paper-covered book upon Battersea Enamel.  For he was really
+engaged in speculating why Hanaud had called him to his
+side.  Was it on the chance that he might detect some
+swift look of understanding as it was exchanged by the
+two girls, some sign that they were in a collusion?  If so,
+he was to be disappointed.  For though Betty and Ann
+were now free from Hanaud's vigilant eye, neither of
+them moved, neither of them signalled to the other.
+Hanaud, however, seemed entirely interested in his book.
+He answered Jim's suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, one would suppose that there were a second volume.
+But this is complete," he said, and he put back the
+book in its place.  There was room next to it for another
+quarto book, so long as it was no thicker, and Hanaud
+rested his finger in the vacant place on the shelf, with his
+thoughts clearly far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty recalled him to his surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she said in her quiet voice from
+her seat in the window, "there was a second point, you
+said, on which you would like to ask me a question."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, I had not forgotten it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned with a curiously swift movement and stood
+so that he had both girls in front of him, Betty on his
+left in the window, Ann Upcott standing a little apart
+upon his right, gazing at him with a look of awe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you, Mademoiselle," he asked, "been pestered,
+since Boris Waberski brought his accusation, with any
+of these anonymous letters which seem to be flying about
+Dijon?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have received one," answered Betty, and Ann Upcott
+raised her eyebrows in surprise.  "It came on Sunday
+morning.  It was very slanderous, of course, and I should
+have taken no notice of it but for one thing.  It told me
+that you, Monsieur Hanaud, were coming from Paris to
+take up the case."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho!" said Hanaud softly.  "And you received this
+letter on the Sunday morning?  Can you show it to me,
+Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course not.  You destroyed it, as such letter should
+be destroyed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I didn't," Betty answered.  "I kept it.  I put it
+away in a drawer of my writing-table in my own sitting-room.
+But that room is sealed up, Monsieur Hanaud.
+The letter is in the drawer still."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud received the statement with a frank satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It cannot run away, then, Mademoiselle," he said
+contentedly.  But the contentment passed.  "So the Commissaire
+of Police actually sealed up your private sitting-room.
+That, to be sure, was going a little far."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty shrugged her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was mine, you see, where I keep my private things.
+And after all I was accused!" she said bitterly; but Ann
+Upcott was not satisfied to leave the matter there.  She
+drew a step nearer to Betty and then looked at Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that is not all the truth," she said.  "Betty's room
+belongs to that suite of rooms in which Madame Harlowe's
+bedroom was arranged.  It is the last room of the
+suite opening on to the hall, and for that reason, as the
+Commissaire said with an apology, it was necessary to
+seal it up with the others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thank you, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud with a
+smile.  "Yes, that of course softens his action."  He
+looked whimsically at Betty in the window-seat.  "It has
+been my misfortune, I am afraid, to offend Mademoiselle
+Harlowe.  Will you help me to get all these troublesome
+dates now clear?  Madame Harlowe was buried, I
+understand, on the Saturday morning twelve days ago!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur," said Ann Upcott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And after the funeral, on your return to this house,
+the notary opened and read the will?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And in Boris Waberski's presence?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then exactly a week later, on Saturday, the seventh of
+May, he goes off quickly to the Prefecture of Police?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And on Sunday morning by the post comes the anonymous
+letter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned away to Betty, who bowed her head in
+answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And a little later on the same morning comes the
+Commissaire, who seals the doors."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At eleven o'clock, to be exact," replied Ann Upcott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud bowed low.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are both wonderful young ladies.  You notice the
+precise hour at which things happen.  It is a rare gift, and
+very useful to people like myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott had been growing easier and easier in her
+manner with each answer that she gave.  Now she could
+laugh outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do, at all events, Monsieur Hanaud," she said.  "But
+alas!  I was born to be an old maid.  A chair out of place,
+a book disarranged, a clock not keeping time, or even a
+pin on the carpet&mdash;I cannot bear these things.  I notice
+them at once and I must put them straight.  Yes, it was
+precisely eleven o'clock when the Commissaire of Police
+rang the bell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he search the rooms before he sealed them?"
+Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  We both of us thought his negligence strange,"
+Ann replied, "until he informed us that the Examining
+Magistrate wanted everything left just as it was."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed genially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That was on my account," he explained.  "Who could
+tell what wonderful things Hanaud might not discover
+with his magnifying glass when he arrived from Paris?
+What fatal fingerprints!  Oh!  Ho! ho!  What scraps
+of burnt letter!  Ah!  Ha! ha!  But I tell you,
+Mademoiselle, that if a crime has been committed in this house,
+even Hanaud would not expect to make any startling
+discoveries in rooms which had been open to the whole
+household for a fortnight since the crime.  However,"
+and he moved towards the door, "since I am here
+now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty was upon her feet like a flash of lightning.
+Hanaud stopped and swung round upon her, swiftly, with
+his eyes very challenging and hard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are going to break those seals now?" she asked
+with a curious breathlessness.  "Then may I come with
+you&mdash;please, please!  It is I who am accused.  I have a
+right to be present," and her voice rose into an earnest
+cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Calm yourself, Mademoiselle," Hanaud returned
+gently.  "No advantage will be taken of you.  I am going
+to break no seals.  That, as I have told you, is the
+right of the Commissaire, who is a magistrate, and he
+will not move until the medical analysis is ready.  No,
+what I was going to propose was that Mademoiselle
+here," and he pointed to Ann, "should show me the outside
+of those reception-rooms and the rest of the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," said Betty, and she sat down again in the
+window-seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," said Hanaud.  He turned back to Ann
+Upcott.  "Shall we go?  And as we go, will you tell me
+what you think of Boris Waberski?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He has some nerve.  I can tell you that, Monsieur
+Hanaud," Ann cried.  "He actually came back to this
+house after he had lodged his charge, and asked me to
+support him"; and she passed out of the room in front of
+Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher followed the couple to the door and
+closed it behind them.  The last few minutes had set his
+mind altogether at rest.  The author of the anonymous
+letters was the detective's real quarry.  His manner had
+quite changed when putting his questions about them.
+The flamboyancies and the indifference, even his
+amusement at Betty's ill-humour had quite disappeared.  He
+had got to business watchfully, quietly.  Jim came back
+into the room.  He took his cigarette-case from his pocket
+and opened it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I smoke?" he asked.  As he turned to Betty for
+permission, a fresh shock brought his thoughts and words
+alike to a standstill.  She was staring at him with panic
+naked in her eyes and her face set like a tragic mask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He believes me guilty," she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Jim, and he went to her side.  But she
+would not listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does.  I am sure of it.  Don't you see that he was
+bound to?  He was sent from Paris.  He has his reputation
+to think of.  He must have his victim before he
+returns."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was sorely tempted to break his word.  He had
+only to tell the real cause which had fetched Hanaud out
+of Paris and Betty's distress was gone.  But he could
+not.  Every tradition of his life strove to keep him silent.
+He dared not even tell her that this charge against her
+was only an excuse.  She must live in anxiety for a little
+while longer.  He laid his hand gently upon her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty, don't believe that!" he said, with a consciousness
+of how weak that phrase was compared with the
+statement he could have made.  "I was watching Hanaud,
+listening to him.  I am sure that he already knew the
+answers to the questions he was asking you.  Why, he
+even knew that Simon Harlowe had a passion for collecting,
+though not a word had been said of it.  He was asking
+questions to see how you would answer them, setting
+now and then a little trap, as he admitted&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Betty in trembling voice, "all the time he
+was setting traps."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And every answer that you gave, even your manner
+in giving them," Jim continued stoutly, "more and more
+made clear your innocence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To him?" asked Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, to him.  I am sure of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe caught at his arm and held it in both
+her hands.  She leaned her head against it.  Through the
+sleeve of his coat he felt the velvet of her cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," she whispered.  "Thank you, Jim," and
+as she pronounced the name she smiled.  She was thanking
+him not so much for the stout confidence of his words,
+as for the comfort which the touch of him gave to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very likely I am making too much of little things," she
+went on.  "Very likely I am ungenerous, too, to Monsieur
+Hanaud.  But he lives amidst crimes and criminals.  He
+must be so used to seeing people condemned and passing
+out of sight into blackness and horrors, that one more
+or less, whether innocent or guilty, going that way,
+wouldn't seem to matter very much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Betty, I think that is a little unjust," Jim
+Frobisher remarked gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, I take it back," she said, and she let his
+arm go.  "All the same, Jim, I am looking to you, not
+to him," and she laughed with an appealing tremor in the
+laugh which took his heart by storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Luckily," said he, "you don't have to look to any one,"
+and he had hardly finished the sentence before Ann
+Upcott came back alone into the room.  She was about
+Betty's height and Betty's age and had the same sort of
+boyish slenderness and carriage which marks the girls of
+this generation.  But in other respects, even to the colour
+of her clothes, she was as dissimilar as one girl can be
+from another.  She was dressed in white from her coat to
+her shoes, and she wore a big gold hat so that one was
+almost at a loss to know where her hat ended and her
+hair began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is prowling about by himself," she replied.  "I
+showed him all the rooms and who used them, and he
+said that he would have a look at them and sent me back
+to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he break the seals on the reception-rooms?" Betty
+Harlowe asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no," said Ann.  "Why, he told us that he couldn't
+do that without the Commissaire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he told us that," Betty remarked dryly.  "But I
+was wondering whether he meant what he told us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't think Monsieur Hanaud's alarming," said
+Ann.  She gave Jim Frobisher the impression that at any
+moment she might call him a dear old thing.  She had
+quite got over the first little shock which the announcement
+of his presence had caused her.  "Besides," and she
+sat down by the side of Betty in the window-seat and
+looked with the frankest confidence at Jim&mdash;"besides, we
+can feel safe now, anyway."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher threw up his hands in despair.  That
+queer look of aloofness had played him false with Ann
+Upcott now, as it had already done with Betty.  If these
+two girls had called on him for help when a sudden squall
+found them in an open sailing-boat with the sheet of the
+sail made fast, or on the ice-slope of a mountain, or with
+a rhinoceros lumbering towards them out of some forest
+of the Nile, he would not have shrunk from their trust.
+But this was quite a different matter.  They were calmly
+pitting him against Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were safe before," he exclaimed.  "Hanaud is
+not your enemy, and as for me, I have neither experience
+nor natural gifts for this sort of work"&mdash;and he broke off
+with a groan.  For both the girls were watching him with
+a smile of complete disbelief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good heavens, they think that I am being astute," he
+reflected, "and the more I confess my incapacity the
+astuter they'll take me to be."  He gave up all arguments.
+"Of course I am absolutely at your service," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," said Betty.  "You will bring your luggage
+from your hotel and stay here, won't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was tempted to accept that invitation.  But, on
+the one hand, he might wish to see Hanaud at the Grande
+Taverne; or Hanaud might wish to see him, and secrecy
+was to be the condition of such meetings.  It was better
+that he should keep his freedom of movement complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't put you to so much trouble, Betty," he replied.
+"There's no reason in the world that I should.
+A call over the telephone and in five minutes I am at your
+side."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe seemed in doubt to press her invitation
+or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It looks a little inhospitable in me," she began, and the
+door opened, and Hanaud entered the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I left my hat and stick here," he said.  He picked them
+up and bowed to the girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have seen everything, Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everything, Mademoiselle.  I shall not trouble you
+again until the report of the analysis is in my hands.  I
+wish you a good morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty slipped off the window-seat and accompanied him
+out into the hall.  It appeared to Jim Frobisher that she
+was seeking to make some amends for her ill-humour; and
+when he heard her voice he thought to detect in it some
+note of apology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall be very glad if you will let me know the sense
+of that report as soon as possible," she pleaded.  "You,
+better than any one, will understand that this is a difficult
+hour for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand very well, Mademoiselle," Hanaud answered
+gravely.  "I will see to it that the hour is not
+prolonged."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim, watching them through the doorway, as they stood
+together in the sunlit hall, felt ever so slight a touch upon
+his arm.  He wheeled about quickly.  Ann Upcott was
+at his side with all the liveliness and even the delicate
+colour gone from her face, and a wild and desperate
+appeal in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will come and stay here?  Oh, please!" she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have just refused," he answered.  "You heard me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know," she went on, the words stumbling over one
+another from her lips.  "But take back your refusal.  Do!
+Oh, I am frightened out of my wits.  I don't understand
+anything.  I am terrified!"  And she clasped her hands
+together in supplication.  Jim had never seen fear so
+stark, no, not even in Betty's eyes a few minutes ago.
+It robbed her exquisite face of all its beauty, and made it
+in a second, haggard and old.  But before he could answer,
+a stick clattered loudly upon the pavement of the
+hall and startled them both like the crack of a pistol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked through the doorway.  Hanaud was stooping
+to pick up his cane.  Betty made a dive for it, but
+Hanaud already had it in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thank you, Mademoiselle, but I can still touch my
+toes.  Every morning I do it five times in my pyjamas,"
+and with a laugh he ran down the couple of steps into the
+courtyard and with that curiously quick saunter of his
+was out into the street of Charles-Robert in a moment.
+When Jim turned again to Ann Upcott, the fear had gone
+from her face so completely that he could hardly believe
+his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty, he is going to stay," she cried gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I inferred," replied Betty with a curious smile as
+she came back into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap07"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER SEVEN: <i>Exit Woberski</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher neither saw nor heard any more of
+Hanaud that day.  He fetched his luggage away from
+the hotel and spent the evening with Betty Harlowe and
+Ann Upcott at the Maison Crenelle.  They took their
+coffee after dinner in the garden behind the house,
+descending to it by a short flight of stone steps from a great
+door at the back of the hall.  And by some sort of
+unspoken compact they avoided all mention of Waberski's
+charge.  They had nothing to do but to wait now for the
+analyst's report.  But the long line of high, shuttered
+windows just above their heads, the windows of the
+reception-rooms, forbade them to forget the subject, and
+their conversation perpetually dwindled down into long
+silences.  It was cool out here in the dark garden, cool
+and very still; so that the bustle of a bird amongst the
+leaves of the sycamores startled them and the rare footsteps
+of a passer-by in the little street of Charles-Robert
+rang out as though they would wake a dreaming city.
+Jim noticed that once or twice Ann Upcott leaned swiftly
+forward and stared across the dark lawns and glimmering
+paths to the great screen of tall trees, as if her eyes
+had detected a movement amongst their stems.  But on
+each occasion she said nothing and with an almost
+inaudible sigh sank back in her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there a door into the garden from the street?"
+Frobisher asked, and Betty answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  There is a passage at the end of the house under
+the reception-rooms from the courtyard which the gardeners
+use.  The only other entrance is through the hall
+behind us.  This old house was built in days when your
+house really was your castle and the fewer the entrances,
+the more safely you slept."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clocks of that city of Clocks clashed out the hour
+of eleven, throwing the sounds of their strokes backwards
+and forwards above the pinnacles and roof-tops in a sort
+of rivalry.  Betty rose to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's a day gone, at all events," she said, and Ann
+Upcott agreed with a breath of relief.  To Jim it seemed
+a pitiful thing that these two girls, to whom each day
+should be a succession of sparkling hours all too short,
+must be rejoicing quietly, almost gratefully, that another
+of them had passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It should be the last of the bad days," he said, and
+Betty turned swiftly towards him, her great eyes shining
+in the darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, Jim," she said, her voice ever so slightly
+lingering like a caress upon his name and she held out
+her hand.  "It's terribly dull for you, but we are not
+unselfish enough to let you go.  You see, we are shunned
+just now&mdash;oh, it's natural!  To have you with us means
+a great deal.  For one thing," and there came a little lilt
+in her voice, "I shall sleep to-night."  She ran up the
+steps and stood for a moment against the light from the
+hall.  "A long-legged slip of a girl, in black silk
+stockings"&mdash;thus Mr. Haslitt had spoken of her as she was
+five years ago, and the description fitted her still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, Betty," said Jim, and Ann Upcott ran
+past him up the steps and waved her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night," said Jim, and with a little twist of her
+shoulders Ann followed Betty.  She came back, however.
+She was wearing a little white frock of <i>crêpe de Chine</i>
+with white stockings and satin shoes, and she gleamed at
+the head of the steps like a slender thing of silver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll bolt the door when you come in, won't you?"
+She pleaded with a curious anxiety considering the height
+of the strong walls about the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will," said Jim, and he wondered why in all this
+business Ann Upcott stood out as a note of fear.  It was
+high time indeed, that the long line of windows was
+thrown open and the interdict raised from the house and
+its inmates.  Jim Frobisher paced the quiet garden in the
+darkness with a prayer at his heart that that time would
+come to-morrow.  In Betty's room above the reception-rooms
+the light was still burning behind the latticed shutters
+of the windows, in spite of her confidence that she
+would sleep&mdash;yes, and in Ann Upcott's room too, at the
+end of the house towards the street.  A fury against
+Boris Waberski flamed up in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late before he himself went into the house and
+barred the door, later still before he fell asleep.  But
+once asleep, he slept soundly, and when he waked, it was
+to find his shutters thrown wide to the sunlight, his coffee
+cold by his bedside, and Gaston, the old servant, in the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud asked me to tell you he was in the
+library," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was out of bed in an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Already?  What is the time, Gaston?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nine o'clock.  I have prepared Monsieur's bath."  He
+removed the tray from the table by the bed.  "I will bring
+some fresh coffee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you!  And will you please tell Monsieur
+Hanaud that I will not be long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim took his coffee while he dressed and hurried down
+to the library, where he found Hanaud seated at the big
+writing-table in the middle of the room, with a newspaper
+spread out over the blotting-pad and placidly reading the
+news.  He spoke quickly enough, however, the moment
+Jim appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you left your hotel in the Place Darcy, after all,
+eh, my friend?  The exquisite Miss Upcott!  She had but
+to sigh out a little prayer and clasp her hands together,
+and it was done.  Yes, I saw it all from the hall.  What
+it is to be young!  You have those two letters which
+Waberski wrote your firm?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim.  He did not think it necessary to
+explain that though the prayer was Ann Upcott's, it was
+the thought of Betty which had brought him to the
+Maison Grenelle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!  I have sent for him," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To come to this house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am expecting him now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's capital," cried Jim.  "I shall meet him, then!
+The damned rogue!  I shouldn't wonder if I thumped
+him," and he clenched his fist and shook it in a joyous
+anticipation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I doubt if that would be so helpful as you think.  No,
+I beg of you to place yourself in my hands this morning,
+Monsieur Frobisher," Hanaud interposed soberly.
+"If you confront Waberski at once with those two letters,
+at once his accusation breaks down.  He will withdraw
+it.  He will excuse himself.  He will burst into a torrent
+of complaints and reproaches.  And I shall get nothing
+out of him.  That I do not want."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what is there to be got?" Jim asked impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something perhaps.  Perhaps nothing," the detective
+returned with a shrug of the shoulders.  "I have a second
+mission in Dijon, as I told you in Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The anonymous letters?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  You were present yesterday when Mademoiselle
+Harlowe told me how she learned that I was summoned
+from Paris upon this case.  It was not, after all,
+any of my colleagues here who spread the news.  It is
+even now unknown that I am here.  No, it was the writer
+of the letters.  And in so difficult a matter I can afford
+to neglect no clue.  Did Waberski know that I was going
+to be sent for?  Did he hear that at the Prefecture when
+he lodged his charge on the Saturday or from the
+examining magistrate on the same day?  And if he did, to
+whom did he talk between the time when he saw the
+magistrate and the time when letters must be posted if they
+are to be delivered on the Sunday morning?  These are
+questions I must have the answer to, and if we at once
+administer the knock-out with your letters, I shall not
+get them.  I must lead him on with friendliness.  You
+see that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim very reluctantly did.  He had longed to see
+Hanaud dealing with Waberski in the most outrageous
+of his moods, pouncing and tearing and trampling with
+the gibes of a schoolboy and the improprieties of the
+gutter.  Hanaud indeed had promised him as much.  But
+he found him now all for restraint and sobriety and more
+concerned apparently with the authorship of the anonymous
+letters than with the righting of Betty Harlowe.
+Jim felt that he had been defrauded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I am to meet this man," he said.  "That must not
+be forgotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And it shall not be," Hanaud assured him.  He led
+him over to the door in the inner wall close to the
+observation window and opened it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See!  If you will please to wait in here," and as the
+disappointment deepened on Jim's face, he added, "Oh,
+I do not ask you to shut the door.  No.  Bring up a chair
+to it&mdash;so!  And keep the door ajar so!  Then you will
+see and hear and yet not be seen.  You are content?  Not
+very.  You would prefer to be on the stage the whole
+time like an actor.  Yes, we all do.  But, at all events,
+you do not throw up your part," and with a friendly grin
+he turned back to the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shuffling step which merged into the next step with
+a curiously slovenly sound rose from the courtyard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was time we made our little arrangements," said
+Hanaud in an undertone.  "For here comes our hero from
+the Steppes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim popped his head through the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud!" he whispered excitedly.  "Monsieur
+Hanaud!  It cannot be wise to leave those windows
+open on the courtyard.  For if we can hear a footstep so
+loudly in this room, anything said in this room will be
+easily overheard in the court."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how true that is!" Hanaud replied in the same
+voice and struck his forehead with his fist in anger at his
+folly.  "But what are we to do?  The day is so hot.
+This room will be an oven.  The ladies and Waberski
+will all faint.  Besides, I have an officer in plain clothes
+already stationed in the court to see that it is kept empty.
+Yes, we will risk it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim drew back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That man doesn't welcome advice from any one,"
+he said indignantly, but he said it only to himself; and
+almost before he had finished, the bell rang.  A few
+seconds afterwards Gaston entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Boris," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Hanaud with a nod.  "And will you tell
+the ladies that we are ready?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Boris Waberski, a long, round-shouldered man with
+bent knees and clumsy feet, dressed in black and holding
+a soft black felt hat in his hand, shambled quickly into
+the room and stopped dead at the sight of Hanaud.
+Hanaud bowed and Waberski returned the bow; and
+then the two men stood looking at one another&mdash;Hanaud
+all geniality and smiles, Waberski a rather grotesque
+figure of uneasiness like one of those many grim
+caricatures carved by the imagination of the Middle Ages on
+the columns of the churches of Dijon.  He blinked in
+perplexity at the detective and with his long,
+tobacco-stained fingers tortured his grey moustache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you be seated?" said Hanaud politely.  "I think
+that the ladies will not keep us waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed towards a chair in front of the writing-table
+but on his left hand and opposite to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand," said Waberski doubtfully.  "I
+received a message.  I understood that the Examining
+Magistrate had sent for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am his agent," said Hanaud.  "I am&mdash;&mdash;" and he
+stopped.  "Yes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Boris Waberski stared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon.  I am&mdash;Hanaud."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shot the name out quickly, but he was answered by
+no start, nor by any sign of recognition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud?"  Waberski shook his head.  "That no
+doubt should be sufficient to enlighten me," he said with
+a smile, "but it is better to be frank&mdash;it doesn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud of the Sûrété of Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And upon Waberski's face there came slowly a look of
+utter consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" he said, and again "Oh!" with a lamentable look
+towards the door as if he was in two minds whether to
+make a bolt of it.  Hanaud pointed again to the chair,
+and Waberski murmured, "Yes&mdash;to be sure," and made
+a little run to it and sank down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher, watching from his secret place, was
+certain of one thing.  Boris Waberski had not written the
+anonymous letter to Betty nor had he contributed the
+information about Hanaud to the writer.  He might well
+have been thought to have been acting ignorance of
+Hanaud's name, up to the moment when Hanaud explained
+who Hanaud was.  But no longer.  His consternation
+then was too genuine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will understand, of course, that an accusation
+so serious as the one you have brought against Mademoiselle
+Harlowe demands the closest inquiry," Hanaud continued
+without any trace of irony, "and the Examining
+Magistrate in charge of the case honoured us in Paris
+with a request for help."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is very difficult," replied Boris Waberski,
+twisting about as if he was a martyr on red-hot plates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the difficulty was Waberski's, as Jim, with that
+distressed man in full view, was now able to appreciate.
+Waberski had rushed to the Prefecture when no answer
+came from Messrs. Frobisher &amp; Haslitt to his letter of
+threats, and had brought his charge in a spirit of
+disappointment and rancour, with a hope no doubt that some
+offer of cash would be made to him and that he could
+withdraw it.  Now he found the trained detective service
+of France upon his heels, asking for his proofs and
+evidence.  This was more than he had bargained for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought," Hanaud continued easily, "that a little
+informal conversation between you and me and the two
+young ladies, without shorthand writers or secretaries,
+might be helpful."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, indeed," said Waberski hopefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As a preliminary of course," Hanaud added dryly, "a
+preliminary to the more serious and now inevitable
+procedure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski's gleam of hopefulness was extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure," he murmured, plucking at his lean throat
+nervously.  "Cases must proceed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is what they are there for," said Hanaud
+sententiously; and the door of the library was pushed open.
+Betty came into the room with Ann Upcott immediately
+behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You sent for me," she began to Hanaud, and then she
+saw Boris Waberski.  Her little head went up with a
+jerk, her eyes smouldered.  "Monsieur Boris," she said,
+and again she spoke to Hanaud.  "Come to take possession,
+I suppose?"  Then she looked round the room for
+Jim Frobisher, and exclaimed in a sudden dismay:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I understood that&mdash;&mdash;" and Hanaud was just in
+time to stop her from mentioning any name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All in good time, Mademoiselle," he said quickly.
+"Let us take things in their order."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty took her old place in the window-seat.  Ann
+Upcott shut the door and sat down in a chair a little apart
+from the others.  Hanaud folded up his newspaper and
+laid it aside.  On the big blotting-pad which was now
+revealed lay one of those green files which Jim Frobisher
+had noticed in the office of the Sûrété.  Hanaud opened
+it and took up the top paper.  He turned briskly to
+Waberski.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur, you state that on the night of the 27th of
+April, this girl here, Betty Harlowe, did wilfully give to
+her adoptive mother and benefactress, Jeanne-Marie
+Harlowe, an overdose of a narcotic by which her death was
+brought about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Waberski with an air of boldness, "I declare
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You do not specify the narcotic?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was probably morphine, but I cannot be sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And administered, according to you, if this summary
+which I hold here is correct, in the glass of lemonade
+which Madame Harlowe had always at her bedside."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laid the sheet of foolscap down again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You do not charge the nurse, Jeanne Baudin, with
+complicity in this crime?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no!" Waberski exclaimed with a sort of horror,
+with his eyes open wide and his eyebrows running up his
+forehead towards his hedge of wiry hair.  "I have not a
+suspicion of Jeanne Baudin.  I pray you, Monsieur
+Hanaud, to be clear upon that point.  There must be no
+injustice!  No!  Oh, it is well that I came here to-day!
+Jeanne Baudin!  Listen!  I would engage her to nurse
+me to-morrow, were my health to fail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One cannot say more than that," replied Hanaud with
+a grave sympathy.  "I only asked you the question
+because undoubtedly Jeanne Baudin was in Madame's
+bedroom when Mademoiselle entered it to wish Madame
+good night and show off her new dancing-frock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I understand," said Waberski.  He was growing
+more and more confident, so suave and friendly was this
+Monsieur Hanaud of the Sûrété.  "But the fatal drug
+was slipped into that glass without a doubt when Jeanne
+Baudin was not looking.  I do not accuse her.  No!  It
+is that hard one," and his voice began to shake and his
+mouth to work, "who slipped it in and then hurried off
+to dance till morning, whilst her victim died.  It is terrible
+that!  Yes, Monsieur Hanaud, it is terrible.  My poor
+sister!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sister-in-law."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The correction came with an acid calm from an armchair
+near the door in which Ann Upcott was reclining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sister to me!" replied Waberski mournfully and he
+turned to Hanaud.  "Monsieur, I shall never cease to
+reproach myself.  I was away fishing in the forest.  If
+I had stayed at home!  Think of it!  I ask you to&mdash;&mdash;"
+and his voice broke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but you did come back, Monsieur Waberski,"
+Hanaud said, "and this is where I am perplexed.  You
+loved your sister.  That is clear, since you cannot even
+think of her without tears."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," Waberski shaded his eyes with his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why did you, loving her so dearly, wait for so
+long before you took any action to avenge her death?
+There will be some good reason not a doubt, but I have
+not got it."  Hanaud continued, spreading out his hands.
+"Listen to the dates.  Your dear sister dies on the night
+of the 27th of April.  You return home on the 28th; and
+you do nothing, you bring no charge, you sit all quiet.
+She is buried on the 30th, and after that you still do
+nothing, you sit all quiet.  It is not until one week after
+that you launch your accusation against Mademoiselle.
+Why?  I beg you, Monsieur Waberski, not to look at
+me between the fingers, for the answer is not written on
+my face, and to explain this difficulty to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The request was made in the same pleasant, friendly
+voice which Hanaud had used so far and without any
+change of intonation.  But Waberski snatched his hand
+away from his forehead and sat up with a flush on his
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I answer you at once," he exclaimed.  "From the first
+I knew it here," and he thumped his heart with his fist,
+"that murder had been committed.  But as yet I did not
+know it here," and he patted his forehead, "in my head.
+So I think and I think and I think.  I see reasons and
+motives.  They build themselves up.  A young girl of
+beauty and style, but of a strange and secret character,
+thirsting in her heart for colour and laughter and
+enjoyment and the power which her beauty offers her if she
+will but grasp it, and yet while thirsting, very able to
+conceal all sign of thirst.  That is the picture I give you
+of that hard one, Betty Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time since the interview had commenced,
+Betty herself showed some interest in it.  Up till now
+she had sat without a movement, a figure of disdain in
+an ice-house of pride.  Now she flashed into life.  She
+leaned forward, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin
+propped in her hand, her eyes on Waberski, and a smile
+of amusement at this analysis of herself giving life to
+her face.  Jim Frobisher, on the other hand, behind his
+door felt that he was listening to blasphemies.  Why did
+Hanaud endure it?  There was information, he had said,
+which he wanted to get from Boris Waberski.  The point
+on which he wanted information was settled long ago, at
+the very beginning of this informal session.  It was as
+clear as daylight that Waberski had nothing to do with
+Betty's anonymous letter.  Why, then, should Hanaud
+give this mountebank of a fellow a free opportunity to
+slander Betty Harlowe?  Why should he question and
+question as if there were solid weight in the accusation?
+Why, in a word, didn't he fling open this door, allow
+Frobisher to produce the blackmailing letters to
+Mr. Haslitt, and then stand aside while Boris Waberski was
+put into that condition in which he would call upon the
+services of Jeanne Baudin?  Jim indeed was furiously
+annoyed with Monsieur Hanaud.  He explained to
+himself that he was disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Boris Waberski, after a little nervous check
+when Betty had leaned forward, continued his description.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For such a one Dijon would be tiresome.  It is true
+there was each year a month or so at Monte Carlo, just
+enough to give one a hint of what might be, like a
+cigarette to a man who wants to smoke.  And then back
+to Dijon!  Ah, Monsieur, not the Dijon of the Dukes of
+Burgundy, not even the Dijon of the Parliament of the
+States, but the Dijon of to-day, an ordinary, dull,
+provincial town of France which keeps nothing of its former
+gaieties and glory but some old rare buildings and a little
+spirit of mockery.  Imagine, then, Monsieur, this hard
+one with a fortune and freedom within her grasp if only
+she has the boldness on some night when Monsieur Boris
+is out of the way to seize them!  Nor is that all.  For
+there is an invalid in the house to whom attentions are
+owed&mdash;yes, and must be given."  Waberski, in a flight of
+excitement checked himself and half closed his eyes, with
+a little cunning nod.  "For the invalid was not so easy.
+No, even that dear one had her failings.  Oh, yes, and we
+will not forget them when the moment comes for the
+extenuating pleas.  No, indeed," and he flung his arm
+out nobly.  "I myself will be the first to urge them to the
+judge of the Assizes when the verdict is given."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe leaned back once more indifferent
+From an arm-chair near the door, a little gurgle of
+laughter broke from the lips of Ann Upcott.  Even Hanaud
+smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," he said; "but we have not got quite as far
+as the Court of Assizes, Monsieur Waberski.  We are
+still at the point where you know it in your heart but not
+in your head."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is so," Waberski returned briskly.  "On the
+seventh of May, a Saturday, I bring my accusation to the
+Prefecture.  Why?  For, on the morning of that day I
+am certain.  I know it at last here too," and up went his
+hand to his forehead, and he hitched himself forward on
+to the edge of his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am in the street of Gambetta, one of the small popular
+new streets, a street with some little shops and a reputation
+not of the best.  At ten o'clock I am passing quickly
+through that street when from a little shop a few yards
+in front of me out pops that hard one, my niece."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the whole character of that session had
+changed.  Jim Frobisher, though he sat apart from it,
+felt the new tension, and was aware of the new expectancy.
+A moment ago Boris Waberski as he sat talking
+and gesticulating had been a thing for ridicule, almost for
+outright laughter.  Now, though his voice still jumped
+hysterically from high notes to low notes and his body
+jerked like a marionette's, he held the eyes of every
+one&mdash;every one, that is, except Betty Harlowe.  He was no
+longer vague.  He was speaking of a definite hour and a
+place and of a definite incident which happened there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, in that bad little street I see her.  I do not
+believe my senses.  I step into a little narrow alley and I
+peep round the corner.  I peep with my eyes," and
+Waberski pointed to them with two of his fingers as though
+there was something peculiarly convincing in the fact
+that he peeped with them and not with his elbows, "and
+I am sure.  Then I wait until she is out of sight, and
+I creep forward to see what shop it is she visited in that
+little street of squalor.  Once more I do not believe my
+eyes.  For over the door I read the name, Jean Cladel,
+Herbalist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pronounced the name in a voice of triumph and sat
+back in his chair, nodding his head violently at intervals
+of a second.  There was not a sound in the room until
+Hanaud's voice broke the silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand," he said softly.  "Who is this
+Jean Cladel, and why should a young lady not visit his
+shop?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon," Waberski replied.  "You are not
+of Dijon.  No! or you would not have asked that question.
+Jean Cladel has no better name than the street he
+very suitably lives in.  Ask a Dijonnais about Jean Cladel,
+and you will see how he becomes silent and shrugs his
+shoulders as if here was a topic on which it was becoming
+to be silent.  Better still, Monsieur Hanaud, ask at
+the Prefecture.  Jean Cladel!  Twice he has been tried
+for selling prohibited drugs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was stung at last out of his calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is that?" he cried in a sharp voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, twice, Monsieur.  Each time he has scraped
+through, that is true.  He has powerful friends, and
+witnesses have been spirited away.  But he is known!  Jean
+Cladel!  Yes, Jean Cladel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel, Herbalist of the street Gambetta,"
+Hanaud repeated slowly.  "But"&mdash;and he leaned back in
+an easier attitude&mdash;"you will see my difficulty, Monsieur
+Waberski.  Ten o'clock is a public hour.  It is not a likely
+hour for any one to choose for so imprudent a visit, even
+if that one were stupid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and so I reasoned too," Waberski interposed
+quickly.  "As I told you, I could not believe my eyes.
+But I made sure&mdash;oh, there was no doubt, Monsieur
+Hanaud.  And I thought to myself this.  Crimes are
+discovered because criminals, even the acutest, do sooner
+or later some foolish thing.  Isn't it so?  Sometimes they
+are too careful; they make their proofs too perfect for an
+imperfect world.  Sometimes they are too careless or are
+driven by necessity to a rash thing.  But somehow a
+mistake is made and justice wins the game."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha! a student of crime, Monsieur!"  He turned to
+Betty, and it struck upon Jim Frobisher with a curious
+discomfort that this was the first time Hanaud had looked
+directly at Betty since the interview had begun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what do you say to this story, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a lie," she answered quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You did not visit Jean Cladel in the street of Gambetta
+at ten o'clock on the morning of the 7th of May?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski smiled and twisted his moustache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course!  Of course!  We could not expect Mademoiselle
+to admit it.  One fights for one's skin, eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, after all," Hanaud interrupted, with enough
+savagery in his voice to check all Waberski's complacency,
+"let us not forget that on the 7th of May, Madame
+Harlowe had been dead for ten days.  Why should
+Mademoiselle still be going to the shop of Jean Cladel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To pay," said Waberski.  "Oh, no doubt Jean Cladel's
+wares are expensive and have to be paid for more than
+once, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By wares you mean poison," said Hanaud.  "Let us
+be explicit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poison which was used to murder Madame Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say so," Waberski declared, folding his arms across
+his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well," said Hanaud.  He took from his green
+file a second paper written over in a fine hand and
+emphasised by an official stamp.  "Then what will you say,
+Monsieur, if I tell you that the body of Madame
+Harlowe has been exhumed?" Hanaud continued, and
+Waberski's face lost what little colour it had.  He stared
+at Hanaud, his jaw working up and down nervously, and
+he did not say a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what will you say if I tell you," Hanaud
+continued, "that no more morphia was discovered in it than
+one sleeping-dose would explain and no trace at all of any
+other poison?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a complete silence Waberski took his handkerchief
+from his pocket and dabbed his forehead.  The game was
+up.  He had hoped to make his terms, but his bluff was
+called.  He had not one atom of faith in his own accusation.
+There was but one course for him to take, and that
+was to withdraw his charge and plead that his affection
+for his sister-in-law had led him into a gross mistake.
+But Boris Waberski was never the man for that.  He had
+that extra share of cunning which shipwrecks always the
+minor rogue.  He was unwise enough to imagine that
+Hanaud might be bluffing too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his chair a little nearer to the table.  He
+tittered and nodded at Hanaud confidentially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You say 'if I tell you,'" he said smoothly.  "Yes, but
+you do not tell me, Monsieur Hanaud&mdash;no, not at all.
+On the contrary, what you say is this: 'My friend Waberski,
+here is a difficult matter which, if exposed, means a
+great scandal, and of which the issue is doubtful.  There
+is no good in stirring the mud.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I say that?" Hanaud asked, smiling pleasantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski felt sure of his ground now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and more than that.  You say, 'You have been
+badly treated, my friend Waberski, and if you will now
+have a little talk with that hard one your niece&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And his chair slid back against the bookcase and he sat
+gaping stupidly like a man who has been shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud had sprung to his feet, he stood towering
+above the table, his face suddenly dark with passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I say all that, do I?" he thundered.  "I came
+all the way from Paris to Dijon to preside over a little
+bargain in a murder case!  I&mdash;Hanaud!  Oh! ho! ho!
+I'll teach you a lesson for that!  Read this!" and bending
+forward he thrust out the paper with the official seal.
+"It is the report of the analysts.  Take it, I tell you, and
+read it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski reached out a trembling arm, afraid to
+venture nearer.  Even when he had the paper in his hands,
+they shook so he could not read it.  But since he had
+never believed in his charge that did not matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he muttered, "no doubt I have made a mistake."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud caught the word up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mistake!  Ah, there's a fine word!  I'll show you
+what sort of a mistake you have made.  Draw up your
+chair to this table in front of me!  So!  And take a
+pen&mdash;so!  And a sheet of paper&mdash;so! and now you write
+for me a letter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," Waberski agreed.  All the bravado had
+gone from his bearing, all the insinuating slyness.  He
+was in a quiver from head to foot.  "I will write that I
+am sorry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is not necessary," roared Hanaud.  "I will see
+to it that you are sorry.  No!  You write for me what I
+dictate to you and in English.  You are ready?  Yes?
+Then you begin.  'Dear Sirs.'  You have that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," said Waberski, scribbling hurriedly.  His
+head was in a whirl.  He flinched as he wrote under the
+towering bulk of the detective.  He had as yet no
+comprehension of the goal to which he was being led.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!  'Dear Sirs,'" Hanaud repeated.  "But we
+want a date for that letter.  April 30th, eh?  That will
+do.  The day Madame Harlowe's will was read and you
+found you were left no money.  April 30th&mdash;put it in.
+So!  Now we go on.  'Dear Sirs, Send me at once one
+thousand pounds by the recommended post, or I make
+some awkwardnesses&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski dropped his pen and sprang back out of his
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand&mdash;I can't write that....  There
+is an error&mdash;I never meant..." he stammered, his
+hands raised as if to ward off an attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, you never meant the blackmail!" Hanaud cried
+savagely.  "Ah!  Ha!  Ha!  It is good for you that I
+now know that!  For when, as you put it so delicately
+to Mademoiselle, the moment comes for the extenuating
+pleas, I can rise up in the Court and urge it.  Yes!  I
+will say: 'Mr. the President, though he did the blackmail,
+poor fellow, he never meant it.  So please to give him
+five years more,'" and with that Hanaud swept across
+the room like a tornado and flung open the door behind
+which Frobisher was waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come!" he said, and he led Jim into the room.  "You
+produce the two letters he wrote to your firm, Monsieur
+Frobisher.  Good!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was not necessary to produce them.  Boris
+Waberski had dropped into a chair and burst into tears.
+There was a little movement of discomfort made by
+every one in that room except Hanaud; and even his
+anger dropped.  He looked at Waberski in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You make us all ashamed.  You can go back to your
+hotel," he said shortly.  "But you will not leave Dijon,
+Monsieur Waberski, until it is decided what steps we shall
+take with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waberski rose to his feet and stumbled blindly to the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I make my apologies," he stammered.  "It is all a
+mistake.  I am very poor ... I meant no harm," and
+without looking at any one he got himself out of the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That type!  He at all events cannot any more think
+that Dijon is dull," said Hanaud, and once more he
+adventured on the dangerous seas of the English
+language.  "Do you know what my friend Mister Ricardo
+would have said?  No?  I tell you.  He would have said,
+'That fellow!  My God!  What a sauce!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those left in the room, Betty, Ann Upcott, and Jim
+Frobisher, were in a mood to welcome any excuse for
+laughter.  The interdict upon the house was raised, the
+charge against Betty proved of no account, the whole
+bad affair was at an end.  Or so it seemed.  But Hanaud
+went quickly to the door and closed it, and when he
+turned back there was no laughter at all upon his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now that that man has gone," he said gravely, "I
+have something to tell you three which is very serious.  I
+believe that, though Waberski does not know it, Madame
+Harlowe was murdered by poison in this house on the
+night of April the twenty-seventh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The statement was received in a dreadful silence.  Jim
+Frobisher stood like a man whom some calamity has
+stunned.  Betty leaned forward in her seat with a face of
+horror and incredulity; and then from the arm-chair by
+the door where Ann Upcott was sitting there burst a loud,
+wild cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was some one in the house that night," she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud swung round to her, his eyes blazing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And it is you who tell me that, Mademoiselle?" he
+asked in a curious, steady voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It's the truth," she cried with a sort of relief
+in her voice, that at last a secret was out which had grown
+past endurance.  "I am sure now.  There was a stranger
+in the house."  And though her face was white as paper,
+her eyes met Hanaud's without fear.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap08"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER EIGHT: <i>The Book</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The two startling declarations, one treading upon the
+heels of the other, set Jim Frobisher's brain whirling.
+Consternation and bewilderment were all jumbled
+together.  He had no time to ask "how," for he was
+already asking "What next?"  His first clear thought
+was for Betty, and as he looked at her, a sharp anger
+against both Hanaud and Ann Upcott seized and shook
+him.  Why hadn't they both spoken before?  Why must
+they speak now?  Why couldn't they leave well alone?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Betty had fallen back in the window-seat, her
+hands idle at her sides and her face utterly weary and
+distressed.  Jim thought of some stricken patient who
+wakes in the morning to believe for a few moments that
+the malady was a bad dream; and then comes the stab
+and the cloud of pain settles down for another day.  A
+moment ago Betty's ordeal seemed over.  Now it was
+beginning a new phase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sorry," he said to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The report of the analysts was lying on the writing-table
+just beneath his eyes.  He took it up idly.  It was
+a trick, of course, with its seals and its signatures, a
+trick of Hanaud's to force Waberski to a retraction.  He
+glanced at it, and with an exclamation began carefully
+to read it through from the beginning to the end.  When
+he had finished, he raised his head and stared at Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this report is genuine," he cried.  "Here are
+the details of the tests applied and the result.  There was
+no trace discovered of any poison."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No trace at all," Hanaud replied.  He was not in the
+least disturbed by the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I don't understand why you bring the accusation
+or whom you accuse," Frobisher exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have accused no one," said Hanaud steadily.  "Let
+us be clear about that!  As to your other question&mdash;look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took Frobisher by the elbow and led him to that
+bookshelf by the window before which they had stood
+together yesterday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was an empty space here yesterday.  You yourself
+drew my attention to it.  You see that the space is
+filled to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud took down the volume which occupied the
+space.  It was of quarto size, fairly thick and bound in a
+paper cover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look at that," he said; and Jim Frobisher as he took
+it noticed with a queer little start that although Hanaud's
+eyes were on his face they were blank of all expression.
+They did not see him.  Hanaud's senses were concentrated
+on the two girls at neither of whom he so much
+as glanced.  He was alert to them, to any movement they
+might make of surprise or terror.  Jim threw up his
+head in a sudden revolt.  He was being used for another
+trick, as some conjurer may use a fool of a fellow whom
+he has persuaded out of his audience on to his platform.
+Jim looked at the cover of the book, and cried with
+enough violence to recall Hanaud's attention:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see nothing here to the point.  It is a treatise printed
+by some learned society in Edinburgh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is.  And if you will look again, you will see that
+it was written by a Professor of Medicine in that
+University.  And if you will look a third time you will see
+from a small inscription in ink that the copy was
+presented with the Professor's compliments to Mr. Simon
+Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud, whilst he was speaking, went to the second
+of the two windows which looked upon the court and putting
+his head out, spoke for a little while in a low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall not need our sentry here any more," he
+said as he turned back into the room.  "I have sent him
+upon an errand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went back to Jim Frobisher, who was turning over
+a page of the treatise here and there and was never a
+scrap the wiser.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Strophanthus Hispidus," Jim read aloud the title of
+the treatise.  "I can't make head or tail of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me try!" said Hanaud, and he took the book out
+of Frobisher's hands.  "I will show you all how I spent
+the half-hour whilst I was waiting for you this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down at the writing-table, placed the treatise on
+the blotting-pad in front of him and laid it open at a
+coloured plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the fruit of the plant Strophanthus Hispidus,
+when it is ripening," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The plate showed two long, tapering follicles joined
+together at their stems and then separating like a pair
+of compasses set at an acute angle.  The backs of these
+follicles were rounded, dark in colour and speckled; the
+inner surfaces, however, were flat, and the curious
+feature of them was that, from longitudinal crevices, a
+number of silky white feathers protruded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Each of these feathers," Hanaud continued, and he
+looked up to find that Ann Upcott had drawn close to
+the table and that Betty Harlowe herself was leaning
+forward with a look of curiosity upon her face&mdash;"each
+of these feathers is attached by a fine stalk to an elliptical
+pod, which is the seed, and when the fruit is quite ripe
+and these follicles have opened so that they make a
+straight line, the feathers are released and the wind
+spreads the seed.  It is wonderful, eh?  See!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned the pages until he came to another plate.
+Here a feather was represented in complete detachment
+from the follicle.  It was outspread like a fan and was
+extraordinarily pretty and delicate in its texture; and
+from it by a stem as fine as a hair the seed hung like a
+jewel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What would you say of it, Mademoiselle?" Hanaud
+asked, looking up into the face of Ann Upcott with a
+smile.  "An ornament wrought for a fine lady, by a
+dainty artist, eh?" and he turned the book round so that
+she on the opposite side of the table might the better
+admire the engraving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe, it seemed, was now mastered by her
+curiosity.  Jim Frobisher, gazing down over Hanaud's
+shoulder at the plate and wondering uneasily whither he
+was being led, saw a shadow fall across the book.  And
+there was Betty, standing by the side of her friend with
+the palms of her hands upon the edge of the table and her
+face bent over the book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One could wish it was an ornament, this seed of the
+Strophanthus Hispidus," Hanaud continued with a shake
+of the head.  "But, alas! it is not so harmless."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned the book around again to himself and once
+more turned the pages.  The smile had disappeared
+altogether from his face.  He stopped at a third plate; and
+this third plate showed a row of crudely fashioned arrows
+with barbed heads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud glanced up over his shoulder at Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you understand now the importance of this book,
+Monsieur Frobisher?" he asked.  "No?  The seeds of
+this plant make the famous arrow-poison of Africa.  The
+deadliest of all the poisons since there is no antidote
+for it."  His voice grew sombre.  "The wickedest of all
+the poisons, since it leaves no trace."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher was startled.  "Is that true?" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Hanaud; and Betty suddenly leaned
+forward and pointed to the bottom of the plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is a mark there below the hilt of that arrow,"
+she said curiously.  "Yes, and a tiny note in ink."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment a little gift of vision was vouchsafed
+to Jim Frobisher, born, no doubt, of his perplexities and
+trouble.  A curtain was rung up in his brain.  He saw
+no more than what was before him&mdash;the pretty group
+about the table in the gold of the May morning, but it
+was all made grim and terrible and the gold had withered
+to a light that was grey and deathly and cold as the
+grave.  There were the two girls in the grace of their
+beauty and their youth, daintily tended, fastidiously
+dressed, bending their shining curls over that plate of the
+poison arrows like pupils at a lecture.  And the man
+delivering the lecture, so close to them, with speech so
+gentle, was implacably on the trail of murder, and maybe
+even now looked upon one of these two girls as his
+quarry; was even now perhaps planning to set her in
+the dock of an Assize Court and send her out afterwards,
+carried screaming and sobbing with terror in the first
+grey of the morning to the hideous red engine erected
+during the night before the prison gates.  Jim saw
+Hanaud the genial and friendly, as in some flawed mirror,
+twisted into a sinister and terrifying figure.  How could
+he sit so close with them at the table, talk to them, point
+them out this and that diagram in the plates, he being
+human and knowing what he purposed.  Jim broke in
+upon the lecture with a cry of exasperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this isn't a poison!  This is a book about a poison.
+The book can't kill!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once Hanaud replied to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't it?" he cried sharply.  "Listen to what Mademoiselle
+said a minute ago.  Below the hilt of this arrow
+marked 'Figure F,' the Professor has written a tiny note."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This particular arrow was a little different from the
+others in the shape of its shaft.  Just below the triangular
+iron head the shaft expanded.  It was as though the head
+had been fitted into a bulb; as one sees sometimes wooden
+penholders fine enough and tapering at the upper end,
+and quite thick just above the nib.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'See page 37,'" said Hanaud, reading the Professor's
+note, and he turned back the pages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Page 37.  Here we are!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud ran a finger half-way down the page and
+stopped at a word in capitals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Figure F."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud hitched his chair a little closer to the table;
+Ann Upcott moved round the end of the table that she
+might see the better; even Jim Frobisher found himself
+stooping above Hanaud's shoulder.  They were all
+conscious of a queer tension; they were expectant like
+explorers on the brink of a discovery.  Whilst Hanaud read
+the paragraph aloud, it seemed that no one breathed; and
+this is what he read:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Figure F is the representation of a poison arrow
+which was lent to me by Simon Harlowe, Esq., of
+Blackman's, Norfolk, and the Maison Crenelle at Dijon.  It
+was given to him by a Mr. John Carlisle, a trader on the
+Shire River in the Kombe country, and is the most perfect
+example of a poison arrow which I have seen.  The
+Strophanthus seed has been pounded up in water and mixed
+with the reddish clay used by the Kombe natives, and
+the compound is thickly smeared over the head of the
+arrow shaft and over the actual iron dart except at the
+point and the edges.  The arrow is quite new and the
+compound fresh.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud leaned back in his chair when he had come to
+the end of this paragraph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, Monsieur Frobisher, the question we have to
+answer.  Where is to-day Simon Harlowe's arrow?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty looked up into Hanaud's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If it is anywhere in this house, Monsieur, it should be
+in the locked cabinet in my sitting-room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your sitting-room?" Hanaud exclaimed sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It is what we call the Treasure Room&mdash;half
+museum, half living-room.  My uncle Simon used it,
+Madame too.  It was their favourite room, full of curios
+and beautiful things.  But after Simon Harlowe died
+Madame would never enter it.  She locked the door which
+communicated with her dressing-room, so that she might
+never even in a moment of forgetfulness enter it.  The
+room has a door into the hall.  She gave the room to
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's forehead cleared of its wrinkles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand," he said.  "And that room is sealed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you ever seen the arrow, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not that I remember.  I only looked into the cabinet
+once.  There are some horrible things hidden away
+there"; and Betty shivered and shook the recollection of
+them from her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The chances are that it's not in the house at all, that
+it never came back to the house," Frobisher argued
+stubbornly.  "The Professor in all probability would have
+kept it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If he could," Hanaud rejoined.  "But it's out of all
+probability that a collector of rare things would have
+allowed him to keep it.  No!" and he sat for a little time
+in a muse.  "Do you know what I am wondering?" he
+asked at length, and then answered his own question.  "I
+am wondering whether after all Boris Waberski was not
+in the street of Gambetta on the seventh of May and close,
+very close, to the shop of Jean Cladel the herbalist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Boris!  Boris Waberski," cried Jim.  Was he in
+Hanaud's eyes the criminal?  After all, why not?  After
+all, who more likely if criminal there was, since Boris
+Waberski thought himself an inheritor under Mrs. Harlowe's
+will?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am wondering whether he was not doing that very
+thing which he attributed to you, Mademoiselle Betty,"
+Hanaud continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Paying?" Betty cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Paying&mdash;or making excuses for not paying, which
+is more probable, or recovering the poison arrow now
+clean of its poison, which is most probable of all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Hanaud had made an end of his secrecies and
+reticence.  His suspicion, winged like the arrow in the
+plate, was flying straight to this evident mark.  Jim drew
+a breath like a man waking from a nightmare; in all of
+that small company a relaxation was visible; Ann Upcott
+drew away from the table; Betty said softly as though
+speaking to herself, "Monsieur Boris!  Monsieur Boris!
+Oh, I never thought of that!" and, to Jim's admiration
+there was actually a note of regret in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was audible, too, to Hanaud, since he answered with
+a smile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you must bring yourself to think of it, Mademoiselle.
+After all, he was not so gentle with you that you
+need show him so much good will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A slight rush of colour tinged Betty's cheeks.  Jim
+was not quite sure that a tiny accent of irony had not
+pointed Hanaud's words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw him sitting here," she replied quickly, "half an
+hour ago&mdash;abject&mdash;in tears&mdash;a man!"  She shrugged her
+shoulders with a gesture of distaste.  "I wish him
+nothing worse.  I was satisfied."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled again with a curious amusement, an
+appreciation which Frobisher was quite at a loss to
+understand.  But he had from time to time received an
+uneasy impression that a queer little secret duel was all
+this while being fought by Betty Harlowe and Hanaud
+underneath the smooth surface of questions and answers&mdash;a
+duel in which now one, now the other of the combatants
+got some trifling scratch.  This time it seemed
+Betty was hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are satisfied, Mademoiselle, but the Law is not,"
+Hanaud returned.  "Boris Waberski expected a legacy.
+Boris Waberski needed money immediately, as the first
+of the two letters which he wrote to Monsieur Frobisher's
+firm clearly shows.  Boris Waberski had a motive."  He
+looked from one to the other of his audience with a nod
+to drive the point home.  "Motives, no doubt, are signposts
+rather difficult to read, and if one reads them amiss,
+they lead one very wide astray.  Granted!  But you
+must look for your signposts all the same and try to read
+them aright.  Listen again to the Professor of Medicine
+in the University of Edinburgh!  He is as precise as a
+man can be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's eyes fell again upon the description of
+Figure F in the treatise still open upon the table in front
+of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The arrow was the best specimen of a poison arrow
+which he had ever come across.  The poison paste was
+thickly and smoothly spread over the arrow head and
+some inches of the shaft.  The arrow was unused and the
+poison fresh, and these poisons retain their energy for
+many, many years.  I tell you that if this book and this
+arrow were handed over to Jean Cladel, Herbalist, Jean
+Cladel could with ease make a solution in alcohol which
+injected from a hypodermic needle, would cause death
+within fifteen minutes and leave not one trace."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Within fifteen minutes?" Betty asked incredulously,
+and from the arm-chair against the wall, where Ann
+Upcott had once more seated herself, there broke a
+startled exclamation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" she cried, but no one took any notice of her
+at all.  Both Jim and Betty had their eyes fixed upon
+Hanaud, and he was altogether occupied in driving his
+argument home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Within fifteen minutes?  How do you know?" cried Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is written here, in the book."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And where would Jean Cladel have learnt to handle
+the paste with safety, how to prepare the solution?" Jim
+went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here!  Here!  Here!" answered Hanaud, tapping
+with his knuckles upon the treatise.  "It is all written
+out here&mdash;experiment after experiment made upon living
+animals and the action of the poison measured and
+registered by minutes.  Oh, given a man with a working
+knowledge of chemicals such as Jean Cladel must possess,
+and the result is certain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe leaned forward again over the book and
+Hanaud turned it half round between them, so that both,
+by craning their heads, could read.  He turned the pages
+back to the beginning and passed them quickly in review.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See, Mademoiselle, the time tables.  Strophanthus
+constricts the muscles of the heart like digitalis, only much
+more violently, much more swiftly.  See the contractions
+of the heart noted down minute after minute, until the
+moment of death and all&mdash;here is the irony!&mdash;so that by
+means of these experiments, the poison may be transformed
+into a medicine and the weapon of death become
+an agent of life&mdash;as in good hands, it has happened."  Hanaud
+leaned back and contemplated Betty Harlowe between
+his half-closed eyes.  "That is wonderful, Mademoiselle.
+What do you think?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty slowly closed the book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud," she said, "it is no less
+wonderful that you should have studied this book so
+thoroughly during the half-hour you waited for us here this
+morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Hanaud's turn to change colour.  The blood
+mounted into his face.  He was for a second or two quite
+disconcerted.  Jim once more had a glimpse of the secret
+duel and rejoiced that this time it was Hanaud, the great
+Hanaud, who was scratched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The study of poisons is particularly my work," he
+answered shortly.  "Even at the Sûrété we have to
+specialise nowadays," and he turned rather quickly towards
+Frobisher.  "You are thoughtful, Monsieur?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was following out his own train of thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he answered.  Then he spoke to Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Boris Waberski had a latch-key, I suppose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He took it away with him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When are the iron gates locked?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is the last thing Gaston does before he goes to bed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim's satisfaction increased with every answer he received.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, Monsieur Hanaud," he cried, "all this while
+we have been leaving out a question of importance.  Who
+put this book back upon its shelf?  And when?  Yesterday
+at noon the space was empty.  This morning it is
+filled.  Who filled it?  Last night we sat in the garden
+after dinner behind the house.  What could have been
+easier than for Waberski to slip in with his latch-key at
+some moment when the court was empty, replace the book
+and slip out again unnoticed?  Why&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gesture of Betty's brought him to a halt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unnoticed?  Impossible!" she said bitterly.  "The
+police have a <i>sergent-de-ville</i> at our gates, night and day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is there no longer.  After you were good enough
+to answer me so frankly yesterday morning the questions
+it was my duty to put to you, I had him removed at
+once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, that's true," Jim exclaimed joyfully.  He
+remembered now that when he had driven up with his
+luggage from the hotel in the afternoon, the street of
+Charles-Robert had been quite empty.  Betty Harlowe
+stood taken aback by her surprise.  Then a smile made
+her face friendly; her eyes danced to the smile, and she
+dipped to the detective a little mock curtsy.  But her voice
+was warm with gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thank you, Monsieur.  I did not notice yesterday
+that the man had been removed, or I should have thanked
+you before.  Indeed I was not looking for so much
+consideration at your hands.  As I told my friend Jim, I
+believed that you went away thinking me guilty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud raised a hand in protest.  To Jim it was the
+flourish of the sword with which the duellist saluted at
+the end of the bout.  The little secret combat between
+these two was over.  Hanaud, by removing the sergeant
+from before the gates, had given a sign surely not only
+to Betty but to all Dijon that he found nothing to justify
+any surveillance of her goings out and comings in, or
+any limitations upon her freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you see," Jim insisted.  He was still worrying at
+his solution of the case like a dog with a bone.  "You
+see Waberski had the road clear for him last night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty, however, would not have it.  She shook her head
+vigorously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't believe that Monsieur Boris is guilty of so
+horrible a murder.  More," and she turned her great eyes
+pleadingly upon Hanaud, "I don't believe that any murder
+was committed here at all.  I don't want to believe it,"
+and for a moment her voice faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all, Monsieur Hanaud, what are you building
+this dreadful theory upon?  That a book of my Uncle
+Simon was not in his library yesterday and is there
+to-day.  We know nothing more.  We don't know even
+whether Jean Cladel exists at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall know that, Mademoiselle, very soon," said
+Hanaud, staring down at the book upon the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We don't know whether the arrow is in the house,
+whether it ever was."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must make sure, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud
+stubbornly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And even if you had it now, here with the poison
+clinging in shreds to the shaft, you still couldn't be sure
+that the rest of it had been used.  Here is a report,
+Monsieur, from the doctors.  Because it says that no trace
+of the poison can be discovered, you can't infer that a
+poison was administered which leaves no trace.  You
+never can prove it.  You have nothing to go upon.  It's
+all guesswork, and guesswork which will keep us living in
+a nightmare.  Oh, if I thought for a moment that murder
+had been committed, I'd say, 'Go on, go on'!  But it
+hasn't.  Oh, it hasn't!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty's voice rang with so evident a sincerity, there
+was so strong a passion of appeal, for peace, for an
+end of suspicion, for a right to forget and be forgotten,
+that Jim fancied no man could resist it.  Indeed, Hanaud
+sat for a long while with his eyes bent upon the table
+before he answered her.  But when at last he did, gently
+though his voice began, Jim knew at once that she had
+lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You argue and plead very well, Mademoiselle Betty,"
+he said.  "But we have each of us our little creeds by
+which we live for better or for worse.  Here is mine, a
+very humble one.  I can discover extenuations in most
+crimes: even crimes of violence.  Passion, anger, even
+greed!  What are they but good qualities developed
+beyond the bounds?  Things at the beginning good and
+since grown monstrous!  So, too, in the execution.  This
+or that habit of life makes natural this or that weapon
+which to us is hideous and abnormal and its mere use a
+sign of a dreadful depravity.  Yes, I recognise these
+palliations.  But there is one crime I never will
+forgive&mdash;murder by poison.  And one criminal in whose pursuit
+I will never tire nor slacken, the Poisoner."  Through the
+words there ran a real thrill of hatred, and though
+Hanaud's voice was low, and he never once raised his
+eyes from the table, he held the three who listened to him
+in a dreadful spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cowardly and secret, the poisoner has his little world
+at his mercy, and a fine sort of mercy he shows to be
+sure," he continued bitterly.  "His hideous work is so
+easy.  It just becomes a vice like drink, no more than
+that to the poisoner, but with a thousand times the pleasure
+drink can give.  Like the practice of some abominable
+art.  I tell you the truth now!  Show me one victim
+to-day and the poisoner scot-free, and I'll show you
+another victim before the year's out.  Make no mistake!
+Make no mistake!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice rang out and died away.  But the words
+seemed still to vibrate in the air of that room, to strike
+the walls and rebound from them and still be audible.
+Jim Frobisher, for all his slow imagination, felt that had
+a poisoner been present and heard them, some cry of
+guilt must have rent the silence and betrayed him.  His
+heart stopped in its beats listening for a cry, though his
+reason told him there was no mouth in that room from
+which the cry could come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked up at Betty when he had finished.  He
+begged her pardon with a little flutter of his hands and a
+regretful smile.  "You must take me, therefore, as God
+made me, Mademoiselle, and not blame me more than
+you can help for the distress I still must cause you.
+There was never a case more difficult.  Therefore never
+one about which one way or the other I must be more
+sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Betty could reply there came a knock upon the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come in," Hanaud cried out, and a small, dark, alert
+man in plain clothes entered the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is Nicolas Moreau, who was keeping watch in
+the courtyard.  I sent him some while ago upon an
+errand," he explained and turned again to Moreau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Nicolas?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nicolas stood at attention, with his hands at the seams
+of his trousers, in spite of his plain clothes, and he recited
+rather than spoke in a perfectly expressionless official
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In accordance with instructions I went to the shop
+of Jean Cladel.  It is number seven.  From the Rue
+Gambetta I went to the Prefecture.  I verified your
+statement.  Jean Cladel has twice appeared before the Police
+Correctionelle for selling forbidden drugs and has twice
+been acquitted owing to the absence of necessary witnesses."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Nicolas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau saluted, turned on his heel, and went out of
+the room.  There followed a moment of silence, of
+discouragement.  Hanaud looked ruefully at Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see!  I must go on.  We must search in that
+locked cabinet of Simon Harlowe's for the poison arrow,
+if by chance it should be there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The room is sealed," Frobisher reminded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must have those seals removed," he replied, and
+he took his watch from his pocket and screwed up his
+face in grimace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We need Monsieur the Commissary, and Monsieur the
+Commissary will not be in a good humour if we disturb
+him now.  For it is twelve o'clock, the sacred hour of
+luncheon.  You will have observed upon the stage that
+Commissaries of Police are never in a good humour.  It
+is because&mdash;&mdash;"  But Hanaud's audience was never to
+hear his explanation of this well-known fact.  For he
+stopped with a queer jerk of his voice, his watch still
+dangling from his fingers upon its chain.  Both Jim and
+Betty looked at once where he was looking.  They saw
+Ann Upcott standing up against the wall with her hand
+upon the top rail of a chair to prevent herself from
+falling.  Her eyes were closed, her whole face a mask
+of misery.  Hanaud was at her side in a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle," he asked with a breathless sort of
+eagerness, "what is it you have to tell me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true, then?" she whispered.  "Jean Cladel
+exists?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the poison arrow could have been used?" she
+faltered, and the next words would not be spoken, but
+were spoken at the last.  "And death would have
+followed in fifteen minutes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Upon my oath it is true," Hanaud insisted.  "What
+is it you have to tell me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I could have hindered it all.  I shall never
+forgive myself.  I could have hindered the murder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's eyes narrowed as he watched the girl.  Was
+he disappointed, Frobisher wondered?  Did he expect
+quite another reply?  A swift movement by Betty
+distracted him from these questions.  He saw Betty looking
+across the room at them with the strangest glittering eyes
+he had ever seen.  And then Ann Upcott drew herself
+away from Hanaud and stood up against the wall at her
+full height with her arms outstretched.  She seemed to
+be setting herself apart as a pariah; her whole attitude
+and posture cried, "Stone me!  I am waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud put his watch into his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, we will let the Commissary eat his
+luncheon in peace, and we will hear your story first.  But
+not here.  In the garden under the shade of the trees."  He
+took his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.  "Indeed
+I too feel the heat.  This room is as hot as an oven."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Jim Frobisher looked back in after time upon
+the incidents of that morning, nothing stood out so vividly
+in his memories, no, not even the book of arrows and its
+plates, not Hanaud's statement of his creed, as the picture
+of him twirling his watch at the end of his chain, whilst
+it sparkled in the sunlight and he wondered whether
+he should break in now upon the Commissaire of Police
+or let him eat his luncheon in quiet.  So much that was
+then unsuspected by them all, hung upon the exact
+sequence of events.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap09"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER NINE: <i>The Secret</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The garden chairs were already set out upon a lawn
+towards the farther end of the garden in the shadow
+of the great trees.  Hanaud led the way towards them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall be in the cool here and with no one to
+overhear us but the birds," he said, and he patted and
+arranged the cushions in a deep arm-chair of basket work
+for Ann Upcott.  Jim Frobisher was reminded again of
+the solicitude of a doctor with an invalid and again the
+parallel jarred upon him.  But he was getting a clearer
+insight into the character of this implacable being.  The
+little courtesies and attentions were not assumed.  They
+were natural, but they would not hinder him for a
+moment in his pursuit.  He would arrange the cushions with
+the swift deft hands of a nurse&mdash;yes, but he would slip
+the handcuffs on the wrists of his invalid, a moment
+afterwards, no less deftly and swiftly, if thus his duty
+prompted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!" he said.  "Now, Mademoiselle, you are
+comfortable.  For me, if I am permitted, I shall smoke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned round to ask for permission of Betty, who
+with Jim had followed into the garden behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," she answered; and coming forward, she
+sat down in another of the chairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud pulled out of a pocket a bright blue bundle of
+thin black cigarettes and lit one.  Then he sat in a chair
+close to the two girls.  Jim Frobisher stood behind
+Hanaud.  The lawn was dappled with sunlight and cool
+shadows.  The blackbird and the thrush were calling from
+bough and bush, the garden was riotous with roses and
+the air sweet with their perfume.  It was a strange
+setting for the eerie story which Ann Upcott had to tell of
+her adventures in the darkness and silence of a night; but
+the very contrast seemed to make the story still more
+vivid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not go to Monsieur de Pouillac's Ball on the
+night of April the 27th," she began, and Jim started, so
+that Hanaud raised his hand to prevent him interrupting.
+He had not given a thought to where Ann Upcott had
+been upon that night.  To Hanaud, however, the
+statement brought no surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were not well?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wasn't that," Ann replied.  "But Betty and I had&mdash;I
+won't say a rule, but a sort of working arrangement
+which I think had been in practice ever since I came to
+the Maison Crenelle.  We didn't encroach upon each
+other's independence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two girls had recognised from their first coming
+together that privacy was the very salt of companionship.
+Each had a sanctuary in her own sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think Betty has ever been in mine, I only once
+or twice in hers," said Ann.  "We had each our own
+friends.  We didn't pester each other with questions as
+to where we had been and with whom.  In a word, we
+weren't all the time shadows upon each other's heels."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A wise rule, Mademoiselle," Hanaud agreed cordially.
+"A good many households are split from roof to cellar
+by the absence of just such a rule.  The de Pouillacs then
+were Mademoiselle Betty's friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  As soon as Betty had gone," Ann resumed,
+"I told Gaston that he might turn off the lights and go
+to bed whenever he liked; and I went upstairs to my own
+sitting-room, which is next to my bedroom.  You can see
+the windows from here.  There!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were in a group facing the back of the long house
+across the garden.  To the right of the hall stretched the
+line of shuttered windows, with Betty's bedroom just
+above.  Ann pointed to the wing on the left of the hall
+and towards the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see.  You are above the library, Mademoiselle," said
+Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I had a letter to write," Ann continued, and
+suddenly faltered.  She had come upon some obstacle in
+the telling of her story which she had forgotten when
+she had uttered her cry in the library.  She gasped.
+"Oh!" she murmured, and again "Oh!" in a low voice.
+She glanced anxiously at Betty, but she got no help from
+her at all.  Betty was leaning forward with her elbows
+upon her knees and her eyes on the grass at her feet and
+apparently miles away in thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud asked smoothly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was an important letter," Ann went on again,
+choosing her words warily, much as yesterday at one
+moment in her interrogatory Betty herself had
+done&mdash;concealing something, too, just as Betty had done.  "I
+had promised faithfully to write it.  But the address was
+downstairs in Betty's room.  It was the address of a
+doctor," and having said that, it seemed that she had
+cleared her obstacle, for she went on in a more easy and
+natural tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know what it is, Monsieur Hanaud.  I had been
+playing tennis all the afternoon.  I was pleasantly tired.
+There was a letter to be written with a good deal of care
+and the address was all the way downstairs.  I said to
+myself that I would think out the terms of my letter
+first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here Jim Frobisher, who had been shifting impatiently
+from one foot to the other, broke in upon the
+narrative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what was this letter about and to what doctor?"
+he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud swung round almost angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, please!" he cried.  "These things will all come to
+light of themselves in their due order, if we leave them
+alone and keep them in our memories.  Let Mademoiselle
+tell her story in her own way," and he was back at
+Ann Upcott again in a flash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mademoiselle.  You determined to think out the
+tenor of your letter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A hint of a smile glimmered upon the girl's face for a
+second.  "But it was an excuse really, an excuse to sit
+down in my big arm-chair, stretch out my legs and do
+nothing at all.  You can guess what happened."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You fell fast asleep.  Conscience does not keep young
+people, who are healthy and tired, awake," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, but it wakes up with them," Ann returned, "and
+upbraids at once bitterly.  I woke up rather chilly, as
+people do who have gone to sleep in their chairs.  I was
+wearing a little thin frock of pale blue tulle&mdash;oh, a
+feather-weight of a frock!  Yes, I was cold and my conscience
+was saying, 'Oh, big lazy one!  And your letter?  Where
+is it?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In a moment I was standing up and the next I was
+out of the room on the landing, and I was still half dazed
+with sleep.  I closed my door behind me.  It was just
+chance that I did it.  The lights were all out on the
+staircase and in the hall below.  The curtains were drawn
+across the windows.  There was no moon that night.  I
+was in a darkness so complete that I could not see the
+glimmer of my hand when I raised it close before my
+face."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud let the end of his cigarette drop at his feet.
+Betty had raised her face and was staring at Ann with
+her mouth parted.  For all of them the garden had
+disappeared with its sunlight and its roses and its singing
+birds.  They were upon that staircase with Ann Upcott
+in the black night.  The swift changes of colour in her
+cheeks and of expression in her eyes&mdash;the nervous
+vividness of her compelled them to follow with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mademoiselle?" said Hanaud quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The darkness didn't matter to me," she went on, with
+an amazement at her own fearlessness, now that she
+knew the after-history of that evening.  "I am afraid
+now.  I wasn't then," and Jim remembered how the night
+before in the garden her eyes had shifted from this dark
+spot to that in search of an intruder.  Certainly she was
+afraid now!  Her hands were clenched tight upon the
+arms of her chair, her lips shook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew every tread of the stairs.  My hand was on
+the balustrade.  There was no sound.  It never occurred
+to me that any one was awake except myself.  I did
+not even turn on the light in the hall by the switch at
+the bottom of the stairs.  I knew that there was a switch
+just inside the door of Betty's room, and that was enough.
+I think, too, that I didn't want to rouse anybody.  At the
+foot of the stairs I turned right like a soldier.  Exactly
+opposite to me across the hall was the door of Betty's
+room.  I crossed the hall with my hands out in front of
+me," and Betty, as though she herself were crossing the
+hall, suddenly thrust both her hands out in front of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, one would have to do that," she said slowly.  "In
+the dark&mdash;with nothing but space in front of one&mdash;&mdash;  Yes!"
+and then she smiled as she saw that Hanaud's eyes
+were watching her curiously.  "Don't you think so,
+Monsieur Hanaud?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt," said he.  "But let us not interrupt Mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I touched the wall first," Ann resumed, "just at the
+angle of the corridor and the hall."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The corridor with the windows on to the courtyard
+on the one side and the doors of the receptions on the
+other?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Were the curtains drawn across all those windows too,
+Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  There was not a glimmer of light anywhere.  I
+felt my way along the wall to my right&mdash;that is, in the
+hall, of course, not the corridor&mdash;until my hands slipped
+off the surface and touched nothing.  I had reached the
+embrasure of the doorway.  I felt for the door-knob,
+turned it and entered the room.  The light switch was in
+the wall at the side of the door, close to my left hand.  I
+snapped it down.  I think that I was still half asleep when
+I turned the light on in the treasure-room, as we called
+it.  But the next moment I was wide awake&mdash;oh, I have
+never been more wide awake in my life.  My fingers
+indeed were hardly off the switch after turning the light
+on, before they were back again turning the light off.  But
+this time I eased the switch up very carefully, so that
+there should be no snap&mdash;no, not the tiniest sound to
+betray me.  There was so short an interval between the
+two movements of my hand that I had just time to notice
+the clock on the top of the marquetry cabinet in the
+middle of the wall opposite to me, and then once more I
+stood in darkness, but stock still and holding my breath&mdash;a
+little frightened&mdash;yes, no doubt a little frightened, but
+more astonished than frightened.  For in the inner wall
+of the room, at the other end, close by the window,
+there,"&mdash;and Ann pointed to the second of those shuttered
+windows which stared so blankly on the garden&mdash;"the door
+which was always locked since Simon Harlowe's death
+stood open and a bright light burned beyond."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe uttered a little cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That door?" she exclaimed, now at last really
+troubled.  "It stood open?  How can that have been?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shifted his position in his chair, and asked her
+a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On which side of the door was the key, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On Madame's, if the key was in the lock at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!  You don't remember whether it was?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Betty.  "Of course both Ann and I were
+in and out of Madame's bedroom when she was ill, but
+there was a dressing-room between the bedroom and the
+communicating door of my room, so that we should not
+have noticed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure," Hanaud agreed.  "The dressing-room in
+which the nurse might have slept and did when Madame
+had a seizure.  Do you remember whether the communicating
+door was still open or unlocked on the next
+morning?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty frowned and reflected, and shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cannot remember.  We were all in great trouble.
+There was so much to do.  I did not notice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Indeed why should you?" said Hanaud.  He
+turned back to Ann.  "Before you go on with this curious
+story, Mademoiselle, tell me this!  Was the light beyond
+the open door, a light in the dressing-room or in the room
+beyond the dressing-room, Madame Harlowe's bedroom,
+or didn't you notice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the far room, I think," Ann answered confidently.
+"There would have been more light in the treasure-room
+otherwise.  The treasure-room is long no doubt, but
+where I stood I was completely in darkness.  There was
+only this panel of yellow light in the open doorway.  It
+lay in a band straight across the carpet and it lit up the
+sedan chair opposite the doorway until it all glistened
+like silver."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho, there is a sedan chair in that museum?" said
+Hanaud lightly.  "It will be interesting to see.  So the
+light, Mademoiselle, came from the far room?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The light and&mdash;and the voices," said Ann with a
+quaver in her throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Voices!" cried Hanaud.  He sat up straight in his
+chair, whilst Betty Harlowe went as white as a ghost.
+"Voices!  What is this?  Did you recognise those
+voices?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One, Madame's.  There was no mistaking it.  It was
+loud and violent for a moment.  Then it went off into
+a mumble of groans.  The other voice only spoke once
+and very few words and very clearly.  But it spoke in
+a whisper.  There was too a sound of&mdash;movements."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Movements!" said Hanaud sharply; and with his
+voice his face seemed to sharpen too.  "Here's a word
+which does not help us much.  A procession moves.  So
+does the chair if I push it.  So does my hand if I cover
+a mouth and stop a cry.  Is it that sort of movement you
+mean, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under the stern insistence of his questions Ann Upcott
+suddenly weakened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I am afraid so," she said with a loud cry, and she
+clapped her hands to her face.  "I never understood until
+this morning when you spoke of how the arrow might
+be used.  Oh, I shall never forgive myself.  I stood in
+the darkness, a few yards away&mdash;no more&mdash;I stood quite
+still and listened and just beyond the lighted doorway
+Madame was being killed!"  She drew her hands from
+her face and beat upon her knees with her clenched fists
+in a frenzy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Yes, I believe that now!' Madame cried in the hoarse,
+harsh voice we knew: 'Stripped, eh?  Stripped to the
+skin!' and she laughed wildly; and then came the sound,
+as though&mdash;yes, it might have been that!&mdash;as though she
+were forced down and held, and Madame's voice died to
+a mumble and then silence&mdash;and then the other voice in a
+low clear whisper, 'That will do now.'  And all the
+while I stood in the darkness&mdash;oh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you do after that clear whisper reached your
+ears?" Hanaud commanded.  "Take your hands from
+your face, if you please, and let me hear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott obeyed him.  She flung her head back with
+the tears streaming down her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I turned," she whispered.  "I went out of the room.
+I closed the door behind me&mdash;oh, ever so gently.  I
+fled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fled?  Fled?  Where to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Up the stairs!  To my room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you rang no bell?  You roused no one?  You
+fled to your room!  You hid your head under the
+bed-clothes like a child!  Come, come, Mademoiselle!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud broke off his savage irony to ask,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And whose voice did you think it was that whispered
+so clearly, 'That will do now?'  The stranger's you spoke
+of in the library this morning?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Monsieur," Ann replied.  "I could not tell.  With
+a whisper one voice is like another."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you must have given that voice an owner.  To
+run away and hide&mdash;no one would do that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought it was Jeanne Baudin's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Hanaud sat back in his chair again, gazing at
+the girl with a look in which there was as much horror as
+incredulity.  Jim Frobisher stood behind him ashamed
+of his very race.  Could there be a more transparent
+subterfuge?  If she thought that the nurse Jeanne Baudin
+was in the bedroom, why did she turn and fly?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud.  His voice had
+suddenly become gentle, almost pleading.  "You will not
+make me believe that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott turned with a helpless gesture towards
+Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see!" she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Betty answered.  She sat in doubt for a second
+or two and then sprang to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait!" she said, and before any one could have
+stopped her she was skimming half-way across the garden
+to the house.  Jim Frobisher wondered whether Hanaud
+had meant to stop her and then had given up the idea as
+quite out of the question.  Certainly he had made some
+small quick movement; and even now, he watched Betty's
+flight across the broad lawn between the roses with an
+inscrutable queer look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To run like that!" he said to Frobisher, "with a boy's
+nimbleness and a girl's grace!  It is pretty, eh?  The long
+slim legs that twinkle, the body that floats!" and Betty
+ran up the stone steps into the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a tension in Hanaud's attitude with which
+his light words did not agree, and he watched the blank
+windows of the house with expectancy.  Betty, however,
+was hardly a minute upon her errand.  She reappeared
+upon the steps with a largish envelope in her hand and
+quickly rejoined the group.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur, we have tried to keep this back from you,"
+she said, without bitterness but with a deep regret.  "I
+yesterday, Ann to-day, just as we have tried for many
+years to keep it from all Dijon.  But there is no help for
+it now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She opened the envelope and, taking out a cabinet
+photograph, handed it to Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the portrait of Madame, my aunt, at the time
+of her marriage with my uncle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the three-quarter length portrait of a woman,
+slender with the straight carriage of youth, in whose face
+a look of character had replaced youth's prettiness.  It
+was a face made spiritual by suffering, the eyes shadowed
+and wistful, the mouth tender, and conveying even in the
+hard medium of a photograph some whimsical sense of
+humour.  It made Jim Frobisher, gazing over Hanaud's
+shoulder, exclaim not "She was beautiful," but "I would
+like to have known her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!  A companion," Hanaud added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty took a second photograph from the envelope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this, Monsieur, is the same lady a year ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second photograph had been taken at Monte Carlo,
+and it was difficult to believe that it was of the same
+woman, so tragic a change had taken place within those
+ten years.  Hanaud held the portraits side by side.  The
+grace, the suggestion of humour had all gone; the figure
+had grown broad, the features coarse and heavy; the
+cheeks had fattened, the lips were pendulous; and there
+was nothing but violence in the eyes.  It was a dreadful
+picture of collapse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is best to be precise, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud
+gently, "though these photographs tell their unhappy story
+clearly enough.  Madame Harlowe, during the last years
+of her life, drank?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Since my uncle's death," Betty explained.  "Her life,
+as very likely you know already, had been rather miserable
+and lonely before she married him.  But she had a
+dream then on which to live.  After Simon Harlowe died,
+however&mdash;&mdash;" and she ended her explanation with a
+gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Hanaud replied, "of course, Mademoiselle, we
+have known, Monsieur Frobisher and I, ever since we
+came into this affair that there was some secret.  We
+knew it before your reticence of yesterday or Mademoiselle
+Upcott's of to-day.  Waberski must have known of
+something which you would not care to have exposed
+before he threatened your lawyers in London, or brought
+his charges against you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he knew and the doctors and the servants of
+course who were very loyal.  We did our best to keep
+our secret but we could never be sure that we had
+succeeded."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A friendly smile broadened Hanaud's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, we can make sure now and here," he said, and
+both the girls and Jim stared at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How?" they exclaimed in an incredulous voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud beamed.  He held them in suspense.  He
+spread out his hands.  The artist as he would have said,
+the mountebank as Jim Frobisher would have expressed
+it, had got the upper hand in him, and prepared his
+effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By answering me one simple question," he said.
+"Have either of you two ladies received an anonymous
+letter upon the subject?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The test took them all by surprise; yet each one of
+them recognised immediately that they could hardly have
+a better.  All the secrets of the town had been exploited
+at one time or another by this unknown person or group
+of persons&mdash;all the secrets that is, except this one of
+Mrs. Harlowe's degradation.  For Betty answered,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!  I never received one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor I," added Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then your secret is your secret still," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For how long now?" Betty asked quickly, and Hanaud
+did not answer a word.  He could make no promise
+without being false to what he had called his creed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a pity," said Betty wistfully.  "We have striven
+so hard, Ann and I," and she gave to the two men a
+glimpse of the life the two girls had led in the Maison
+Crenelle.  "We could do very little.  We had neither of
+us any authority.  We were both of us dependent upon
+Madame's generosity, and though no one could have
+been kinder when&mdash;when Madame was herself, she was
+not easy when she had&mdash;the attacks.  There was too much
+difference in age between us and her for us really to do
+anything but keep guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She would not brook interference; she drank alone in
+her bedroom; she grew violent and threatening if any
+one interfered.  She would turn them all into the street.
+If she needed any help she could ring for the nurse, as
+indeed she sometimes, though rarely, did."  It was a
+dreadful and wearing life as Betty Harlowe described it
+for the two young sentinels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We were utterly in despair," Betty continued.  "For
+Madame, of course, was really ill with her heart, and we
+always feared some tragedy would happen.  This letter
+which Ann was to write when I was at Monsieur de
+Pouillac's ball seemed our one chance.  It was to a doctor
+in England&mdash;he called himself a doctor at all events&mdash;who
+advertised that he had a certain remedy which could
+be given without the patient's knowledge in her food and
+drink.  Oh, I had no faith in it, but we had got to try it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked round at Frobisher triumphantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did I say to you, Monsieur Frobisher, when you
+wanted to ask a question about this letter?  You see!
+These things disclose themselves in their due order if you
+leave them alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The triumph went out of his voice.  He rose to his
+feet and, bowing to Betty with an unaffected stateliness
+and respect, he handed her back the photographs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, I am very sorry," he said.  "It is clear
+that you and your friend have lived amongst difficulties
+which we did not suspect.  And, for the secret, I shall do
+what I can."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim quite forgave him the snub which had been
+administered to him for the excellence of his manner
+towards Betty.  He had a hope even that now he would
+forswear his creed, so that the secret might still be kept
+and the young sentinels receive their reward for their close
+watch.  But Hanaud sat down again in his chair, and
+once more turned towards Ann Upcott.  He meant to go
+on then.  He would not leave well alone.  Jim was all
+the more disappointed, because he could not but realise
+that the case was more and more clearly building itself
+from something unsubstantial into something solid, from
+a conjecture to an argument&mdash;this case against some one.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap10"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TEN: <i>The Clock upon the Cabinet</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott's story was in the light of this new
+disclosure intelligible enough.  Standing in the darkness,
+she had heard, as she thought, Mrs. Harlowe in one
+of her violent outbreaks.  Then with a sense of relief she
+had understood that Jeanne Baudin the nurse was with
+Mrs. Harlowe, controlling and restraining her and finally
+administering some sedative.  She had heard the outcries
+diminish and cease and a final whisper from the nurse to
+her patient or even perhaps to herself, "That will do
+now."  Then she had turned and fled, taking care to
+attract no attention to herself.  Real cowardice had nothing
+to do with her flight.  The crisis was over.  Her
+intervention, which before would only have been a provocation
+to a wilder outburst on the part of Mrs. Harlowe, was
+now altogether without excuse.  It would once more have
+aroused the invalid, and next day would have added to
+the discomfort and awkwardness of life in the Maison
+Crenelle.  For Mrs. Harlowe sober would have known
+that Ann had been a witness of one more of her dreadful
+exhibitions.  The best thing which Ann could do, she did,
+given that her interpretation of the scene was the true one.
+She ran noiselessly back in the darkness to her room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Hanaud.  "But you believe now that your
+interpretation was not correct.  You believe now that
+whilst you stood in the darkness with the door open and
+the light beyond, Madame Harlowe was being murdered,
+coldly and cruelly murdered a few feet away from you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott shivered from head to foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to believe it," she cried.  "It's too
+horrible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You believe now that the one who whispered 'That
+will do now,' was not Jeanne Baudin," Hanaud insisted,
+"but some unknown person, and that the whisper was
+uttered after murder had been done to a third person
+in that room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann twisted her body from this side to that; she wrung
+her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid of it!" she moaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what is torturing you now, Mademoiselle, is
+remorse that you did not step silently forward and from
+the darkness of the treasure-room look through that
+lighted doorway."  He spoke with a great consideration
+and his insight into her distress was in its way a solace
+to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she exclaimed eagerly.  "I told you this morning
+I could have hindered it.  I didn't understand until
+this morning.  You see, that night something else
+happened"; and now indeed stark fear drew the colour from
+her cheeks and shone in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something else?" Betty asked with a quick indraw of
+her breath, and she shifted her chair a little so that she
+might face Ann.  She was wearing a black coat over a
+white silk shirt open at the throat, and she took her
+handkerchief from a side pocket of the coat and drew it across
+her forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud explained.  "It is clear
+that something else happened that night to your friend,
+something which, taken together with our talk this
+morning over the book of arrows, had made her believe that
+murder was done."  He looked at Ann.  "You went
+then to your room?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann resumed her story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I went to bed.  I was very&mdash;what shall I say?&mdash;disturbed
+by Madame's outburst, as I thought it.  One
+never knew what was going to happen in this house.  It
+was on my nerves.  For a time I tumbled from side to
+side in my bed.  I was in a fever.  Then suddenly I was
+asleep, sound asleep.  But only for a time.  I woke up
+and it was still pitch dark in my room.  There was not
+a thread of light from the shutters.  I turned over from
+my side on to my back and I stretched out my arms
+above my head.  As God is my Judge I touched a
+face&mdash;&mdash;" and even after all these days the terror of that
+moment was so vivid and fresh to her that she shuddered
+and a little sob broke from her lips.  "A face quite close
+to me bending over me, in silence.  I drew my hands
+away with a gasp.  My heart was in my throat.  I lay
+just for a second or two dumb, paralysed.  Then my
+voice came back to me and I screamed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the look of the girl as she told her story
+perhaps more than the words she used; but something of her
+terror spread like a contagion amongst her hearers.  Jim
+Frobisher's shoulders worked uneasily.  Betty with her
+big eyes wide open, her breath suspended, hung upon
+Ann's narrative.  Hanaud himself said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You screamed?  I do not wonder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew that no one could hear me and that lying down
+I was helpless," Ann continued.  "I sprang out of bed
+in a panic, and now I touched no one.  I was so scared out
+of my wits that I had lost all sense of direction.  I
+couldn't find the switch of the electric light.  I stumbled
+along a wall feeling with my hands.  I heard myself
+sobbing as though I was a stranger.  At last I knocked
+against a chest of drawers and came a little to myself.
+I found my way then to the switch and turned on the
+light.  The room was empty.  I tried to tell myself that
+I had been dreaming, but I knew that the tale wasn't
+true.  Some one had been stealthily bending down close,
+oh, so close over me in the darkness.  My hand that had
+touched the face seemed to tingle.  I asked myself with
+a shiver, what would have happened to me if just at that
+moment I had not waked up?  I stood and listened, but
+the beating of my heart filled the whole room with noise.
+I stole to the door and laid my ear against the panel.  Oh,
+I could easily have believed that one after another an
+army was creeping on tiptoe past my door.  At last I
+made up my mind.  I flung the door open wide.  For a
+moment I stood back from it, but once the door was
+open I heard nothing.  I stole out to the head of the
+great staircase.  Below me the hall was as silent as an
+empty church.  I think that I should have heard a spider
+stir.  I suddenly realised that the light was streaming
+from my room and that some of it must reach me.  I
+cried at once, 'Who's there?'  And then I ran back to my
+room and locked myself in.  I knew that I should sleep
+no more that night.  I ran to the windows and threw open
+the shutters.  The night had cleared, the stars were bright
+in a clean black sky and there was a freshness of morning
+in the air.  I had been, I should think, about five
+minutes at the window when&mdash;you know perhaps, Monsieur,
+how the clocks in Dijon clash out and take up the
+hour from one another and pass it on to the hills&mdash;all of
+them struck three.  I stayed by the window until the
+morning came."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After she had finished no one spoke for a little while.
+Then Hanaud slowly lit another cigarette, looking now
+upon the ground, now into the air, anywhere except at the
+faces of his companions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So this alarming thing happened just before three
+o'clock in the morning?" he asked gravely.  "You are
+very sure of that, I suppose?  For, you see, it may be
+of the utmost importance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am quite sure, Monsieur," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you have told this story to no one until this
+moment?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To no one in the world," replied Ann.  "The next
+morning Madame Harlowe was found dead.  There were
+the arrangements for the funeral.  Then came Monsieur
+Boris's accusation.  There were troubles enough in the
+house without my adding to them.  Besides, no one would
+have believed my story of the face in the darkness; and
+I didn't of course associate it then with the death of
+Mrs. Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," Hanaud agreed.  "For you believed that death
+to have been natural."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and I am not sure that it wasn't natural now,"
+Ann protested.  "But to-day I had to tell you this story,
+Monsieur Hanaud"; and she leaned forward in her chair
+and claimed his attention with her eyes, her face, every
+tense muscle of her body.  "Because if you are right and
+murder was done in this house on the twenty-seventh, I
+know the exact hour when it was done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded his head once or twice slowly.  He
+gathered up his feet beneath him.  His eyes glittered very
+brightly as he looked at Ann.  He gave Frobisher the
+queer impression of an animal crouching to spring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The clock upon the marquetry cabinet," he said,
+"against the middle of the wall in the treasure-room.
+The white face of it and the hour which leapt at you
+during that fraction of a second when your fingers were
+on the switch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Ann with a slow and quiet emphasis.  "The
+hour was half-past ten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that statement the tension was relaxed.  Betty's
+tightly-clenched hand opened and her trifle of a
+handkerchief fluttered down on the grass.  Hanaud changed
+from that queer attitude of a crouching animal.  Jim
+Frobisher drew a great breath of relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, that is very important," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Important.  I should think it was!" cried Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this was clear and proven to him.  If murder had
+been done on the night of the 27th of April, there was
+just one person belonging to the household of the Maison
+Crenelle who could have no share in it; and that one
+person was his client, Betty Harlowe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty was stooping to pick up her handkerchief when
+Hanaud spoke to her; and she drew herself erect again
+with a little jerk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that clock on the marquetry cabinet keep good
+time, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very good," she answered.  "Monsieur Sabin the
+watch-maker in the Rue de la Liberté has had it more
+than once to clean.  It is an eight-day clock.  It will be
+going when the seals are broken this afternoon.  You will
+see for yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud, however, accepted her declaration on the spot.
+He rose to his feet and bowed to her with a certain
+formality but with a smile which redeemed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At half-past ten Mademoiselle Harlowe was dancing
+at the house of M. de Pouillac on the Boulevard Thiers,"
+he said.  "Of that there is no doubt.  Inquiries have been
+made.  Mademoiselle did not leave that house until after
+one in the morning.  There is evidence enough of that
+to convince her worst enemy, from her chauffeur and her
+dancing partners to M. de Pouillac's coachman, who stood
+at the bottom of the steps with a lantern during that
+evening and remembers to have held open for Mademoiselle
+the door of her car when she went away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So that's that," said Jim to himself.  Betty at all
+events was out of the net for good.  And with that
+certainty there came a revolution in his thoughts.  Why
+shouldn't Hanaud's search go on?  It was interesting to
+watch the building up of this case against an unknown
+criminal&mdash;a case so difficult to bring to its proper
+conclusion in the Court of Assize, a case of poison where there
+was no trace of poison, a case where out of a mass of
+conjectures, here and there and more and more definite
+facts were coming into view; just as more and more
+masts of ships stand up out of a tumbled sea, the nearer
+one approaches land.  Yes, now he wanted Hanaud to
+go on, delving astutely, letting, in his own phrase, things
+disclose themselves in their due sequence.  But there
+was one point which Hanaud had missed, which should
+be brought to his notice.  The mouse once more, he
+thought with all a man's vanity in his modesty, would
+come to the help of the netted lion.  He cleared his
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Ann, there is one little question I would like to
+ask you," he began, and Hanaud turned upon him, to his
+surprise, with a face of thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You wish to ask a question?" he said.  "Well,
+Monsieur, ask it if you wish.  It is your right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His manner added, what his voice left unsaid, "and
+your responsibility."  Jim hesitated.  He could see no
+harm in the question he proposed to ask.  It was of vital
+importance.  Yet Hanaud stood in front of him with a
+lowering face, daring him to put it.  Jim did not doubt
+any longer that Hanaud was quite aware of his point
+and yet for some unknown reason objected to its
+disclosure.  Jim yielded, but not with a very good grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is nothing," he said surlily, and Hanaud at once
+was all cheerfulness again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we will adjourn," he said, looking at his watch.
+"It is nearly one o'clock.  Shall we say three for the
+Commissary of Police?  Yes?  Then I shall inform him
+and we will meet in the library at three and"&mdash;with a
+little bow to Betty&mdash;"the interdict shall be raised."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At three, then," she said gaily.  She sprang up from
+her chair, stooped, picked up her handkerchief with a
+swift and supple movement, twirled upon her heel and
+cried, "Come along, Ann!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The four people moved off towards the house.  Betty
+looked back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have left your gloves behind you on your chair,"
+she said suddenly to Hanaud.  Hanaud looked back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I have," he said, and then in a voice of protest,
+"Oh, Mademoiselle!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Betty had already darted back and now returned
+dangling the gloves in her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, how shall I thank you?" he asked as
+he took them from her.  Then he cocked his head at
+Frobisher, who was looking a little stiff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ha! ha! my young friend," he said with a grin.  "You
+do not like that so much kindness should be shown me.
+No!  You are looking very proper.  You have the poker
+in the back.  But ask yourself this: 'What are youth
+and good looks compared with Hanaud?'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, Jim Frobisher did not like Hanaud at all when
+the urchin got the upper hand in him.  And the worst
+of it was that he had no rejoinder.  He flushed very
+red, but he really had no rejoinder.  They walked in
+silence to the house, and Hanaud, picking up his hat and
+stick, took his leave by the courtyard and the big gates.
+Ann drifted into the library.  Jim felt a touch upon his
+arm.  Betty was standing beside him with a smile of
+amusement upon her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You didn't really mind my going back for his gloves,
+did you?" she asked.  "Say you didn't, Jim!" and the
+amusement softened into tenderness.  "I wouldn't have
+done it for worlds if I had thought you'd have minded."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim's ill-humour vanished like mist on a summer morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mind?" he cried.  "You shall pin a rose in his button-hole
+if it pleases you, and all I'll say will be, 'You might
+do the same for me'!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty laughed and gave his arm a friendly squeeze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We are friends again, then," she said, and the next
+moment she was out on the steps under the glass face of
+the porch.  "Lunch at two, Ann!" she cried.  "I must
+walk all the grime of this morning out of my brain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was too quick and elusive for Jim Frobisher.  She
+had something of Ariel in her conception&mdash;a delicate
+creature of fire and spirit and air.  She was across the
+courtyard and out of sight in the street of Charles-Robert
+before he had quite realised that she was going.  He
+turned doubtfully towards the library, where Ann Upcott
+stood in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I had better follow her," he said, reaching for his hat
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann smiled and shook her head wisely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shouldn't.  I know Betty.  She wants to be alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim twiddled his hat in his hands, not half as sure upon
+the point as she was.  Ann watched him with a rather
+rueful smile for a little while.  Then she shrugged her
+shoulders in a sudden exasperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is something you ought to do," she said.  "You
+ought to let Monsieur Bex, Betty's notary here, know that
+the seals are to be broken this afternoon.  He ought to be
+here.  He was here when they were affixed.  Besides, he
+has all the keys of Mrs. Harlowe's drawers and cupboards."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's true," Jim exclaimed.  "I'll go at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann gave him Monsieur Bex's address in the Place
+Etienne Dolet, and from the window of the library
+watched him go upon his errand.  She stood at the
+window for a long while after he had disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap11"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER ELEVEN: <i>A New Suspect</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex the notary came out into the hall
+of his house when Frobisher sent his card in to
+him.  He was a small, brisk man with a neat pointed
+beard, his hair cut <i>en brosse</i> and the corner of his napkin
+tucked into his neck between the flaps of his collar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim explained that the seals were to be removed from
+the rooms of the Maison Grenelle, but said nothing at
+all of the new developments which had begun with the
+discovery of the book of the arrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have had communications with Messrs. Frobisher
+and Haslitt," the little man exclaimed.  "Everything has
+been as correct as it could possibly be.  I am happy to
+meet a partner of so distinguished a firm.  Yes.  I will
+certainly present myself at three with my keys and see
+the end of this miserable scandal.  It has been a
+disgrace.  That young lady so delicious and so correct!
+And that animal of a Waberski!  But we can deal with
+him.  We have laws in France."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave Jim the impression that there were in his
+opinion no laws anywhere else, and he bowed his visitor
+into the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim returned by the Rue des Godrans and the main
+thoroughfare of the town, the street of Liberty.  As he
+crossed the semicircle of the Place d'Armes in front of
+the Hôtel de Ville, he almost ran into Hanaud smoking a
+cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have lunched already?" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An affair of a quarter of an hour," said Hanaud with
+a wave of the hand.  "And you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not until two.  Miss Harlowe wanted a walk."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How I understand that!  The first walk after an
+ordeal!  The first walk of a convalescent after an
+operation!  The first walk of a defendant found innocent of
+a grave charge!  It must be worth taking, that walk.
+But console yourself, my friend, for the postponement
+of your luncheon.  You have met me!" and he struck
+something of an attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Jim had the gravest objection to anything theatrical,
+especially when displayed in public places, and he
+answered stiffly, "That is a pleasure, to be sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud grinned.  To make Jim look "proper" was
+becoming to him an unfailing entertainment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now I reward you," he said, though for what Jim
+could not imagine.  "You shall come with me.  At this
+hour, on the top of old Philippe le Bon's Terrace Tower,
+we shall have the world to ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led the way into the great courtyard of the Hôtel
+de Ville.  Behind the long wing which faced them, a
+square, solid tower rose a hundred and fifty feet high
+above the ground.  With Frobisher at his heels, Hanaud
+climbed the three hundred and sixteen steps and emerged
+upon the roof into the blue and gold of a cloudless May
+in France.  They looked eastwards, and the beauty of
+the scene took Frobisher's breath away.  Just in front,
+the slender apse of Notre Dame, fine as a lady's
+ornament, set him wondering how in the world through all
+these centuries it had endured; and beyond, rich and
+green and wonderful, stretched the level plain with its
+shining streams and nestling villages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud sat down upon a stone bench and stretched out
+his arm across the parapet.  "Look!" he cried eagerly,
+proudly.  "There is what I brought you here to see.
+Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked and saw, and his face lit up.  Far away on
+the horizon's edge, unearthly in its beauty, hung the
+great mass of Mont Blanc; white as silver, soft as velvet,
+and here and there sparkling with gold as though the
+flame of a fire leaped and sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho!" said Hanaud as he watched Jim's face.  "So
+we have that in common.  You perhaps have stood on
+the top of that mountain?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Five times," Jim answered, with a smile made up of
+many memories.  "I hope to do so again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are fortunate," said Hanaud a little enviously.
+"For me I see him only in the distance.  But even so&mdash;if
+I am troubled&mdash;it is like sitting silent in the company
+of a friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher's mind strayed back over memories of
+snow slope and rock ridge.  It was a true phrase which
+Hanaud had used.  It expressed one of the many elusive,
+almost incommunicable emotions which mountains did
+mean to the people who had "that"&mdash;the passion for
+mountains&mdash;in common.  Jim glanced curiously at
+Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are troubled about this case, then?" he said
+sympathetically.  The distant and exquisite vision of that
+soaring arc of silver and velvet set in the blue air had
+brought the two men into at all events a momentary
+brotherhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very," Hanaud returned slowly, without turning his
+eyes from the horizon, "and for more reasons than one.
+What do you yourself think of it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud," Jim said dryly, "that you
+do not like any one to ask any questions except yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed with an appreciation of the thrust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you wished to ask a question of the beautiful
+Mademoiselle Upcott.  Tell me if I have guessed aright
+the question you meant to ask!  It was whether the face
+she touched in the darkness was the smooth face of a
+woman or the face of a man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  That was it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now for Hanaud to glance curiously and quickly
+at Jim.  There could be no doubt of the thought which
+was passing through his mind: "I must begin to give you
+a little special attention, my friend."  But he was careful
+not to put his thoughts into words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not want that question asked," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because it was unnecessary, and unnecessary questions
+are confusing things which had best be avoided
+altogether."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim did not believe one word of that explanation.  He
+had too clear a recollection of the swift movement and the
+look with which Hanaud had checked him.  Both had been
+unmistakably signs of alarm.  Hanaud would not have
+been alarmed at the prospect of a question being asked,
+merely because the question was superfluous.  There was
+another and, Jim was sure, a very compelling reason in
+Hanaud's mind.  Only he could not discover it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, was the question superfluous?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely," Hanaud replied.  "Suppose that that young
+lady's hand had touched in the darkness the face of a
+man with its stubble, its tough skin, and the short hair
+of his head around it, bending down so low over hers,
+would not that have been the most vivid, terrifying thing
+to her in all the terrifying incident?  Stretching out her
+hands carelessly above her head, she touches suddenly,
+unexpectedly, the face of a man?  She could not have
+told her story at all without telling that.  It would have
+been the unforgettable detail, the very heart of her terror.
+She touched the face of a man!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim recognised that the reasoning was sound, but he
+was no nearer to the solution of his problem&mdash;why
+Hanaud so whole-heartedly objected to the question
+being asked.  And then Hanaud made a quiet remark which
+drove it for a long time altogether out of Jim's
+speculations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle Ann touched the face of a woman in the
+darkness that night&mdash;if that night, in the darkness she
+touched a face at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was utterly startled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You believe that she was lying to us?" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shook a protesting hand in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe nothing," he said.  "I am looking for a
+criminal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott!"  Jim spoke the name in amazement.
+"Ann Upcott!"  Then he remembered the look of her
+as she had told her story, her face convulsed with terror,
+her shaking tones.  "Oh, it's impossible that she was
+lying.  Surely no one could have so mimicked fear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You may take this from me, my friend.  All women
+who are great criminals are also very artful actresses.
+I never knew one who wasn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott!" Jim Frobisher once more exclaimed,
+but now with a trifle less of amazement.  He was growing
+slowly and gradually accustomed to the idea.  Still&mdash;that
+girl with the radiant look of young Spring!  Oh, no!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott was left nothing in Mrs. Harlowe's will,"
+he argued.  "What could she have to gain by murder?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait, my friend!  Look carefully at her story!
+Analyse it.  You will see&mdash;what?  That it falls into two
+parts."  Hanaud ground the stump of his cigar beneath
+his heel, offered one of his black cigarettes to Jim
+Frobisher and lighted one for himself.  He lit it with a
+sulphur match which Jim thought would never stop
+fizzling, would never burst into flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One part when she was alone in her bedroom&mdash;a little
+story of terror and acted very effectively, but after all
+any one could invent it.  The other part was not so easy
+to invent.  The communicating door open for no reason,
+the light beyond, the voice that whispered, 'That will do,'
+the sound of the struggle!  No, my friend, I don't
+believe that was invented.  There were too many little
+details which seemed to have been lived through.  The
+white face of the clock and the hour leaping at her.  No!
+I think all that must stand.  But adapt it a little.  See!
+This morning Waberski told us a story of the Street of
+Gambetta and of Jean Cladel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I asked you afterwards whether Waberski might
+not be telling a true story of himself and attributing it
+to Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, interpret Ann Upcott's story in the same
+way," continued Hanaud.  "Suppose that sometime that
+day she had unlocked the communicating door!  What
+more easy?  Madame Harlowe was up during the day-time.
+Her room was empty.  And that communicating
+door opened not into Madame's bedroom, where perhaps
+it might have been discovered whether it was locked or
+not, but into a dressing-room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Jim agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well then, continue!  Ann Upcott is left alone after
+Mademoiselle Harlowe's departure to Monsieur de Pouillac's
+Ball.  She sends Gaston to bed.  The house is all
+dark and asleep.  Suppose then that she is joined
+by&mdash;some one&mdash;some one with the arrow poison all ready in
+the hypodermic needle.  That they enter the treasure-room
+just as Ann Upcott described.  That she turns on
+the light for a second whilst&mdash;some one&mdash;crosses the
+treasure-room and opens the door.  Suppose that the voice
+which whispered, 'That will do now,' was the voice of Ann
+Upcott herself and that she whispered it across Madame
+Harlowe's body to the third person in that room!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The 'some one,'" exclaimed Jim.  "But, who then?  Who?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.  "Why not Waberski?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waberski?" cried Jim with a new excitement in his
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You asked me what had Ann Upcott to gain by this
+murder and you answered your own question.  Nothing
+you said, Monsieur Frobisher, but did your quick answer
+cover the ground?  Waberski&mdash;he at all events expected
+a fine fat legacy.  What if he in return for help proposed
+to share that fine fat legacy with the exquisite
+Mademoiselle Ann.  Has she no motive now?  In the end what
+do we know of her at all except that she is the paid
+companion and therefore poor?  Mademoiselle Ann!"; and
+he threw up his hands.  "Where does she spring from?
+How did she come into that house?  Was she perhaps
+Waberski's friend?"&mdash;and a cry from Jim brought
+Hanaud to a stop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had thought of Waberski as the possible murderer
+if murder had been done&mdash;a murderer who, disappointed
+of his legacy, the profits of his murder, had carried on
+his villainy to blackmail and a false accusation.  But he
+had not associated Ann Upcott with him until those
+moments on the Terrace Tower.  Yet now memories
+began to crowd upon him.  The letter to him, for instance.
+She had said that Waberski had claimed her support and
+ridiculed his claim.  Might that letter not have been a blind
+and a rather cunning blind?  Above all there was a scene
+passing vividly through his mind which was very different
+from the scene spread out before his eyes, a scene of lighted
+rooms and a crowd about a long green table, and a fair
+slender girl seated at the table, who lost and lost until
+the whole of her little pile of banknotes was swept in by
+the croupier's rake, and then turned away with a high
+carriage but a quivering lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Hanaud keenly.  "You know something
+after all of Ann Upcott, my friend.  What do you
+know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim hesitated.  At one moment it did not seem fair to
+her that he should relate his story.  Explained, it might
+wear so different a complexion.  At another moment that
+it would be fairer to let her explain it.  And there was
+Betty to consider.  Yes, above all there was Betty to
+consider.  He was in Dijon on her behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will tell you," he said to Hanaud.  "When I saw
+you in Paris, I told you that I had never seen Ann Upcott
+in all my life.  I believed it.  It wasn't until she danced
+into the library yesterday morning that I realised I had
+misled you.  I saw Ann Upcott at the <i>trente et quarante</i>
+table at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo in January of
+this year.  I sat next to her.  She was quite alone and
+losing her money.  Nothing would go right for her.  She
+bore herself proudly and well.  The only sign I saw of
+distress was the tightening of her fingers about her little
+handbag, and a look of defiance thrown at the other players
+when she rose after her last coup, as though she dared
+them to pity her.  I was on the other hand winning, and
+I slipped a thousand-franc note off the table on to the
+floor, keeping my heel firmly upon it as you can
+understand.  And as the girl turned to move out from the
+crowd I stopped her.  I said in English, for she was
+obviously of my race, 'This is yours.  You have dropped
+it on the floor.'  She gave me a smile and a little shake of
+the head.  I think that for the moment she dared not trust
+her lips to speak, and in a second, of course, she was
+swallowed up in the crowd.  I played for a little while
+longer.  Then I too rose and as I passed the entrance to
+the bar on my way to get my coat, this girl rose up from
+one of the many little tables and spoke to me.  She called
+me by my name.  She thanked me very prettily and said
+that although she had lost that evening she was not really
+in any trouble.  I doubted the truth of what she said.  For
+she had not one ring upon any finger, not the tiniest
+necklace about her throat, not one ornament upon her dress
+or in her hair.  She turned away from me at once and
+went back to the little table where she sat down again in
+the company of a man.  The girl of course was Ann
+Upcott, the man Waberski.  It was from him no doubt
+that she had got my name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did this little episode happen before Ann Upcott
+became a member of the household?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," replied Jim.  "I think she joined Mrs. Harlowe
+and Betty at Monte Carlo.  I think that she came
+with them back to Dijon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt," said Hanaud.  He sat for a little while
+in silence.  Then he said softly, "That does not look so
+very well for Mademoiselle Ann."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had to admit that it did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But consider this, Monsieur Hanaud," he urged.  "If
+Ann Upcott, which I will not believe, is mixed up in this
+affair, why should she of her own free will volunteer this
+story of what she heard upon the night of the
+twenty-seventh and invent that face which bent down over her
+in the darkness?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have an idea about that," Hanaud replied.  "She
+told us this story&mdash;when?  After I had said that we must
+have the seals broken this afternoon and the rooms thrown
+open.  It is possible that we may come upon something
+in those rooms which makes it wise for her to divert
+suspicion upon some other woman in the house.  Jeanne
+Baudin, or even Mademoiselle Harlowe's maid Francine
+Rollard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But not Mademoiselle Betty," Jim interposed quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no!" Hanaud returned with a wave of his hand.
+"The clock upon the marquetry cabinet settled that.
+Mademoiselle Betty is out of the affair.  Well, this
+afternoon we shall see.  Meanwhile, my friend, you will be
+late for your luncheon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud rose from the bench and with a last look at the
+magical mountain, that outpost of France, they turned
+towards the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher looked down upon tiny squares green
+with limes and the steep gaily-patterned roofs of ancient
+houses.  About him the fine tapering spires leapt high
+like lances from the slates of its many churches.  A little
+to the south and a quarter of a mile away across the roof
+tops he saw the long ridge of a big house and the smoke
+rising from a chimney stack or two and behind it the tops
+of tall trees which rippled and shook the sunlight from
+their leaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Maison Crenelle!" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer, not even the slightest movement
+at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it?" he asked and he turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud had not even heard him.  He was gazing
+also towards the Maison Crenelle with the queerest look
+upon his face; a look with which Jim was familiar in
+some sort of association, but which for a moment or two
+he could not define.  It was not an expression of
+amazement.  On the other hand interest was too weak a word.
+Suddenly Jim Frobisher understood and comprehension
+brought with it a sense of discomfort.  Hanaud's look,
+very bright and watchful and more than a little inhuman,
+was just the look of a good retriever dog when his master
+brings out a gun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked again at the high ridge of the house.  The
+slates were broken at intervals by little gabled windows,
+but at none of them could he see a figure.  From none of
+them a signal was waved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it that you are looking at?" asked Jim in
+perplexity and then with a touch of impatience.  "You
+see something, I'm sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud heard his companion at last.  His face
+changed in a moment, lost its rather savage vigilance, and
+became the face of a buffoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I see something.  Always I see something.
+Am I not Hanaud?  Ah, my friend, the responsibility of
+being Hanaud!  Aren't you fortunate to be without it?
+Pity me!  For the Hanauds must see something
+everywhere&mdash;even when there is nothing to see.  Come!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bustled out of the sunlight on that high platform
+into the dark turret of the staircase.  The two men
+descended the steps and came out again into the semi-circle
+of the Place d'Armes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!" said Hanaud and then "Yes," as though he
+had some little thing to say and was not quite sure
+whether he would say it.  Then he compromised.  "You
+shall take a Vermouth with me before you go to your
+luncheon," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should be late if I did," Frobisher replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud waved the objection aside with a shake of his
+outstretched forefinger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have plenty of time, Monsieur.  You shall take
+a Vermouth with me, and you will still reach the Maison
+Crenelle before Mademoiselle Harlowe.  I say that,
+Hanaud," he said superbly, and Jim laughed and
+consented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall plead your vanity as my excuse when I find her
+and Ann Upcott half through their meal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A café stands at the corner of the street of Liberty and
+the Place d'Armes, with two or three little tables set out
+on the pavement beneath an awning.  They sat down at
+one of them, and over the Vermouth, Hanaud was once
+more upon the brink of some recommendation or statement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see&mdash;&mdash;" he began and then once more ran away.
+"So you have been five times upon the top of the Mont
+Blanc!" he said.  "From Chamonix?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Once," Jim replied.  "Once from the Col du Géant
+by the Brenva glacier.  Once by the Dôme route.  Once
+from the Brouillard glacier.  And the last time by the
+Mont Mandit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud listened with genuine friendliness and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You tell me things which are interesting and very
+new to me," he said warmly.  "I am grateful, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the other hand," Jim answered dryly, "you, Monsieur,
+tell me very little.  Even what you brought me to
+this café to say, you are going to keep to yourself.  But
+for my part I shall not be so churlish.  I am going to tell
+you what I think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think we have missed the way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud selected a cigarette from his bundle in its
+bright blue wrapping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will perhaps think me presumptuous in saying so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not the least little bit in the world," Hanaud replied
+seriously.  "We of the Police are liable in searching
+widely to overlook the truth under our noses.  That is our
+danger.  Another angle of view&mdash;there is nothing more
+precious.  I am all attention."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher drew his chair closer to the round table
+of iron and leaned his elbows upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think there is one question in particular which we
+must answer if we are to discover whether Mrs. Harlowe
+was murdered, and if so by whom."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I agree," he said slowly.  "But I wonder whether we
+have the same question in our minds."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a question which we have neglected.  It is this&mdash;Who
+put back the Professor's treatise on Sporanthus in
+its place upon the bookshelf in the library, between
+mid-day yesterday and this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud struck another of his abominable matches, and
+held it in the shelter of his palm until the flame shone.
+He lit his cigarette and took a few puffs at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt that question is important," he admitted,
+although in rather an off-hand way.  "But it is not mine.
+No.  I think there is another more important still.  I
+think if we could know why the door of the treasure-room,
+which had been locked since Simon Harlowe's
+death, was unlocked on the night of the twenty-seventh
+of April, we should be very near to the whole truth of this
+dark affair.  But," and he flung out his hands, "that
+baffles me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim left him sitting at the table and staring moodily
+upon the pavement, as if he hoped to read the answer
+there.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap12"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWELVE: <i>The Breaking of the Seals</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later Jim Frobisher had to admit that
+Hanaud guessed very luckily.  He would not allow
+that it was more than a guess.  Monsieur Hanaud might
+be a thorough little Mr. Know-All; but no insight, however
+brilliant, could inform him of so accidental a circumstance.
+But there the fact was.  Frobisher did arrive at
+the Maison Crenelle, to his great discomfort, before Betty
+Harlowe.  He had loitered with Hanaud at the café just
+so that this might not take place.  He shrank from being
+alone with Ann Upcott now that he suspected her.  The
+most he could hope to do was to conceal the reason of his
+trouble.  The trouble itself in her presence he could not
+conceal.  She made his case the more difficult perhaps by
+a rather wistful expression of sympathy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are distressed," she said gently.  "But surely you
+need not be any longer.  What I said this morning was
+true.  It was half-past ten when that dreadful whisper
+reached my ears.  Betty was a mile away amongst her
+friends in a ball-room.  Nothing can shake that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is not on her account that I am troubled," he cried,
+and Ann looked at him with startled eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty crossed the court and joined them in the hall
+before Ann could ask a question; and throughout their
+luncheon he made conversation upon indifferent subjects
+with rapidity, if without entertainment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortunately there was no time to spare.  They were
+still indeed smoking their cigarettes over their coffee when
+Gaston informed them that the Commissary of Police
+with his secretary was waiting in the library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is Mr. Frobisher, my solicitor in London," said
+Betty as she presented Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissary, Monsieur Girardot, was a stout, bald,
+middle-aged man with a pair of folding glasses sitting
+upon a prominent fat nose; his secretary, Maurice
+Thevenet, was a tall good-looking novice in the police
+administration, a trifle flashy in his appearance, and in
+his own esteem, one would gather, rather a conqueror
+amongst the fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have asked Monsieur Bex, Mademoiselle's notary
+in Dijon, to be present," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is quite in order," replied the Commissary, and
+Monsieur Bex was at that moment announced.  He
+came on the very moment of three.  The clock was
+striking as he bowed in the doorway.  Everything was just
+as it should be.  Monsieur Bex was pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With Monsieur le Commissaire's consent," he said,
+smiling, "we can now proceed with the final ceremonies
+of this affair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We wait for Monsieur Hanaud," said the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud of the Sûrété of Paris, who has been invited
+by the Examining Magistrate to take charge of this
+case," the Commissary explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Case?" cried Monsieur Bex in perplexity.  "But there
+is no case for Hanaud to take charge of;" and Betty
+Harlowe drew him a little aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst she gave the little notary some rapid summary
+of the incidents of the morning, Jim went out of the room
+into the hall in search of Hanaud.  He saw him at once;
+but to his surprise Hanaud came forward from the back
+of the hall as if he had entered the house from the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I sought you in the dining-room," he said, pointing to
+the door of that room which certainly was at the back of
+the house behind the library, with its entrance behind the
+staircase.  "We will join the others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was presented to Monsieur Bex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And this gentleman?" asked Hanaud, bowing slightly
+to Thevenet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My secretary, Maurice Thevenet," said the Commissary,
+and in a loud undertone, "a charming youth, of an
+intelligence which is surprising.  He will go far."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked at Thevenet with a friendly interest.
+The young recruit gazed at the great man with kindling
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This will be an opportunity for me, Monsieur Hanaud,
+by which, if I do not profit, I prove myself of no intelligence
+at all," he said with a formal modesty which quite
+went to the heart of Monsieur Bex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is very correct," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud for his part was never averse to flattery.  He
+cocked an eye at Jim Frobisher; he shook the secretary
+warmly by the hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then don't hesitate to ask me questions, my young
+friend," he answered.  "I am Hanaud now, yes.  But
+I was once young Maurice Thevenet without, alas! his
+good looks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice Thevenet blushed with the most becoming
+diffidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is very kind," said Monsieur Bex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This looks like growing into a friendly little family
+party," Jim Frobisher thought, and he quite welcomed a
+"Hum" and a "Ha" from the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved to the centre of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We, Girardot, Commissaire of Police, will now
+remove the seals," he said pompously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led the way from the Library across the hall and
+along the corridor to the wide door of Mrs. Harlowe's
+bedroom.  He broke the seals and removed the bands.
+Then he took a key from the hand of his secretary and
+opened the door upon a shuttered room.  The little
+company of people surged forward.  Hanaud stretched out
+his arms and barred the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just for a moment, please!" he ordered and over his
+shoulder Jim Frobisher had a glimpse of the room which
+made him shiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning in the garden some thrill of the chase
+had made him for a moment eager that Hanaud should
+press on, that development should follow upon development
+until somewhere a criminal stood exposed.  Since
+the hour, however, which he had spent upon the Tower
+of the Terrace, all thought of the chase appalled him and
+he waited for developments in fear.  This bedroom
+mistily lit by a few stray threads of daylight which
+pierced through the chinks of the shutters, cold and silent
+and mysterious, was for him peopled with phantoms,
+whose faces no one could see, who struggled dimly in
+the shadows.  Then Hanaud and the Commissary crossed
+to the windows opposite, opened them and flung back the
+shutters.  The clear bright light flooded every corner in
+an instant and brought to Jim Frobisher relief.  The
+room was swept and clean, the chairs ranged against the
+wall, the bed flat and covered with an embroidered spread;
+everywhere there was order; it was as empty of suggestion
+as a vacant bedroom in an hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said.  "This room stood open for a week
+after Madame's funeral.  It would have been a miracle if
+we discovered anything which could help us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to the bed, which stood with its head against
+the wall midway between the door and the windows.  A
+small flat stand with a button of enamel lay upon the
+round table by the bed-side, and from the stand a cord
+ran down by the table leg and disappeared under the
+carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the bell into what was the maid's bedroom, I
+suppose," he said, turning towards Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud stooped and minutely examined the cord.  But
+there was no sign that it had ever been tampered with.
+He stood up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, will you take Monsieur Girardot into
+Jeanne Baudin's bedroom and close the door.  I shall
+press this button, and you will know whether the bell rings
+whilst we here shall be able to assure ourselves whether
+sounds made in one of the rooms would be heard in the
+other."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty took the Commissary of Police away, and a few
+seconds later those in Mrs. Harlowe's room heard a door
+close in the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you shut our door now, if you please?" Hanaud
+requested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bex, the notary, closed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, silence, if you please!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud pressed the button, and not a sound answered
+him.  He pressed it again and again with the same result.
+The Commissary returned to the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It rang twice," said the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And an electric bell has a shrill, penetrating sound,"
+he cried.  "Name of a name, but they built good houses
+when the Maison Crenelle was built!  Are the cupboards
+and drawers open?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried one and found it locked.  Monsieur Bex came
+forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All the drawers were locked on the morning when
+Madame Harlowe's death was discovered.  Mademoiselle
+Harlowe herself locked them in my presence and handed
+to me the keys for the purpose of making an inventory.
+Mademoiselle was altogether correct in so doing.  For
+until the funeral had taken place the terms of the will
+were not disclosed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But afterwards, when you took the inventory you
+must have unlocked them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have not yet begun the inventory, Monsieur Hanaud.
+There were the arrangements for the funeral, a list of the
+properties to be made for valuation, and the vineyards to
+be administered."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho," cried Hanaud alertly.  "Then these wardrobes
+and cupboards and drawers should hold exactly
+what they held on the night of the twenty-seventh of
+April."  He ran quickly about the room trying a door
+here, a drawer there, and came to a stop beside a
+cupboard fashioned in the thickness of the wall.  "The
+trouble is that a child with a bent wire could unlock any
+one of them.  Do you know what Madame Harlowe kept
+in this, Monsieur Bex?" and Hanaud rapped with his
+knuckles upon the cupboard door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I have no idea.  Shall I open it?" and Bex
+produced a bunch of keys from his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not for the moment, I think," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been dawdling over the locks and the drawers,
+as though time meant nothing to him at all.  He now
+swung briskly back into the centre of the room, making
+notes, it seemed to Frobisher, of its geography.  The
+door opening from the corridor faced, across the length
+of the floor, the two tall windows above the garden.  If
+one stood in the doorway facing these two windows, the
+bed was on the left hand.  On the corridor side of the
+bed, a second smaller door, which was half open, led to a
+white-tiled bath-room.  On the window side of the bed
+was the cupboard in the wall about the height of a
+woman's shoulders.  A dressing-table stood between the
+windows, a great fire-place broke the right-hand wall,
+and in that same wall, close to the right-hand window,
+there was yet another door.  Hanaud moved to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the door of the dressing-room?" he asked of
+Ann Upcott, and without waiting for an answer pushed
+it open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex followed upon his heels with his keys
+rattling.  "Everything here has been locked up too," he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud paid not the slightest attention.  He opened
+the shutters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a narrow room without any fire-place at all,
+and with a door exactly opposite to the door by which
+Hanaud had entered.  He went at once to this door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And this must be the communicating door which
+leads into what is called the treasure-room," he said, and
+he paused with his hand upon the knob and his eyes ranging
+alertly over the faces of the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Ann Upcott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was conscious of a queer thrill.  He thought of
+the opening of some newly-discovered tomb of a Pharaoh
+in a hill-side of the Valley of Kings.  Suspense passed
+from one to the other as they waited, but Hanaud did
+not move.  He stood there impassive and still like some
+guardian image at the door of the tomb.  Jim felt that
+he was never going to move, and in a voice of
+exasperation he cried:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is the door locked?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud replied in a quiet but a singular voice.  No
+doubt he, too, felt that strange current of emotion and
+expectancy which bound all in the room under a spell,
+and even gave to their diverse faces for a moment a kind
+of family similitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know yet whether it's locked or not," he said.
+"But since this room is now the private sitting-room of
+Mademoiselle Harlowe, I think that we ought to wait
+until she rejoins us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex just had time to remark with approval,
+"That is very correct," before Betty's fresh, clear voice
+rang out from the doorway leading to Mrs. Harlowe's
+bedroom:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned the handle.  The door was not locked.
+It opened at a touch&mdash;inwards towards the group of
+people and upwards towards the corridor.  The treasure-room
+was before them, shrouded in dim light, but here
+and there a beam of light sparkled upon gold and held
+out a promise of wonders.  Hanaud picked his way
+daintily to the windows and fastened the shutters back
+against the outside wall.  "I beg that nothing shall be
+touched," he said as the others filed into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap13"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN: <i>Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Like the rest of the reception-rooms along the
+corridor, it was longer than it was broad and more of a
+gallery than a room.  But it had been arranged for habitation
+rather than for occasional visits.  For it was furnished
+with a luxurious comfort and not over-crowded.  In the
+fawn-coloured panels of the walls a few exquisite pictures
+by Fragonard had been framed; on the writing-table of
+Chinese Chippendale by the window every appointment,
+ink-stand, pen-tray, candlestick, sand-caster and all were
+of the pink Battersea enamel and without a flaw.  But
+they were there for use, not for exhibition.  Moreover
+a prominent big fire-place in the middle of the wall on
+the side of the hall, jutted out into the room and gave it
+almost the appearance of two rooms in communication,
+The one feature of the room, indeed, which at a first
+glimpse betrayed the collector, was the Sedan chair set in
+a recess of the wall by the fire-place and opposite to the
+door communicating with Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom.  Its
+body was of a pale French grey in colour, with elaborately
+carved mouldings in gold round the panels and medallions
+representing fashionable shepherds and shepherdesses
+daintily painted in the middle of them.  It had glass
+windows at the sides to show off the occupant, and it was
+lined with pale grey satin, embroidered in gold to match
+the colour of the panels.  The roof, which could be raised
+upon a hinge at the back, was ornamented with gold
+filigree work, and it had a door in front of which the
+upper part was glass.  Altogether it was as pretty a
+gleaming piece of work as the art of carriage-building
+could achieve, and a gilt rail very fitly protected it.  Even
+Hanaud was taken by its daintiness.  He stood with his
+hands upon the rail examining it with a smile of pleasure,
+until Jim began to think that he had quite forgotten the
+business which had brought him there.  However, he
+brought himself out of his dream with a start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A pretty world for rich people, Monsieur Frobisher,"
+he said.  "What pictures of fine ladies in billowy skirts
+and fine gentlemen in silk stockings!  And what splashings
+of mud for the unhappy devils who had to walk!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned his back to the chair and looked across the
+room.  "That is the clock which marked half-past ten,
+Mademoiselle, during the moment when you had the light
+turned up?" he asked of Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she answered quickly.  Then she looked at it
+again.  "Yes, that's it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim detected or fancied that he detected a tiny change
+in her intonation, as she repeated her assurance, not an
+inflexion of doubt&mdash;it was not marked enough for that&mdash;but
+of perplexity.  It was clearly, however, fancy upon
+his part, for Hanaud noticed nothing at all.  Jim pulled
+himself up with an unspoken remonstrance.  "Take
+care!" he warned himself.  "For once you begin to
+suspect people, they can say and do nothing which will not
+provide you with material for suspicion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was without doubt satisfied.  The clock was
+a beautiful small gilt clock of the Louis Quinze period,
+shaped with a waist like a violin; it had a white face, and
+it stood upon a marquetry Boulle cabinet, a little more
+than waist high, in front of a tall Venetian mirror.
+Hanaud stood directly in front of it and compared it with
+his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is exact to the minute, Mademoiselle," he said to
+Betty, with a smile as he replaced his watch in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned about, so that he stood with his back to the
+clock.  He faced the fire-place across the narrow neck of
+the room.  It had an Adam mantelpiece, fashioned from
+the same fawn-coloured wood as the panels, with slender
+pillars and some beautiful carving upon the board beneath
+the shelf.  Above the shelf one of the Fragonards was
+framed in the wall and apparently so that nothing should
+mask it, there were no high ornaments at all upon the
+shelf itself.  One or two small boxes of Battersea enamel
+and a flat glass case alone decorated it.  Hanaud crossed
+to the mantelshelf and, after a moment's inspection, lifted,
+with a low whistle of admiration, the flat glass case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will pardon me, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty.
+"But I shall probably never in my life have the luck to
+see anything so incomparable again.  And the mantel-shelf
+is a little high for me to see it properly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without waiting for the girl's consent he carried it
+towards the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you see this, Monsieur Frobisher?" he called out,
+and Jim went forward to his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The case held a pendant wrought in gold and chalcedony
+and translucent enamels by Benvenuto Cellini.  Jim
+acknowledged that he had never seen craftsmanship so
+exquisite and delicate, but he chafed none the less at
+Hanaud's diversion from his business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One could spend a long day in this room," the
+detective exclaimed, "admiring these treasures."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt," Jim replied dryly.  "But I had a notion
+that we were going to spend an afternoon looking for an
+arrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My friend, you recall me to my duty."  He looked at
+the jewel again and sighed.  "Yes, as you say, we are
+not visitors here to enjoy ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He carried the case back again to the mantelshelf and
+replaced it.  Then all at once his manner changed.  He
+was leaning forward with his hands still about the glass
+case.  But he was looking down.  The fire-grate was
+hidden from the room by a low screen of blue lacquer;
+and Hanaud, from the position in which he stood, could
+see over the screen into the grate itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is all this?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted the screen from the hearth and put it carefully
+aside.  All now could see what had disturbed him&mdash;a
+heap of white ashes in the grate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud went down upon his knees and picking up the
+shovel from the fender he thrust it between the bars and
+drew it out again with a little layer of the ashes upon it.
+They were white and had been pulverised into atoms.
+There was not one flake which would cover a finger-nail.
+Hanaud touched them gingerly, as though he had expected
+to find them hot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This room was sealed up on Sunday morning and
+to-day is Thursday afternoon," said Jim Frobisher with
+heavy sarcasm.  "Ashes do not as a rule keep hot more
+than three days, Monsieur Hanaud."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice Thevenet looked at Frobisher with indignation.
+He was daring to make fun of Hanaud!  He
+treated the Sûrété with no more respect than one might
+treat&mdash;well, say Scotland Yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even Monsieur Bex had an air of disapproval.  For a
+partner of the firm of Frobisher &amp; Haslitt this gentleman
+was certainly not very correct.  Hanaud on the contrary
+was milk and water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have observed it," he replied mildly, and he sat back
+upon his heels with the shovel still poised in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle!" he called; and Betty moved forward
+and leaned against the mantelshelf at his side.  "Who
+burnt these papers so very carefully?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did," Betty replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And when?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On Saturday night, a few, and the rest on Sunday
+morning, before Monsieur le Commissaire arrived."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what were they, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Letters, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked up into her face quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho!" he said softly.  "Letters!  Yes!  And what
+kind of letters, if you please?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher was for throwing up his hands in
+despair.  What in the world had happened to Hanaud?
+One moment he forgot altogether the business upon
+which he was engaged in his enjoyment of Simon
+Harlowe's collection.  The next he was off on his
+wild-goose chase after anonymous letters.  Jim had not a
+doubt that he was thinking of them now.  One had only
+to say "letters," and he was side-tracked at once,
+apparently ready to accuse any one of their authorship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They were quite private letters," Betty replied, whilst
+the colour slowly stained her cheeks.  "They will not
+help you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I see," Hanaud returned, with just a touch of a
+snarl in his voice as he shook the shovel and flung the
+ashes back into the grate.  "But I am asking you,
+Mademoiselle, what kind of letters these were."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty did not answer.  She looked sullenly down at
+the floor, and then from the floor to the windows; and
+Jim saw with a stab of pain that her eyes were glistening
+with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think, Monsieur Hanaud, that we have come to a
+point when Mademoiselle and I should consult together,"
+he interposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle would certainly be within her rights,"
+said Monsieur Bex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mademoiselle waived her rights with a little
+petulant movement of her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed her face now to them all, with the tears
+abrim in her big eyes, and gave Jim a little nod of thanks
+and recognition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall be answered, Monsieur Hanaud," she said
+with a catch in her voice.  "It seems that nothing, however
+sacred, but must be dragged out into the light.  But
+I say again those letters will not help you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked across the group to her notary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Bex," she said, and he moved forward to
+the other side of Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In Madame's bedroom between her bed and the door
+of the bathroom there stood a small chest in which she
+kept a good many unimportant papers, such as old
+receipted bills, which it was not yet wise to destroy.  This
+chest I took to my office after Madame's death, of course
+with Mademoiselle's consent, meaning to go through the
+papers at my leisure and recommend that all which were
+not important should be destroyed.  My time, however,
+was occupied, as I have already explained to you, and it
+was not until the Friday of the sixth of May that I opened
+the chest at all.  On the very top I saw, to my surprise, a
+bundle of letters in which the writing had already faded,
+tied together with a ribbon.  One glance was enough to
+assure me that they were very private and sacred things
+with which Mademoiselle's notary had nothing whatever
+to do.  Accordingly, on the Saturday morning, I brought
+them back myself to Mademoiselle Betty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a bow Monsieur Bex retired and Betty continued
+the story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I put the letters aside so that I might read them
+quietly after dinner.  As it happened I could not in any
+case have given them attention before.  For on that
+morning Monsieur Boris formulated his charge against
+me, and in the afternoon I was summoned to the Office
+of the Examining Magistrate.  As you can understand,
+I was&mdash;I don't say frightened&mdash;but distressed by this
+accusation; and it was not until quite late in the evening,
+and then rather to distract my thoughts than for any
+other reason, that I looked at the letters.  But as soon as
+I did look at them I understood that they must be
+destroyed.  There were reasons, which"&mdash;and her voice
+faltered, and with an effort again grew steady&mdash;"which I
+feel it rather a sacrilege to explain.  They were letters
+which passed between my uncle Simon and Mrs. Harlowe
+during the time when she was very unhappily married to
+Monsieur Raviart and living apart from him&mdash;sometimes
+long letters, sometimes little scraps of notes scribbled
+off&mdash;without reserve&mdash;during a moment of freedom.
+They were the letters of," and again her voice broke and
+died away into a whisper, so that none could misunderstand
+her meaning&mdash;"of lovers&mdash;lovers speaking very
+intimate things, and glorying in their love.  Oh, there
+was no doubt that they ought to be destroyed!  But I
+made up my mind that I ought to read them, every one,
+first of all lest there should be something in them which
+I ought to know.  I read a good many that night and
+burnt them.  But it grew late&mdash;I left the rest until the
+Sunday morning.  I finished them on the Sunday morning,
+and what I had left over I burnt then.  It was soon
+after I had finished burning them that Monsieur le
+Commissaire came to affix his seals.  The ashes which you
+see there, Monsieur Hanaud, are the ashes of the letters
+which I burnt upon the Sunday morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty spoke with a very pretty and simple dignity
+which touched her audience to a warm sympathy.
+Hanaud gently tilted the ashes back into the grate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, I am always in the wrong with you,"
+he said with an accent of remorse.  "For I am always
+forcing you to statements which make me ashamed and
+do you honour."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim acknowledged that Hanaud, when he wished, could
+do the handsome thing with a very good grace.
+Unfortunately grace seemed never to be an enduring quality
+in him; as, for instance, now.  He was still upon his
+knees in front of the hearth.  Whilst making his apology
+he had been raking amongst the ashes with the shovel
+without giving, to all appearance, any thought to what
+he was doing.  But his attention was now arrested.  The
+shovel had disclosed an unburnt fragment of bluish-white
+paper.  Hanaud's body stiffened.  He bent forward and
+picked the scrap of paper out from the grate, whilst
+Betty, too, stooped with a little movement of curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud sat back again upon his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So!  You burnt more than letters last Sunday
+morning," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty was puzzled and Hanaud held out to her the
+fragment of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bills too, Mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty took the fragment in her hand and shook her
+head over it.  It was obviously the right-hand top corner
+of a bill.  For an intriguing scrap of a printed address
+was visible and below a figure or two in a column.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There must have been a bill or two mixed up with
+the letters," said Betty.  "I don't remember it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She handed the fragment of paper back to Hanaud,
+who sat and looked at it.  Jim Frobisher standing just
+behind him read the printed ends of names and words and
+the figures beneath and happened to remember the very
+look of them, Hanaud held them so long in his hand; the
+top bit of name in large capital letters, the words below
+echelonned in smaller capitals, then the figures in the
+columns and all enclosed in a rough sort of triangle with
+the diagonal line browned and made ragged by the
+fire&mdash;thus&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  ERON<br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;STRUCTION<br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LLES<br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;IS<br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;========<br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;375.05<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, it is of no importance luckily," said Hanaud
+and he tossed the scrap of paper back into the grate.
+"Did you notice these ashes, Monsieur Girardot, on
+Sunday morning?"  He turned any slur the question might
+seem to cast upon Betty's truthfulness with an
+explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is always good when it is possible to get a
+corroboration, Mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty nodded, but Girardot was at a loss.  He
+managed to look extremely important, but importance
+was not required.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't remember," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, corroboration of a kind at all events did
+come though from another source.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I might speak, Monsieur Hanaud?" said Maurice
+Thevenet eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But by all means," Hanaud replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I came into this room just behind Monsieur
+Girardot on the Sunday morning.  I did not see any
+ashes in the hearth, that is true.  But Mademoiselle
+Harlowe was in the act of arranging that screen of blue
+lacquer in front of the fireplace, just as we saw it to-day.
+She arranged it, and when she saw who her visitors were
+she stood up with a start of surprise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Hanaud cordially.  He smiled at Betty.
+"This evidence is just as valuable as if he had told us
+that he had seen the ashes themselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose to his feet and went close to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But there is another letter which you were good
+enough to promise to me," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The an&mdash;&mdash;" she began and Hanaud stopped her
+hurriedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is better that we hold our tongues," he said with
+a nod and a grin which recognised that in this matter
+they were accomplices.  "This is to be our exclusive little
+secret, which, if he is very good, we will share with
+Monsieur le Commissaire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed hugely at his joke, whilst Betty unlocked a
+drawer in the Chippendale secretary.  Girardot the
+Commissaire tittered, not quite sure that he thought very
+highly of it.  Monsieur Bex, on the other hand, by a
+certain extra primness of his face, made it perfectly clear
+that in his opinion such a jape was very, very far from
+correct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty produced a folded sheet of common paper and
+handed it to Hanaud, who took it aside to the window
+and read it carefully.  Then with a look he beckoned
+Girardot to his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Frobisher can come too.  For he is in the
+secret," he added; and the three men stood apart at the
+window looking at the sheet of paper.  It was dated the
+7th of May, signed "The Scourge," like the others of
+this hideous brood, and it began without any preface.
+There were only a few words typed upon it, and some of
+them were epithets not to be reproduced which made
+Jim's blood boil that a girl like Betty should ever have
+had to read them.
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+"<i>Your time is coming now, you&mdash;&mdash;</i>" and here followed
+the string of abominable obscenities.  "<i>You
+are for it, Betty Harlowe.  Hanaud the detective from
+Paris is coming to look after you with his handcuffs
+in his pocket.  You'll look pretty in handcuffs, won't
+you, Betty?  It's your white neck we want!  Three
+cheers for Woberski?  The Scourge.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Girardot stared at the brutal words and settled his
+glasses on his nose and stared again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;" he stammered and he pointed to the
+date.  A warning gesture made by Hanaud brought him
+to a sudden stop, but Frobisher had little doubt as to the
+purport of that unfinished exclamation.  Girardot was
+astonished, as Hanaud himself had been, that this item
+of news had so quickly leaked abroad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud folded the letter and turned back into the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty, and
+Thevenet the secretary took his notebook from his
+pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I make you a copy of the letter, Monsieur
+Hanaud?" he said, sitting down and holding out his
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wasn't going to give it back," Hanaud answered,
+"and a copy at the present stage isn't necessary.  A little
+later on I may ask for your assistance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put the letter away in his letter-case, and his letter-case
+away in his breast-pocket.  When he looked up again
+he saw that Betty was holding out to him a key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This unlocks the cabinet at the end of the room,"
+she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!  Let us look now for the famous arrow, or we
+shall have Monsieur Frobisher displeased with us again,"
+said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cabinet stood against the wall at the end of the
+room opposite to the windows, and close to the door which
+opened on to the hall.  Hanaud took the key, unlocked
+the door of the cabinet and started back with a "Wow."  He
+was really startled, for facing him upon a shelf were
+two tiny human heads, perfect in feature, in hair, in eyes,
+but reduced to the size of big oranges.  They were the
+heads of Indian tribesmen killed upon the banks of the
+Amazon, and preserved and reduced by their conquerors
+by the process common amongst those forests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If the arrow is anywhere in this room, it is here that
+we should find it," he said, but though he found many
+curious oddities in that cabinet, of the perfect specimen of
+a poison arrow there was never a trace.  He turned away
+with an air of disappointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well then, Mademoiselle, there is nothing else for it,"
+he said regretfully; and for an hour he searched that
+room, turning back the carpet, examining the upholstery
+of the chairs, and the curtains, shaking out every vase,
+and finally giving his attention to Betty's secretary.  He
+probed every cranny of it; he discovered the simple
+mechanism of its secret drawers; he turned out every
+pigeon-hole; working with extraordinary swiftness and
+replacing everything in its proper place.  At the end of
+the hour the room was as orderly as when he had entered
+it; yet he had gone through it with a tooth comb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it is not here," he said and he seated himself in
+a chair and drew a breath.  "But on the other hand, as
+the two ladies and Monsieur Frobisher are aware, I was
+prepared not to find it here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have finished then?" said Betty, but Hanaud did
+not stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For a moment," he replied, "I shall be glad, Monsieur
+Girardot, if you will remove the seals in the hall from the
+door at the end of the room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissary went out by the way of Mrs. Harlowe's
+bedroom, accompanied by his secretary.  After a
+minute had passed a key grated in the lock and the door
+was opened.  The Commissary and his secretary returned
+into the room from the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good!" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose from this chair and looking around at the little
+group, now grown puzzled and anxious, he said very
+gravely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the interest of justice I now ask that none of you
+shall interrupt me by either word or gesture, for I have
+an experiment to make."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a complete silence he walked to the fireplace and
+rang the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap14"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN: <i>An Experiment and a Discovery</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Gaston answered the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you please send Francine Rollard here,"
+said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gaston, however, stood his ground.  He looked beyond
+Hanaud to Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If Mademoiselle gives me the order," he said
+respectfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At once then, Gaston," Betty replied, and she sat
+down in a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Francine Rollard was apparently difficult to persuade.
+For the minutes passed, and when at last she did come
+into the treasure room she was scared and reluctant.  She
+was a girl hardly over twenty, very neat and trim and
+pretty, and rather like some wild shy creature out of the
+woods.  She looked round the group which awaited her
+with restless eyes and a sullen air of suspicion.  But it
+was the suspicion of wild people for townsfolk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rollard," said Hanaud gently, "I sent for you, for
+I want another woman to help me in acting a little scene."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned towards Ann Upcott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Mademoiselle, will you please repeat exactly
+your movements here on the night when Madame Harlowe
+died?  You came into the room&mdash;so.  You stood
+by the electric-light switch there.  You turned it on, you
+noticed the time, and you turned it off quickly.  For this
+communicating door stood wide open&mdash;so!&mdash;and a strong
+light poured out of Madame Harlowe's bedroom through
+the doorway."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was very busy, placing himself first by the side
+of Ann to make sure that she stood in the exact place
+which she had described, and then running across the
+room to set wide open the communicating door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You could just see the light gleaming on the ornaments
+and panels of the Sedan chair, on the other side of
+the fireplace on your right.  So!  And there,
+Mademoiselle, you stood in the darkness and," his words
+lengthened out now with tiny intervals between each
+one&mdash;"you heard the sound of the struggle in the bedroom
+and caught some words spoken in a clear whisper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Ann replied with a shiver.  The solemn manner
+of authority with which he spoke obviously alarmed her.
+She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then will you stand there once more," he continued,
+"and once more listen as you listened on that night.  I
+thank you!"  He went away to Betty.  "Now, Mademoiselle,
+and you, Francine Rollard, will you both please
+come with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked towards the communicating door but Betty
+did not even attempt to rise from her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she said with her cheeks very
+white and her voice shaking, "I can guess what you
+propose to do.  But it is horrible and rather cruel to us.
+And I cannot see how it will help."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott broke in before Hanaud could reply.  She
+was more troubled even than Betty, though without doubt
+hers was to be the easier part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It cannot help at all," she said.  "Why must we
+pretend now the dreadful thing which was lived then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned about in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ladies, I beg you to let me have my way.  I think
+that when I have finished, you will yourselves understand
+that my experiment has not been without its use.  I
+understand of course that moments like these bring their
+distress.  But&mdash;you will pardon me&mdash;I am not thinking
+of you"&mdash;and there was so much quietude and gravity in
+the detective's voice that his words, harsh though they
+were, carried with them no offence.  "No, I am thinking
+of a woman more than double the age of either of you,
+whose unhappy life came to an end here on the night of
+the 27th of April.  I am remembering two photographs
+which you, Mademoiselle Harlowe, showed me this
+morning&mdash;I am moved by them.  Yes, that is the truth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He closed his eyes as if he saw those two portraits with
+their dreadful contrast impressed upon his eyelids.  "I
+am her advocate," he cried aloud in a stirring voice.  "The
+tragic woman, I stand for her!  If she was done to death,
+I mean to know and I mean to punish!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never had Frobisher believed that Hanaud could have
+been so transfigured, could have felt or spoken with so
+much passion.  He stood before them an erect and
+menacing figure, all his grossness melted out of him, a
+man with a flaming sword.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As for you two ladies, you are young.  What does a
+little distress matter to you?  A few shivers of discomfort?
+How long will they last?  I beg you not to hinder
+me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty rose up from her chair without another word.
+But she did not rise without an effort, and when she
+stood up at last she swayed upon her feet and her face
+was as white as chalk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, Francine!" she said, pronouncing her words
+like a person with an impediment of speech.  "We must
+show Monsieur Hanaud that we are not the cowards he
+takes us for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Francine still held back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand at all.  I am only a poor girl and
+this frightens me.  The police!  They set traps&mdash;the
+police."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how often do they catch the innocent in them?
+Tell me that, Mademoiselle Francine!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned almost contemptuously towards Mrs. Harlowe's
+bedroom.  Betty and Francine followed upon his
+heels, the others trooped in behind, with Frobisher last
+of all.  He indeed was as reluctant to witness Hanaud's
+experiment as the girls were to take a part in it.  It
+savoured of the theatrical.  There was to be some sort
+of imagined reproduction of the scene which Ann Upcott
+had described, no doubt with the object of testing her
+sincerity.  It would really be a test of nerves more than a
+test of honesty and to Jim was therefore neither reliable
+nor fair play.  He paused in the doorway to say a word
+of encouragement to Ann, but she was gazing again with
+that curious air of perplexity at the clock upon the
+marquetry cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing to fear, Ann," he said, and she
+withdrew her eyes from the clock.  They were dancing now
+as she turned them upon Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wondered whether I should ever hear you call me
+by my name," she said with a smile.  "Thank you, Jim!"  She
+hesitated and then the blood suddenly mounted into
+her face.  "I'll tell you, I was a little jealous," she added
+in a low voice and with a little laugh at herself as though
+she was a trifle ashamed of the confession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was luckily spared the awkwardness of an answer
+by the appearance of Hanaud in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hate to interrupt, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with
+a smile; "but it is of a real importance that Mademoiselle
+should listen without anything to distract her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim followed Hanaud into the bedroom, and was
+startled.  The Commissary and his secretary and
+Monsieur Bex were in a group apart near to one of the
+windows.  Betty Harlowe was stretched upon Mrs. Harlowe's
+bed; Francine Rollard stood against the wall, near
+to the door, clearly frightened out of her wits and
+glancing from side to side with the furtive restless eyes
+of the half-tamed.  But it was not this curious spectacle
+which so surprised Jim Frobisher, but something strange,
+something which almost shocked, in the aspect of Betty
+herself.  She was leaning up on an elbow with her eyes
+fixed upon the doorway and the queerest, most inscrutable
+fierce look in them that he had ever seen.  She was quite
+lost to her environment.  The experiment from which
+Francine shrank had no meaning for her.  She was
+possessed&mdash;the old phrase leapt into Jim's thoughts&mdash;though
+her face was as still as a mass, a mask of frozen passion.
+It was only for a second, however, that the strange seizure
+lasted.  Betty's face relaxed; she dropped back upon
+the bed with her eyes upon Hanaud like one waiting for
+instructions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud, by pointing a finger, directed Jim to take
+his place amongst the group at the window.  He placed
+himself upon one side of the bed, and beckoned to
+Francine.  Very slowly she approached the end of the bed.
+Hanaud directed her in the same silent way to come opposite
+to him on the other side of the bed.  For a little while
+Francine refused.  She stood stubbornly shaking her
+head at the very foot of the bed.  She was terrified of
+some trick, and when at last at a sign from Betty she took
+up the position assigned to her, she minced to it gingerly
+as though she feared the floor would open beneath her
+feet.  Hanaud made her another sign and she looked at a
+scrap of paper on which Hanaud had written some words.
+The paper and her orders had obviously been given to
+her whilst Jim was talking to Ann Upcott.  Francine
+knew what she was to do, but her suspicious peasant
+nature utterly rebelled against it.  Hanaud beckoned to
+her with his eyes riveted upon her compelling her, and
+against her will she bent forwards over the bed and across
+Betty Harlowe's body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A nod from Hanaud now, and she spoke in a low, clear
+whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That&mdash;will&mdash;do&mdash;now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And hardly had she spoken those few words which
+Ann Upcott said she had heard on the night of
+Mrs. Harlowe's death, but Hanaud himself must repeat them
+and also in a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having whispered, he cried aloud towards the doorway
+in his natural voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you hear, Mademoiselle?  Was that the whisper
+which reached your ears on the night when Madame
+died?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All those in the bedroom waited for the answer in
+suspense.  Francine Rollard, indeed, with her eyes fixed
+upon Hanaud in a very agony of doubt.  And the answer
+came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but whoever whispered, whispered twice this
+afternoon.  On the night when I came down in the dark
+to the treasure room, the words were only whispered
+once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was the same voice which whispered them twice,
+Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes ... I think so ... I noticed no difference
+... Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Hanaud flung out his arms with a comic gesture
+of despair, and addressed the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You understand now my little experiment.  A voice
+that whispers!  How shall one tell it from another voice
+that whispers!  There is no intonation, no depth, no
+lightness.  There is not even sex in a voice which
+whispers.  We have no clue, no, not the slightest to the
+identity of the person who whispered, 'That will do now,'
+on the night when Madame Harlowe died."  He waved
+his hand towards Monsieur Bex.  "I will be glad if you
+will open now these cupboards, and Mademoiselle Harlowe
+will tell us, to the best of her knowledge, whether
+anything has been taken or anything disturbed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud returned to the treasure room, leaving
+Monsieur Bex and Betty at their work, with the Commissary
+and his secretary to supervise them.  Jim Frobisher
+followed him.  He was very far from believing that
+Hanaud had truthfully explained the intention of his
+experiment.  The impossibility of identifying a voice
+which whispers!  Here was something with which
+Hanaud must have been familiar from a hundred cases!
+No, that interpretation would certainly not work.  There
+was quite another true reason for this melodramatic little
+scene which he had staged.  He was following Hanaud in
+the hope of finding out that reason, when he heard him
+speaking in a low voice, and he stopped inside the
+dressing-room close to the communicating door where he could
+hear every word and yet not be seen himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle," Hanaud was saying to Ann Upcott,
+"there is something about this clock here which troubles
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;of course it's nonsense....  I must be wrong....
+For here is the cabinet and on it stands the clock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim could gather from the two voices that they were
+both standing together close to the marquetry cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," Hanaud urged.  "Still you are troubled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment's silence.  Jim could imagine the
+girl looking from the clock to the door by which she had
+stood, and back again from the door to the clock.  Surely
+that scene in the bedroom had been staged to extort some
+admission from Ann Upcott of the falsity of her story.
+Was he now, since the experiment had failed, resorting
+to another trick, setting a fresh trap?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" he asked insistently.  "Why are you
+troubled?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It seems to me," Ann replied in a voice of doubt,
+"that the clock is lower now than it was.  Of course it
+can't be ... and I had only one swift glimpse of it....
+Yet my recollection is so vivid&mdash;the room standing
+out revealed in the moment of bright light, and then
+vanishing into darkness again....  Yes, the clock
+seemed to me to be placed higher..." and suddenly
+she stopped as if a warning hand had been laid upon her
+arm.  Would she resume?  Jim was still wondering when
+silently, like a swift animal, Hanaud was in the doorway
+and confronting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with an odd note
+of relief in his voice, "we shall have to enlist you in the
+Sûrété very soon.  That I can see.  Come in!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took Jim by the arm and led him into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As for that matter of the clock, Mademoiselle, the
+light goes up and goes out&mdash;it would have been a marvel
+if you had within that flash of vision seen every detail
+precisely true.  No, there is nothing there!"  He flung
+himself into a chair and sat for a little while silent in an
+attitude of dejection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said this morning to me, Monsieur, that I had
+nothing to go upon, that I was guessing here, and guessing
+there, stirring up old troubles which had better be
+left quietly in their graves, and at the end discovering
+nothing.  Upon my word, I believe you are right!  My
+little experiment!  Was there ever a failure more abject?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud sat up alertly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher had had a brain wave.  The utter
+disappointment upon Hanaud's face and in his attitude had
+enlightened him.  Yes, his experiment had failed.  For
+it was aimed at Francine Rollard.  He had summoned
+her without warning, he had bidden her upon the instant
+to act a scene, nay, to take the chief part in it, in the
+hope that it would work upon her and break her down to
+a confession of guilt.  He suspected Ann.  Well, then,
+Ann must have had an accomplice.  To discover the
+accomplice&mdash;there was the object of the experiment.  And
+it had failed abjectedly, as Hanaud himself confessed.
+Francine had shrunk from the ordeal, no doubt, but the
+reason of the shrinking was manifest&mdash;fear of the police,
+suspicion of a trap, the furtive helplessness of the
+ignorant.  She had not delivered herself into Hanaud's
+toils.  But not a word of this conjecture did Jim reveal
+to Hanaud.  To his question what was the matter, he
+answered simply:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud beat with the palms of his hands upon the arms
+of his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing, eh? nothing!  That's the only answer in
+this case.  To every question!  To every search!  Nothing,
+nothing, nothing;" and as he ended in a sinking voice,
+a startled cry rang out in the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" Ann exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud threw off his dejection like an overcoat.  Jim
+fancied that he was out of his chair and across the
+dressing-room before the sound of the cry had ceased.
+Certainly Betty could not have moved.  She was standing in
+front of the dressing-table, looking down at a big jewel-case
+of dark blue morocco leather, and she was lifting up
+and down the open lid of it with an expression of utter
+incredulity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  "It is unlocked.  We have
+something, after all, Monsieur Frobisher.  Here is a
+jewel-case unlocked, and jewel-cases do not unlock
+themselves.  It was here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked towards the cupboard in the wall, of which
+the door stood open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Betty.  "I opened the door, and took the
+case out by the side handles.  The lid came open when
+I touched it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you look through it, please, and see whether
+anything is missing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Betty began to examine the contents of the
+jewel-case, Hanaud went to Francine, who stood apart.
+He took her by the arm and led her to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sorry if I frightened you, Francine," he said.
+"But, after all, we are not such alarming people, the
+Police, eh?  No, so long as good little maids hold their
+good little tongues, we can be very good friends.  Of
+course, if there is chatter, little Francine, and gossip, little
+Francine, and that good-looking baker's boy is to-morrow
+spreading over Dijon the story of Hanaud's little experiment,
+Hanaud will know where to look for the chatterers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur, I shall not say one word," cried Francine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how wise that will be, little Francine!" Hanaud
+rejoined in a horribly smooth and silky voice.  "For
+Hanaud can be the wickedest of wicked Uncles to
+naughty little chatterers.  Ohhoho, yes!  He seizes them
+tight&mdash;so&mdash;and it will be ever so long before he says to
+them 'That&mdash;will&mdash;do&mdash;now!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rounded off his threats with a quite friendly laugh
+and gently pushed Francine Rollard from the room.
+Then he returned to Betty, who had lifted the tray out
+of the box and was opening some smaller cases which had
+been lying at the bottom.  The light danced upon pendant
+and bracelet, buckle and ring, but Betty still searched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You miss something, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was, after all, certain that you would," Hanaud
+continued.  "If murders are committed, there will be
+some reason.  I will even venture to guess that the jewel
+which you miss is of great value."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is," Betty admitted.  "But I expect it has only been
+mislaid.  No doubt we shall find it somewhere, tucked
+away in a drawer."  She spoke with very great eagerness,
+and a note of supplication that the matter should rest
+there.  "In any case, what has disappeared is mine, isn't
+it?  And I am not going to imitate Monsieur Boris.  I
+make no complaint."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are very kind, Mademoiselle.  But we cannot,
+alas! say here 'That will do now.'"  It was strange to
+Jim to notice how he kept harping upon the words of
+that whisper.  "We are not dealing with a case of theft,
+but with a case of murder.  We must go on.  What is it
+that you miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A pearl necklace," Betty answered reluctantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A big one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was noticeable that as Betty's reluctance increased
+Hanaud became more peremptory and abrupt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not so very."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Describe it to me, Mademoiselle!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty hesitated.  She stood with a troubled face looking
+out upon the garden.  Then with a shrug of resignation
+she obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There were thirty-five pearls&mdash;not so very large, but
+they were perfectly matched and of a beautiful pink.
+My uncle took a great deal of trouble and some years to
+collect them.  Madame told me herself that they actually
+cost him nearly a hundred thousand pounds.  They would
+be worth even more now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A fortune, then," cried Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a person in that room had any belief that the
+necklace would be found, laid aside somewhere by chance.
+Here was Hanaud's case building itself up steadily.
+Another storey was added to it this afternoon.  This or
+that experiment might fail.  What did that matter?  A
+motive for the murder came to light now.  Jim had an
+intuition that nothing now could prevent a definite result;
+that the truth, like a beam of light that travels for a
+million of years, would in the end strike upon a dark spot,
+and that some one would stand helpless and dazzled in a
+glare&mdash;the criminal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who knew of this necklace of yours, Mademoiselle,
+beside yourself?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Every one in the house, Monsieur.  Madame wore it
+nearly always."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wore it, then, on the day of her death?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I&mdash;&mdash;" Betty began, and she turned towards
+Ann for confirmation, and then swiftly turned away
+again.  "I think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure of it," said Ann steadily, though her
+face had grown rather white and her eyes anxious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How long has Francine Rollard been with you?"
+Hanaud asked of Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Three years.  No&mdash;a little more.  She is the only
+maid I have ever had," Betty answered with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see," Hanaud said thoughtfully; and what he saw,
+it seemed to Jim Frobisher that every one else in that
+room saw too.  For no one looked at Ann Upcott.  Old
+servants do not steal valuable necklaces: Ann Upcott and
+Jeanne Baudin, the nurse, were the only new-comers to
+the Maison Crenelle these many years; and Jeanne Baudin
+had the best of characters.  Thus the argument seemed
+to run though no one expressed it in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned his attention to the lock of the cupboard,
+and shook his head over it.  Then he crossed to
+the dressing-table and the morocco case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" he said with a lively interest.  "This is a
+different affair;" and he bent down closely over it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The case was not locked with a key at all.  There were
+three small gilt knobs in the front of the case, and the
+lock was set by the number of revolutions given to each
+knob.  These, of course, could be varied with each knob,
+and all must be known before the case could be
+opened&mdash;Mrs. Harlowe's jewels had been guarded by a formula.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There has been no violence used here," said Hanaud,
+standing up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course my aunt may have forgotten to lock the
+case," said Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course that's possible," Hanaud agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And of course this room was open to any one between
+the time of my aunt's funeral and Sunday morning, when
+the doors were sealed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A week, in fact&mdash;with Boris Waberski in the house,"
+said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes ... yes," said Betty.  "Only ... but I
+expect it is just mislaid and we shall find it.  You see
+Monsieur Boris expected to get some money from my
+lawyers in London.  No doubt he meant to make a bargain
+with me.  It doesn't look as if he had stolen it.  He
+wouldn't want a thousand pounds if he had."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had left Boris out of his speculations.  He had
+recollected him with a thrill of hope that he would be
+discovered to be the thief when Hanaud mentioned his
+name.  But the hope died away again before the reluctant
+and deadly reasoning of Betty Harlowe.  On the other
+hand, if Boris and Ann were really accomplices in the
+murder, because he wanted his legacy, the necklace might
+well have been Ann's share.  More and more, whichever
+way one looked at it, the facts pointed damningly towards
+Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, we will see if it has been mislaid," said Hanaud.
+"But meanwhile, Mademoiselle, it would be well for you
+to lock that case up and to take it some time this afternoon
+to your bankers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty shut down the lid and spun the knobs one after
+the other.  Three times a swift succession of sharp little
+clicks was heard in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have not used, I hope, the combination which
+Madame Harlowe used," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never knew the combination she used," said Betty.
+She lifted the jewel-case back into its cupboard; and the
+search of the drawers and the cupboards began.  But it
+was as barren of result as had been the search of the
+treasure-room for the arrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We can do no more," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  One thing more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The correction came quietly from Ann Upcott.  She
+was standing by herself, very pale and defiant.  She
+knew now that she was suspected.  The very care with
+which every one had avoided even looking at her had left
+her in no doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What more can we do?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can search my rooms."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!" cried Betty violently.  "I won't have it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you please," said Ann.  "It is only fair to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex nodded violently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle could not be more correct," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann addressed herself to Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall not go with you.  There is nothing locked in
+my room except a small leather dispatch-case.  You will
+find the key to that in the left-hand drawer of my
+dressing-table.  I will wait for you in the library."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud bowed, and before he could move from his
+position Betty did a thing for which Jim could have
+hugged her there and then before them all.  She went
+straight to Ann and set her arm about her waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll wait with you, Ann," she said.  "Of course it's
+ridiculous," and she led Ann out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap15"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN: <i>The Finding of the Arrow</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ann's rooms were upon the second floor with the
+windows upon the garden, a bedroom and a sitting-room
+communicating directly with one another.  They
+were low in the roof, but spacious, and Hanaud, as he
+looked around the bedroom, said in a tone of doubt:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes ... after all, if one were frightened suddenly
+out of one's wits, one might stumble about this room in
+the dark and lose one's way to the light switch.  There
+isn't one over the bed."  Then he shrugged his shoulders.
+"But, to be sure, one would be careful that one's details
+could be verified.  So&mdash;&mdash;" and the doubt passed out of
+his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words were all Greek to the Commissary of Police
+and his secretary and Monsieur Bex.  Maurice Thevenet,
+indeed, looked sharply at Hanaud, as if he was on the
+point of asking one of those questions which he had been
+invited to ask.  But Girardot, the Commissary who was
+panting heavily with his ascent of two flights of stairs,
+spoke first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall find nothing to interest us here," he said.
+"That pretty girl would never have asked us to pry about
+amongst her dainty belongings if there had been
+anything to discover."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One never knows," replied Hanaud.  "Let us see!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim walked away into the sitting-room.  He had no
+wish to follow step by step Hanaud and the Commissary
+in their search; and he had noticed on the table in the
+middle of the room a blotting-pad and some notepaper and the
+materials for writing.  He wanted to get all this whirl of
+conjecture and fact and lies, in which during the last two
+days he had lived, sorted and separated and set in order
+in his mind; and he knew no better way of doing so than
+by putting it all down shortly in the "for" and "against"
+style of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.  He would
+have a quiet hour or so whilst Hanaud indefatigably
+searched.  He took a sheet of paper, selected a pen at
+random from the tray and began.  It cost Ann Upcott,
+however, a good many sheets of notepaper, and more than
+once the nib dropped out of his pen-holder and was forced
+back into it before he had finished.  But he had his
+problem reduced at last to these terms:
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%">
+<tr>
+<th style="width: 50%; text-align: center">
+For 
+</th>
+<th style="width: 50%; text-align: center">
+Against
+</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(1) Although suspicion that        
+murder had been committed          
+arose in the first instance only   
+from the return to its shelf of    
+the "Treatise on Sporanthus        
+Hispidus," subsequent developments,
+e.g., the disappearance of         
+the Poison Arrow, the introduction
+into the case of the ill-famed                                        
+Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott's story    
+of her visit to the Treasure 
+Room, and now the mystery of 
+Mrs. Harlowe's pearl necklace,
+make out a prima facie case for
+inquiry.
+
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+But in the absence of any
+trace of poison in the dead
+woman's body, it is difficult to
+see how the criminal can be
+brought to justice, except by
+<br /><br />
+(a) A confession.
+<br /><br />
+(b) The commission of another
+crime of a similar kind.
+Hanaud's theory&mdash;once a
+poisoner always a poisoner.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(2) If murder was committed, 
+it is probable that it was 
+committed at half-past ten at night
+when Ann Upcott in the Treasure
+Room heard the sound of a
+struggle and the whisper, "That
+will do now."
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+Ann Upcott's story may be
+partly or wholly false.  She
+knew that Mrs. Harlowe's
+bedroom was to be opened and
+examined.  If she also knew that
+the pearl necklace had
+disappeared, she must have realised
+that it would be advisable for
+her to tell some story before its
+disappearance was discovered,
+which would divert suspicion
+from her.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(3) It is clear that whoever 
+committed the murder, if murder
+was committed, Betty Harlowe 
+had nothing to do with it.  She
+had an ample allowance.  She
+was at M. Pouillac's Ball on
+the night.  Moreover, once
+Mrs. Harlowe was dead, the necklace
+became Betty Harlowe's
+property.  Had she committed the
+murder, the necklace would not
+have disappeared.
+<br /><br />
+(4) Who then are possibly
+guilty?
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+It is possible that the
+disappearance of the necklace is in
+no way connected with the
+murder, if murder there was.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(i) The servants.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+(i) All of them have many
+years of service to their credit.
+It is not possible that any of
+them would have understood
+enough of the "Treatise on
+Sporanthus Hispidus" to make
+use of it.  If any of them were
+concerned it can only be as an
+accessory or assistant working
+under the direction of another.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(ii) Jeanne Baudin the nurse.
+<br /><br />
+More attention might be given
+to her.  It is too easily accepted
+that she has nothing to do
+with it.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+No one suspects her.  Her
+record is good.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(iii) Francine Rollard.  She 
+was certainly frightened this
+afternoon.  The necklace would 
+be a temptation. 
+<br /><br />
+Was it she who bent over Ann 
+Upcott in the darkness?
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+She was frightened of the
+police as a class, rather than of
+being accused of a crime.  She
+acted her part in the reconstruction
+scene without breaking
+down.  If she were concerned, it
+could only be for the reason
+given above, as an assistant.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(iv) Ann Upcott. 
+<br /><br />
+Her introduction into the
+Maison Crenelle took place 
+through Waberski and under
+dubious circumstances.  She is
+poor, a paid companion, and the
+necklace is worth a considerable
+fortune.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+Her introductions may be
+explicable on favourable grounds.
+Until we know more of her
+history it is impossible to judge.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+She was in the house on the
+night of Mrs. Harlowe's death. 
+She told Gaston he could turn
+out the lights and go to bed
+early that evening.  She could
+easily have admitted Waberski
+and received the necklace as the
+price of her complicity.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+Her account of the night of
+the 27th April may be true from
+beginning to end.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+The story she told us in the 
+garden may have been the true
+story of what occurred adapted.
+It may have been she who 
+whispered "That will do now."
+She may have whispered it to 
+Waberski.
+<br /><br />
+Her connection with Waberski
+was sufficiently close to make
+him count upon Ann's support
+in his charge against Betty.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+In that case the theory of a
+murder is enormously strengthened.
+But who whispered, "That
+will do now"?And who was
+bending over Ann Upcott when
+she waked up?
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+(v) Waberski.
+<br /><br />
+He is a scoundrel, a would-be
+blackmailer.
+<br /><br />
+He was in straits for money
+and he expected a thumping
+legacy from Mrs. Harlowe.
+<br /><br />
+He may have brought Ann
+Upcott into the house with the
+thought of murder in his mind.
+<br /><br />
+Having failed to obtain any
+profit from his crime, he accuses
+Betty of the same crime as a
+blackmailing proposition.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdleft">
+As soon as he knew that
+Mrs. Harlowe had been exhumed and
+an autopsy made he collapsed.
+He knew, if he had used himself
+the poison arrow, that no trace
+of poison would be found.
+<br /><br />
+He knew of Jean Cladel, and
+according to his own story was
+in the Rue Gambetta close to
+Jean Cladel's shop.  It is possible
+that he himself had been visiting
+Cladel to pay for the solution of
+Strophanthus.
+</td>
+<td class="tdright">
+But he would have collapsed
+equally if he had believed that
+no murder had been committed
+at all.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+If murder was committed the two people most
+obviously suspect are Ann Upcott and Waberski
+working in collusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this conclusion Jim Frobisher was reluctantly
+brought, but even whilst writing it down there were
+certain questions racing through his mind to which he could
+find no answer.  He was well aware that he was an utter
+novice in such matters as the investigation of crimes; and
+he recognised that were the answers to these questions
+known to him, some other direction might be given to
+his thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly he wrote those troublesome questions
+beneath his memorandum&mdash;thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(1) Why does Hanaud attach no importance to the
+return of the "Treatise on Sporanthus Hispidus" to
+its place in the library?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(2) What was it which so startled him upon the
+top of the Terrace Tower?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(3) What was it that he had in his mind to say to
+me at the Café in the Place D'Armes and in the end
+did not say?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(4) Why did Hanaud search every corner of the
+treasure room for the missing poison arrow&mdash;except
+the interior of the Sedan chair?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The noise of a door gently closing aroused him from
+his speculations.  He looked across the room.  Hanaud
+had just entered it from the bedroom, shutting the
+communicating door behind him.  He stood with his hand
+upon the door-knob gazing at Frobisher with a curious
+startled stare.  He moved swiftly to the end of the table
+at which Jim was sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How you help me!" he said in a low voice and smiling.
+"How you do help me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alert though Jim's ears were to a note of ridicule, he
+could discover not a hint of it.  Hanaud was speaking
+with the utmost sincerity, his eyes very bright and his
+heavy face quite changed by that uncannily sharp expression
+which Jim had learned to associate with some new
+find in the development of the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I see what you have written?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It could be of no value to you," Jim replied modestly,
+but Hanaud would have none of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is always of value to know what the other man
+thinks, and even more what the other man sees.  What
+did I say to you in Paris?  The last thing one sees one's
+self is the thing exactly under one's nose"; and he began
+to laugh lightly but continuously and with a great deal of
+enjoyment, which Jim did not understand.  He gave in,
+however, over his memorandum and pushed it along to
+Hanaud, ashamed of it as something schoolboyish, but
+hopeful that some of these written questions might be
+answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud sat down at the end of the table close to Jim
+and read the items and the questions very slowly with an
+occasional grunt, and a still more occasional "Aha!" but
+with a quite unchanging face.  Jim was in two minds
+whether to snatch it from his hands and tear it up or dwell
+upon its recollected phrases with a good deal of pride.
+One thing was clear.  Hanaud took it seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat musing over it for a moment or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, here are questions, and dilemmas."  He looked
+at Frobisher with friendliness.  "I shall make you an
+allegory.  I have a friend who is a matador in Spain.
+He told me about the bull and how foolish those people
+are who think the bull not clever.  Yes, but do not jump
+and look the offence with your eyes and tell me how very
+vulgar I am and how execrable my taste.  All that I know
+very well.  But listen to my friend the matador!  He
+says all that the bull wants, to kill without fail all the
+bull-fighters in Spain, is a little experience.  And very little,
+he learns so quick.  Look!  Between the entrance of the
+bull into the arena and his death there are reckoned
+twenty minutes.  And there should not be more, if the
+matador is wise.  The bull&mdash;he learns so quick the
+warfare of the ring.  Well, I am an old bull who has fought
+in the arena many times.  This is your first corrida.
+But only ten minutes of the twenty have passed.  Already
+you have learned much.  Yes, here are some shrewd
+questions which I had not expected you to ask.  When the
+twenty are gone, you will answer them all for yourself.
+Meanwhile"&mdash;he took up another pen and made a tiny
+addition to item one&mdash;"I carry this on one step farther.
+See!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replaced the memorandum under Jim's eyes.  Jim
+read:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"&mdash;subsequent developments, e.g., the disappearance of
+the Poison Arrow, the introduction into the case of the
+ill-famed Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott's story of her visit to
+the treasure-room, and now the mystery of Mrs. Harlowe's
+pearl necklace, <i>and the finding of the arrow</i>, make
+out a prima facie case for inquiry."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Jim sprang to his feet in excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have found the arrow, then?" he cried, glancing
+towards the door of Ann Upcott's bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not I, my friend," replied Hanaud with a grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Commissaire, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, not the Commissaire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"His secretary, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim sat down again in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sorry.  He wears cheap rings.  I don't like him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud broke into a laugh of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Console yourself!  I, too, don't like that young
+gentleman of whom they are all so proud.  Maurice
+Thevenet has found nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked at Hanaud in a perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here is a riddle," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud rubbed his hands together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Prove to me that you have been ten minutes in the
+bull-ring," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think that I have only been five," Jim replied with
+a smile.  "Let me see!  The arrow had not been
+discovered when we first entered these rooms?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And it is discovered now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And it was not discovered by you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor the Commissaire?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor Maurice Thevenet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim stared and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have not been one minute in the bull-ring.  I don't
+understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's face was all alight with enjoyment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I take your memorandum and I write again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hid the paper from Jim Frobisher's eyes with the
+palm of his left hand, whilst he wrote with his right.
+Then with a triumphant gesture he laid it again before
+Jim.  The last question of all had been answered in
+Hanaud's neat, small handwriting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+(4) Why did Hanaud search every corner of the
+treasure-room for the missing Poison Arrow&mdash;except
+the interior of the Sedan chair?
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Underneath the question Hanaud had written as if it
+was Jim Frobisher himself who answered the question:
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+"It was wrong of Hanaud to forget to examine the
+Sedan chair, but fortunately no harm has resulted
+from that lamentable omission.  For Life, the
+incorrigible Dramatist, had arranged that the head of the
+arrow-shaft should be the pen-holder with which I
+have written this memorandum."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Jim looked at the pen-holder and dropped it with a
+startled cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There it was&mdash;the slender, pencil-like shaft expanding
+into a slight bulb where the fingers held it, and the nib
+inserted into the tiny cleft made for the stem of the iron
+dart!  Jim remembered that the nib had once or twice
+become loose and spluttered on the page, until he had
+jammed it in violently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came a terrible thought.  His jaw dropped; he
+stared at Hanaud in awe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder if I sucked the end of it, whilst I was thinking
+out my sentences," he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O Lord!" cried Hanaud, and he snatched up the pen-holder
+and rubbed it hard with his pocket handkerchief.
+Then he spread out the handkerchief upon the table, and
+fetching a small magnifying glass from his pocket,
+examined it minutely.  He looked up with relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is not the least little trace of that reddish-brown
+clay which made the poison paste.  The arrow was
+scraped clean before it was put on that tray of pens.  I
+am enchanted.  I cannot now afford to lose my junior
+colleague."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher drew a long breath and lit a cigarette, and
+gave another proof that he was a very novice of a bull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a mad thing to put the head of that arrow-shaft,
+which a glance at the plates in the Treatise would
+enable a child to identify, into an open tray of pens
+without the slightest concealment!" he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It looked as if Ann Upcott was wilfully pushing her
+neck into the wooden ring of the guillotine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not so mad, my friend!  The old rules are the best.
+Hide a thing in some out-of-the-way corner, and it will
+surely be found.  Put it to lie carelessly under every one's
+nose and no one will see it at all.  No, no!  This was
+cleverly done.  Who could have foreseen that instead of
+looking on at our search you were going to plump
+yourself down in a chair and write your memorandum so
+valuable on Mademoiselle Ann's notepaper?  And even
+then you did not notice your pen.  Why should you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim, however, was not satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a fortnight since Mrs. Harlowe was murdered,
+if she was murdered," he cried.  "What I don't understand
+is why the arrow wasn't destroyed altogether!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But until this morning there was never any question
+of the arrow," Hanaud returned.  "It was a curiosity, an
+item in a collection&mdash;why should one trouble to destroy
+it?  But this morning the arrow becomes a dangerous
+thing to possess.  So it must be hidden away in a hurry.
+For there is not much time.  An hour whilst you and I
+admired Mont Blanc from the top of the Terrace Tower."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And while Betty was out of the house," Jim added
+quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;that is true," said Hanaud.  "I had not thought
+of it.  You can add that point, Monsieur Frobisher, to
+the reasons which put Mademoiselle Harlowe out of our
+considerations.  Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat lost in thought for a little while and speaking
+now and then a phrase rather to himself than to his
+companion: "To run up here&mdash;to cut the arrow down&mdash;to
+round off the end as well as one can in a hurry&mdash;to stain
+it with some varnish&mdash;to mix it with the other pens in
+the tray.  Not so bad!"  He nodded his head in appreciation
+of the trick.  "But nevertheless things begin to
+look black for that exquisite Mademoiselle Ann with her
+delicate colour and her pretty ways."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A noise of the shifting of furniture in the bedroom
+next door attracted his attention.  He removed the nib
+from the arrow-head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We will keep this little matter to ourselves just for
+the moment," he said quickly, and he wrapped the
+improvised pen-holder in a sheet of the notepaper.  "Just
+you and I shall know of it.  No one else.  This is my
+case, not Girardot's.  We will not inflict a great deal of
+pain and trouble until we are sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I agree," said Jim eagerly.  "That's right, I am sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud tucked the arrow-head carefully away in his
+pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This, too," he said, and he took up Jim Frobisher's
+memorandum.  "It is not a good thing to carry about,
+and perhaps lose.  I will put it away at the Prefecture
+with the other little things I have collected."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put the memorandum into his letter-case and got
+up from his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The rest of the arrow-shaft will be somewhere in
+this room, no doubt, and quite easy to see.  But we shall
+not have time to look for it, and, after all, we have the
+important part of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned towards the mantelshelf, where some cards
+of invitation were stuck in the frame of the mirror, just
+as the door was opened and the Commissary with his
+secretary came out from the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The necklace is not in that room," said Monsieur
+Girardot in a voice of finality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor is it here," Hanaud replied with an unblushing
+assurance.  "Let us go downstairs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was utterly staggered.  This room had not been
+searched for the necklace at all.  First the Sedan chair,
+then this sitting-room was neglected.  Hanaud actually
+led the way out to the stairs without so much as a glance
+behind him.  No wonder that in Paris he had styled
+himself and his brethren the Servants of Chance.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap16"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN: <i>Hanaud Laughs</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+At the bottom of the stairs Hanaud thanked the
+Commissary of Police for his assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As for the necklace, we shall of course search the
+baggage of every one in the house," he said.  "But we
+shall find nothing.  Of that we may be sure.  For if the
+necklace has been stolen, too much time has passed since
+it was stolen for us to hope to find it here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bowed Girardot with much respect out of the house,
+whilst Monsieur Bex took Jim Frobisher a little aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have been thinking that Mademoiselle Ann should
+have some legal help," he said.  "Now both you and I
+are attached to the affairs of Mademoiselle Harlowe.
+And&mdash;it is a little difficult to put it delicately&mdash;it may be
+that the interests of those two young ladies are not identical.
+It would not therefore be at all correct for me, at
+all events, to offer her my services.  But I can
+recommend a very good lawyer in Dijon, a friend of mine.
+You see, it may be important."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It may be, indeed.  Will you give me your friend's
+address?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst he was writing the address down Hanaud
+startled him by breaking unexpectedly into a loud laugh.
+The curious thing was that there was nothing whatever to
+account for it.  Hanaud was standing by himself between
+them and the front door.  In the courtyard outside there
+was no one within view.  Within the hall Jim and
+Monsieur Bex were talking very seriously in a low voice.
+Hanaud was laughing at the empty air and his laughter
+betokened a very strong sense of relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I should have lived all these years and never
+noticed that before," he cried aloud in a sort of
+amazement that there could be anything capable of notice which
+he, Hanaud, had not noticed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" asked Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Hanaud did not answer at all.  He dashed back
+through the hall past Frobisher and his companion,
+vanished into the treasure-room, closed the door behind
+him and actually locked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex jerked his chin high in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is an eccentric, that one.  He would not do for
+Dijon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was for defending Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He must act.  That is true," he replied.  "Whatever
+he does and however keenly he does it, he sees a row of
+footlights in front of him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are men like that," Monsieur Bex agreed.  Like
+all Frenchmen, he was easy in his mind if he could place
+a man in a category.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he is doing something which is quite important,"
+Jim continued, swelling a little with pride.  He felt that
+he had been quite fifteen minutes in the bull-ring.  "He
+is searching for something somewhere.  I told him about
+it.  He had overlooked it altogether.  I reproached him
+this morning with his reluctance to take suggestions from
+people only too anxious to help him.  But I did him
+obviously some injustice.  He is quite willing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex was impressed and a little envious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must think of some suggestions to make to Hanaud,"
+he said.  "Yes, yes!  Was there not once a pearl necklace
+in England which was dropped in a match-box into the
+gutter when the pursuit became too hot?  I have read of
+it, I am sure.  I must tell Hanaud that he should spend a
+day or two picking up the match-boxes in the gutters.  He
+may be very likely to come across that necklace of
+Madame Harlowe's.  Yes, certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex was considerably elated by the bright
+idea which had come to him.  He felt that he was again
+upon a level with his English colleague.  He saw Hanaud
+pouncing his way along the streets of Dijon and
+explaining to all who questioned him: "This is the idea of
+Monsieur Bex, the notary.  You know, Monsieur Bex,
+of the Place Etienne Dolet."  Until somewhere near&mdash;but
+Monsieur Bex had not actually located the particular
+gutter in which Hanaud should discover the match-box
+with the priceless beads, when the library door opened and
+Betty came out into the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at the two men in surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Monsieur Hanaud?" she asked.  "I didn't see
+him go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is in your treasure-room," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!"  Betty exclaimed in a voice which showed her
+interest.  "He has gone back there!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked quickly to the door and tried the handle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Locked!" she cried with a little start of surprise.  She
+spoke without turning round.  "He has locked himself
+in!  Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because of the footlights," Monsieur Bex answered,
+and Betty turned about and stared at him.  "Yes, we
+came to that conclusion, Monsieur Frobisher and I.
+Everything he does must ring a curtain down;" and once
+more the key turned in the lock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty swung round again as the sound reached her ears
+and came face to face with Hanaud.  Hanaud looked
+over her shoulder at Frobisher and shook his head
+ruefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You did not find it, then?" Jim asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked away from Jim to Betty Harlowe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Frobisher put an idea into my head,
+Mademoiselle.  I had not looked into that exquisite Sedan
+chair.  It might well be that the necklace had been hidden
+behind the cushions.  But it is not there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you locked the door, Monsieur," said Betty
+stiffly.  "The door of my room, I ask you to notice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud drew himself erect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did, Mademoiselle," he replied.  "And then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty hesitated with some sharp rejoinder on the tip
+of her tongue.  But she did not speak it.  She shrugged
+her shoulders and said coldly as she turned from him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are within your rights, no doubt, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud smiled at her good-humouredly.  He had
+offended her again.  She was showing him once more
+the petulant, mutinous child in her which he had seen the
+morning before.  But the smile did remain upon his face.
+In the doorway of the library Ann Upcott was standing,
+her face still very pale, and fires smouldering in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You searched my rooms, I hope, Monsieur," she said
+in a challenging voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thoroughly, Mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you did not find the necklace?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!" and he walked straight across the hall to her
+with a look suddenly grown stern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, I should like you to answer me a question.
+But you need not.  I wish you to understand that.
+You have a right to reserve your answers for the Office
+of the Examining Magistrate and then give them only in
+the presence of and with the consent of your legal adviser.
+Monsieur Bex will assure you that is so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl's defiance weakened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you wish to ask me?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly how you came to the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fire died out of her eyes; Ann's eyelids fluttered
+down.  She stretched out a hand against the jamb of the
+door to steady herself.  Jim wondered whether she
+guessed that the head of Simon Harlowe's arrow was now
+hidden in Hanaud's pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was at Monte Carlo," she began and stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And quite alone?" Hanaud continued relentlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And without money?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With a little money," Ann corrected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which you lost," Hanaud rejoined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And at Monte Carlo you made the acquaintance of
+Boris Waberski?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so you came to the Maison Crenelle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is all very curious, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud
+gravely, and "If it were only curious!" Jim Frobisher
+wished with all his heart.  For Ann Upcott quailed before
+the detective's glance.  It seemed to him that with another
+question from him, an actual confession would falter and
+stumble from her lips.  A confession of complicity with
+Boris Waberski!  And then?  Jim caught a dreadful
+glimpse of the future which awaited her.  The guillotine?
+Probably a fate much worse.  For that would be over
+soon and she at rest.  A few poignant weeks, an agony of
+waiting, now in an intoxication of hope, now in the lowest
+hell of terror; some dreadful minutes at the breaking of a
+dawn&mdash;and an end!  That would be better after all than
+the endless years of sordid heart-breaking labour, coarse
+food and clothes, amongst the criminals of a convict
+prison in France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim turned his eyes away from her with a shiver of
+discomfort and saw with a queer little shock that Betty
+was watching him with a singular intentness; as if what
+interested her was not so much Ann's peril as his feeling
+about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Ann had made up her mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall tell you at once the little there is to tell," she
+declared.  The words were brave enough, but the bravery
+ended with the words.  She had provoked the short
+interrogatory with a clear challenge.  She ended it in a
+hardly audible whisper.  However, she managed to tell
+her story, leaning there against the post of the door.
+Indeed her voice strengthened as she went on and once a
+smile of real amusement flickered about her lips and in
+her eyes and set the dimples playing in her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up to eighteen months ago she had lived with her
+mother, a widow, in Dorsetshire, a few miles behind
+Weymouth.  The pair of them lived with difficulty.  For
+Mrs. Upcott found herself in as desperate a position as
+England provides for gentlewomen.  She was a small
+landowner taxed up to her ears, and then rated over the
+top of her head.  Ann for her part was thought in the
+neighbourhood to have promise as an artist.  On the
+death of her mother the estate was sold as a toy to a
+manufacturer, and Ann with a small purse and a
+sack-load of ambitions set out for London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It took me a year to understand that I was and should
+remain an amateur.  I counted over my money.  I had
+three hundred pounds left.  What was I going to do with
+it?  It wasn't enough to set me up in a shop.  On the
+other hand, I hated the idea of dependence.  So I made
+up my mind to have ten wild gorgeous days at Monte
+Carlo and make a fortune, or lose the lot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that the smile set her eyes dancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should do the same again," she cried quite unrepentantly.
+"I had never been out of England in my life, but I
+knew a good deal of schoolgirl's French.  I bought a few
+frocks and hats and off I went.  I had the most glorious
+time.  I was nineteen.  Everything from the sleeping-cars
+to the croupiers enchanted me.  I stayed at one of the
+smaller hotels up the hill.  I met one or two people whom
+I knew and they introduced me into the Sporting Club.
+Oh, and lots and lots of people wanted to be kind to me!"
+she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is thoroughly intelligible," said Hanaud dryly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but quite nice people too," Ann rejoined.  Her
+face was glowing with the recollections of that short
+joyous time.  She had forgotten, for the moment,
+altogether the predicament in which she stood, or she
+was acting with an artfulness which Hanaud could hardly
+have seen surpassed in all his experience of criminals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was a croupier, for instance, at the trente-et-quarante
+table in the big room of the Sporting Club.  I
+always tried to sit next to him.  For he saw that no one
+stole my money and that when I was winning I insured
+my stake and clawed a little off the heap from time to
+time.  I was there for five weeks and I had made four
+hundred pounds&mdash;and then came three dreadful nights
+and I lost everything except thirty pounds which I had
+stowed away in the hotel safe."  She nodded across the
+hall towards Jim.  "Monsieur Frobisher can tell you
+about the last night.  For he sat beside me and very
+prettily tried to make me a present of a thousand francs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud, however, was not to be diverted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Afterwards he shall tell me," he said, and resumed
+his questions.  "You had met Waberski before that
+night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, a fortnight before.  But I can't remember who
+introduced me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Boris introduced me a day or two later to
+Betty at tea-time in the lounge of the Hôtel de Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Hanaud.  He glanced at Jim with an
+almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders.  It was,
+indeed, becoming more and more obvious that Waberski
+had brought Ann Upcott into that household deliberately,
+as part of a plan carefully conceived and in due time to
+be fulfilled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When did Waberski first suggest that you should join
+Mademoiselle Harlowe?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That last night," Ann replied.  "He had been standing
+opposite to me on the other side of the trente-et-quarante
+table.  He saw that I had been losing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his head.  "He thought
+that the opportune moment had come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He extended his arms and let his hands fall against his
+thighs.  He was like a doctor presented with a hopeless
+case.  He turned half aside from Ann with his shoulders
+bent and his troubled eyes fixed upon the marble squares
+of the floor.  Jim could not but believe that he was at
+this moment debating whether he should take the girl
+into custody.  But Betty intervened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not be misled, Monsieur Hanaud," she said
+quickly, "It is true no doubt that Monsieur Boris
+mentioned the subject to Ann for the first time that night.
+But I had already told both my aunt and Monsieur Boris
+that I should like a friend of my own age to live with
+me and I had mentioned Ann."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked up at her doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On so short an acquaintance, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty, however, stuck to her guns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I liked her very much from the beginning.  She
+was alone.  It was quite clear that she was of our own
+world.  There was every good reason why I should wish
+for her.  And the four months she has been with me
+have proved to me that I was right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She crossed over to Ann with a defiant little nod at
+Hanaud, who responded with a cordial grin and dropped
+into English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I can push that into my pipe and puff it, as my
+dear Ricardo would say.  That is what you mean?  Well,
+against loyalty, the whole world is powerless."  As he
+made Betty a friendly bow.  He could hardly have told
+Betty in plainer phrase that her intervention had averted
+Ann's arrest; or Ann herself that he believed her guilty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every one in the hall understood him in that sense.
+They stood foolishly looking here and looking there and
+not knowing where to look; and in the midst of their
+discomfort occurred an incongruous little incident which
+added a touch of the bizarre.  Up the two steps to the
+open door came a girl carrying a big oblong cardboard
+milliner's box.  Her finger was on the bell, when Hanaud
+stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is no need to ring," he said.  "What have you
+there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl stepped into the hall and looked at Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is Mademoiselle's dress for the Ball to-morrow
+night.  Mademoiselle was to call for a final fitting but
+did not come.  But Madame Grolin thinks that it will be
+all right."  She laid the box upon a chest at the side of
+the hall and went out again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I had forgotten all about it," said Ann.  "It was
+ordered just before Madame died and tried on once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For Madame Le Vay's masked ball, no doubt," he
+said.  "I noticed the invitation card on the chimney-piece
+of Mademoiselle's sitting-room.  And in what character
+did Mademoiselle propose to go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann startled them all.  She flung up her head, whilst
+the blood rushed into her cheeks and her eyes shone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not Madame de Brinvilliers, Monsieur, at all events,"
+she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even Hanaud was brought up with a start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not suggest it," he replied coldly.  "But let me
+see!" and in a moment whilst his face was flushed with
+anger his hands were busily untying the tapes of the
+box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We talked over that little dress, together, Monsieur,
+more than a month ago.  It is meant to represent a
+water-lily."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What could be more charming?" Hanaud asked, but
+his fingers did not pause in their work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Could suspicion betray itself more brutally?" Jim
+Frobisher wondered.  What could he expect to find in
+that box?  Did he imagine that this Madame Grolin,
+the milliner, was an accomplice of Waberski's too?  The
+episode was ludicrous with a touch of the horrible.
+Hanaud lifted off the lid and turned back the tissue-paper.
+Underneath was seen a short <i>crêpe de Chine</i> frock of a
+tender vivid green with a girdle of gold and a great gold
+rosette at the side.  The skirt was stiffened to stand out
+at the hips, and it was bordered with a row of white satin
+rosettes with golden hearts.  To complete the dress there
+were a pair of white silk stockings with fine gold clocks
+and white satin shoes with single straps across the insteps
+and little tassels of brilliants where the straps buttoned,
+and four gold stripes at the back round the heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud felt under the frock and around the sides,
+replaced the lid, and stood up again.  He never looked at
+Ann Upcott.  He went straight across to Betty Harlowe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I regret infinitely, Mademoiselle, that I have put you
+to so much trouble and occupied so many hours of your
+day," he said with a good deal of feeling.  He made her
+a courteous bow, took up his hat and stick from the table
+on which he had laid it, and made straight for the hall
+door.  His business in the Maison Grenelle was to all
+appearances finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Monsieur Bex was not content.  He had been
+nursing his suggestion for nearly half an hour.  Like a
+poem it demanded utterance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud!" he called; "Monsieur Hanaud!
+I have to tell you about a box of matches."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" Hanaud answered, stopping alertly.  "A box
+of matches!  I will walk with you towards your office,
+and you shall tell me as you go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex secured his hat and his stick in a great
+hurry.  But he had time to throw a glance of pride
+towards his English colleague.  "Your suggestion about
+the treasure room was of no value, my friend.  Let us see
+what I can do!"  The pride and the airy wave of the
+hand spoke the unspoken words.  Monsieur Bex was at
+Hanaud's side in a moment, and talked volubly as they
+passed out of the gates into the street of Charles-Robert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty turned to Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To-morrow, now that I am once allowed to use my
+motor-car, I shall take you for a drive and show you
+something of our neighbourhood.  This afternoon&mdash;you
+will understand, I know&mdash;I belong to Ann."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took Ann Upcott by the arm and the two girls
+went out into the garden.  Jim was left alone in the hall&mdash;as
+at that moment he wanted to be.  It was very still here
+now and very silent.  The piping of birds, the drone of
+bees outside the open doors were rather an accompaniment
+than an interruption of the silence.  Jim placed
+himself where Hanaud had stood at that moment when
+he had laughed so strangely&mdash;half-way between the foot
+of the stairs where Monsieur Bex and he himself had
+been standing and the open porch.  But Jim could detect
+nothing whatever to provoke any laughter, any excitement.
+"That I should have lived all these years and never
+noticed it before," he had exclaimed.  Notice what?
+There was nothing to notice.  A table, a chair or two, a
+barometer hanging upon the wall on one side and a mirror
+hanging upon the wall on the other&mdash;No, there was nothing.
+Of course, Jim reflected, there was a strain of the
+mountebank in Hanaud.  The whole of that little scene
+might have been invented by him maliciously, just to
+annoy and worry and cause discomfort to Monsieur Bex
+and himself.  Hanaud was very capable of a trick like
+that!  A strain of the mountebank indeed!  He had a
+great deal of the mountebank.  More than half of him
+was probably mountebank.  Possibly quite two-thirds!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, damn the fellow!  What in the world did he
+notice?" cried Jim.  "What did he notice from the top
+of the Tower?  What did he notice in this hall?  Why
+must he be always noticing something?" and he jammed
+his hat on in a rage and stalked out of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap17"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: <i>At Jean Cladel's</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+At nine o'clock that night Jim Frobisher walked past
+the cashier's desk and into the hall of the Grande
+Taverne.  High above his head the cinematograph
+machine whirred and clicked and a blade of silver light
+cut the darkness.  At the opposite end of the hall the
+square screen was flooded with radiance and the pictures
+melted upon it one into the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a little while Jim could see nothing but that screen.
+Then the hall swam gradually within his vision.  He saw
+the heads of people like great bullets and a wider central
+corridor where waitresses with white aprons moved.  Jim
+walked up the corridor and turned off to the left between
+the tables.  When he reached the wall he went forward
+again towards the top of the hall.  On his left the hall
+fell back, and in the recess were two large cubicles in
+which billiard tables were placed.  Against the wall of the
+first of these a young man was leaning with his eyes fixed
+upon the screen.  Jim fancied that he recognised Maurice
+Thevenet, and nodded to him as he passed.  A little
+further on a big man with a soft felt hat was seated
+alone, with a Bock in front of him&mdash;Hanaud.  Jim
+slipped into a seat at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You?" Hanaud exclaimed in surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?  You told me this is where you would be
+at this hour," replied Jim, and some note of discouragement
+in his voice attracted Hanaud's attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't think that those two young ladies would let
+you go," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the contrary," Jim replied with a short laugh.
+"They didn't want me at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to say something more, but thought better of
+it, and called to a waitress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Two Bocks, if you please," he ordered, and he offered
+Hanaud a cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Bocks were brought, Hanaud said to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will be well to pay at once, so that we can slip away
+when we want."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have something to do to-night?" Jim asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said no more until Jim had paid and the waitress
+had turned the two little saucers on which she had brought
+the Bocks upside down and had gone away.  Then he
+leaned towards Jim and lowered his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am glad that you came here.  For I have a hope
+that we shall get the truth to-night, and you ought to be
+present when we do get it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim lit his own cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From whom do you hope to get it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel," Hanaud answered in a whisper.  "A
+little later when all the town is quiet we will pay a visit
+to the street of Gambetta."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You think he'll talk?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is no charge against Cladel in this affair.  To
+make a solution of that poison paste is not an offence.
+And he has so much against him that he will want to be
+on our side if he can.  Yes, he will talk I have no doubt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There would be an end of the affair then, to-night.
+Jim Frobisher was glad with an unutterable gladness.
+Betty would be free to order her life as she liked, and
+where she liked, to give to her youth its due scope and
+range, to forget the terror and horror of these last weeks,
+as one forgets old things behind locked doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope, however," he said earnestly to Hanaud, "and
+I believe, that you will be found wrong, that if there was
+a murder Ann Upcott had nothing to do with it.  Yes, I
+believe that."  He repeated his assertion as much to
+convince himself as to persuade Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud touched his elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't raise your voice too much, my friend," he said.
+"I think there is some one against the wall who is
+honouring us with his attention."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is only Maurice Thevenet," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oho?" answered Hanaud in a voice of relief.  "Is
+that all?  For a moment I was anxious.  It seemed that
+there was a sentinel standing guard over us."  He added
+in a whisper, "I, too, hope from the bottom of my heart
+that I may be proved wrong.  But what of that arrow
+head in the pen tray?  Eh?  Don't forget that!"  Then
+he fell into a muse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What happened on that night in the Maison
+Crenelle?" he said.  "Why was that communicating door
+thrown open?  Who was to be stripped to the skin by
+that violent woman?  Who whispered 'That will do
+now'?  Is Ann Upcott speaking the truth, and was there
+some terrible scene taking place before she entered so
+unexpectedly the treasure room&mdash;some terrible scene which
+ended in that dreadful whisper?  Or is Ann Upcott lying
+from beginning to end?  Ah, my friend, you wrote some
+questions down upon your memorandum this afternoon.
+But these are the questions I want answered, and where
+shall I find the answers?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had never seen Hanaud so moved.  His hands
+were clenched, and the veins prominent upon his forehead,
+and though he whispered his voice shook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel may help," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes, he may tell us something."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat through an episode of the film, and saw the
+lights go up and out again, and then Hanaud looked
+eagerly at his watch and put it back again into his pocket
+with a gesture of annoyance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is still too early?" Jim asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Cladel has no servant and takes his meals
+abroad.  He has not yet returned home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little before ten o'clock a man strolled in, and seating
+himself at a table behind Hanaud twice scraped a match
+upon a match-box without getting a light.  Hanaud,
+without moving, said quietly to Frobisher:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is at home now.  In a minute I shall go.  Give
+me five minutes and follow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where shall we meet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Walk straight along the Rue de la Liberté, and I will
+see to that," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pulled his packet of cigarettes from his pocket, put
+one between his lips, and took his time in lighting it.
+Then he got up, but to his annoyance Maurice Thevenet
+recognised him and came forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When Monsieur Frobisher wished me good-evening
+and joined you I thought it was you, Monsieur Hanaud.
+But I had not the presumption to recall myself to your
+notice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Presumption!  Monsieur, we are of the same service,
+only you have the advantage of youth," said Hanaud
+politely, as he turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you are going, Monsieur Hanaud?" Thevenet
+asked in distress.  "I am desolated.  I have broken into
+a conversation like a clumsy fellow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all," Hanaud replied.  To Frobisher his
+patience was as remarkable as Maurice Thevenet's
+impudence.  "We were idly watching a film which I think
+is a little tedious."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, since you are not busy I beg for your
+indulgence.  One little moment that is all.  I should so
+dearly love to be able to say to my friends, 'I sat in the
+cinema with Monsieur Hanaud&mdash;yes, actually I'&mdash;and
+asked for his advice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud sat down again upon his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And upon what subject can you, of whom Monsieur
+Girardot speaks so highly, want my advice?" Hanaud
+asked with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eternal ambition of the provincial was tormenting
+the eager youth.  To get to Paris&mdash;all was in that!
+Fortune, reputation, a life of colour.  A word from
+Monsieur Hanaud and a way would open.  He would
+work night and day to justify that word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur, all I can promise is that when the time
+comes I shall remember you.  But that promise I make
+now with my whole heart," said Hanaud warmly, and
+with a bow he moved away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice Thevenet watched him go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a man!" Maurice Thevenet went on enthusiastically.
+"I would not like to try to keep any secrets
+from him.  No, indeed!"  Jim had heard that sentiment
+before on other lips and with a greater sympathy.  "I did
+not understand at all what he had in his mind when he
+staged that little scene with Francine Rollard.  But
+something, Monsieur.  Oh, you may be sure.  Something wise.
+And that search through the treasure room!  How quick
+and complete!  No doubt while we searched Mademoiselle
+Upcott's bedroom, he was just as quick and complete in
+going through her sitting-room.  But he found nothing.
+No, nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited for Jim to corroborate him, but Jim only
+said "Oho!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Thevenet was not to be extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall tell you what struck me, Monsieur.  He was
+following out no suspicions; isn't that so?  He was
+detached.  He was gathering up every trifle, on the chance
+that each one might sometime fit in with another and at
+last a whole picture be composed.  An artist!  There was
+a letter, for instance, which Mademoiselle Harlowe
+handed to him, one of those deplorable letters which have
+disgraced us here&mdash;you remember that letter, Monsieur?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aha!" said Frobisher, quite in the style of Hanaud.
+"But I see that this film is coming to its wedding bells.
+So I shall wish you a good evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher bowed and left Maurice Thevenet to dream
+of success in Paris.  He strolled between the groups of
+spectators to the entrance and thence into the street.  He
+walked to the arch of the Porte Guillaume and turned
+into the Rue de la Liberté.  The provincial towns go to
+bed early and the street so busy throughout the day was
+like the street of a deserted city.  A couple of hundred
+yards on, he was startled to find Hanaud, sprung from
+nowhere, walking at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So my young friend, the secretary engaged you when
+I had gone?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Maurice Thevenet," said Jim, "may be as the Commissary
+says a young man of a surprising intelligence,
+but to tell you the truth, I find him a very intrusive fellow.
+First of all he wanted to know if you had discovered
+anything in Ann Upcott's sitting-room, and then what Miss
+Harlowe's anonymous letter was about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked at Jim with interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he is anxious to learn, that young man, Girardot
+is right.  He will go far.  And how did you answer him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said 'Oho'! first, and then I said 'Aha'! just like a
+troublesome friend of mine when I ask him a simple
+question which he does not mean to answer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed heartily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you did very well," he said.  "Come, let us turn
+into this little street upon the right.  It will take us to
+our destination."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait!" whispered Jim eagerly.  "Don't cross the road
+for a moment.  Listen!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud obeyed at once; and both men stood and
+listened in the empty street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a sound," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!  That is what troubles me!" Jim whispered
+importantly.  "A minute ago there were footsteps behind
+us.  Now that we have stopped they have stopped too.
+Let us go on quite straight for a moment or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But certainly my friend," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And let us not talk either," Jim urged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a single word," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They moved forward again and behind them once more
+footsteps rang upon the pavement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did I tell you?" asked Jim, taking Hanaud by
+the arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That we would neither of us speak," Hanaud replied.
+"And lo! you have spoken!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why?  Why have I spoken?  Be serious, Monsieur,"
+Jim shook his arm indignantly.  "We are being
+followed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud stopped dead and gazed in steady admiration
+at his junior colleague.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" he whispered.  "You have discovered that?
+Yes, it is true.  We are being followed by one of my
+men who sees to it that we are not followed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher shook Hanaud's arm off indignantly.  He
+drew himself up stiffly.  Then he saw Hanaud's mouth
+twitching and he understood that he was looking
+"proper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, let us go and find Jean Cladel," he said with
+a laugh and he crossed the road.  They passed into a
+network of small, mean streets.  There was not a soul
+abroad.  The houses were shrouded in darkness.  The
+only sounds they heard were the clatter of their own
+footsteps on the pavement and the fainter noise of the
+man who followed them.  Hanaud turned to the left into
+a short passage and stopped before a little house with a
+shuttered shop front.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the place," he said in a low voice and he
+pressed the button in the pillar of the door.  The bell rang
+with a shrill sharp whirr just the other side of the panels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We may have to wait a moment if he has gone to
+bed," said Hanaud, "since he has no servant in the
+house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A minute or two passed.  The clocks struck the half
+hour.  Hanaud leaned his ear against the panels of the
+door.  He could not hear one sound within the house.
+He rang again; and after a few seconds shutters were
+thrown back and a window opened on the floor above.
+From behind the window some one whispered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who is there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The police," Hanaud answered, and at the window
+above there was silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one is going to do you any harm," Hanaud
+continued, raising his voice impatiently.  "We want some
+information from you.  That's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well."  The whisper came from the same spot.
+The man standing within the darkness of the room had
+not moved.  "Wait!  I will slip on some things and come
+down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The window and the shutter were closed again.  Then
+through the chinks a few beams of light strayed out
+Hanaud uttered a little grunt of satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That animal is getting up at last.  He must have some
+strange clients amongst the good people of Dijon if he is
+so careful to answer them in a whisper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned about and took a step or two along the
+pavement and another step or two back like a man upon
+a quarter deck.  Jim Frobisher had never known him so
+restless and impatient during these two days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't help it," he said in a low voice to Jim.  "I
+think that in five minutes we shall touch the truth of this
+affair.  We shall know who brought the arrow to him
+from the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If any one brought the arrow to him at all," Jim
+Frobisher added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Hanaud was not in the mood to consider ifs and
+possibilities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that!" he said with a shrug of the shoulders.
+Then he tapped his forehead.  "I am like Waberski.  I
+have it here that some one did bring the arrow to Jean
+Cladel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started once more his quarter-deck pacing.  Only
+it was now a trot rather than a walk.  Jim was a little
+nettled by the indifference to his suggestion.  He was
+still convinced that Hanaud had taken the wrong starting
+point in all his inquiry.  He said tartly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if some one did bring the arrow here, it will
+be the same person who replaced the treatise on
+Sporanthus on its book shelf."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud came to a stop in front of Jim Frobisher.
+Then he burst into a low laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will bet you all the money in the world that that
+is not true, and then Madame Harlowe's pearl necklace
+on the top of it.  For after all it was not I who brought
+the arrow to Jean Cladel, whereas it was undoubtedly I
+who put back the treatise on the shelf."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim took a step back.  He stared at Hanaud with his
+mouth open in a stupefaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You?" he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I," replied Hanaud, standing up on the tips of his
+toes.  "Alone I did it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then his manner of burlesque dropped from him.  He
+looked up at the shuttered windows with a sudden anxiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That animal is taking longer than he need," he muttered.
+"After all, it is not to a court ball of the Duke of
+Burgundy that we are inviting him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rang the bell again with a greater urgency.  It
+returned its shrill reply as though it mocked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not like this," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seized the door-handle and leaned his shoulder
+against the panel and drove his weight against it.  But
+the door was strong and did not give.  Hanaud put his
+fingers to his mouth and whistled softly.  From the
+direction whence they had come they heard the sound
+of a man running swiftly.  They saw him pass within
+the light of the one street lamp at the corner and out of it
+again; and then he stood at their side.  Jim recognised
+Nicolas Moreau, the little agent who had been sent this
+very morning by Hanaud to make sure that Jean Cladel
+existed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nicolas, I want you to wait here," said Hanaud.  "If
+the door is opened, whistle for us and keep it open."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud said in a low and troubled voice to Frobisher:
+"There is something here which alarms me."  He dived
+into a narrow alley at the side of the shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was in this alley no doubt that Waberski meant us
+to believe that he hid on the morning of the 7th of May,"
+Jim whispered as he hurried to keep with his companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The alley led into a lane which ran parallel with the
+street of Gambetta.  Hanaud wheeled into it.  A wall five
+feet high, broken at intervals by rickety wooden doors,
+enclosed the yards at the backs of the houses.  Before
+the first of these breaks in the wall Hanaud stopped.  He
+raised himself upon the tips of his toes and peered over
+the wall, first downwards into the yard, and then upwards
+towards the back of the house.  There was no lamp in the
+lane, no light showing from any of the windows.  Though
+the night was clear of mist it was as dark as a cavern in
+this narrow lane behind the houses.  Jim Frobisher,
+though his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, knew that
+he could not have seen a man, even if he had moved, ten
+yards away.  Yet Hanaud still stood peering at the back
+of the house with the tips of his fingers on the top of the
+wall.  Finally he touched Jim on the sleeve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe the back window on the first floor is open,"
+he whispered, and his voice was more troubled than ever.
+"We will go in and see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He touched the wooden door and it swung inwards
+with a whine of its hinges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Open," said Hanaud.  "Make no noise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silently they crossed the yard.  The ground floor of
+the house was low.  Jim looking upwards could see now
+that the window above their heads yawned wide open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are right," he breathed in Hanaud's ear, and with
+a touch Hanaud asked for silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room beyond the window was black as pitch.  The
+two men stood below and listened.  Not a word came
+from it.  Hanaud drew Jim into the wall of the house.
+At the end of the wall a door gave admission into the
+house.  Hanaud tried the door, turning the handle first
+and then gently pressing with his shoulder upon the panel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's locked, but not bolted like the door in front," he
+whispered.  "I can manage this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher heard the tiniest possible rattle of a
+bunch of keys as Hanaud drew it from his pocket, and
+then not a noise of any kind whilst Hanaud stooped above
+the lock.  Yet within half a minute the door slowly
+opened.  It opened upon a passage as black as that room
+above their heads.  Hanaud stepped noiselessly into the
+passage.  Jim Frobisher followed him with a heart
+beating high in excitement.  What had happened in that
+lighted room upstairs and in the dark room behind it?
+Why didn't Jean Cladel come down and open the door
+upon the street of Gambetta?  Why didn't they hear
+Nicolas Moreau's soft whistle or the sound of his voice?
+Hanaud stepped back past Jim Frobisher and shut the
+door behind them and locked it again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You haven't an electric torch with you, of course?"
+Hanaud whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," replied Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor I.  And I don't want to strike a match.  There's
+something upstairs which frightens me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You could hardly hear the words.  They were spoken
+as though the mere vibration of the air they caused would
+carry a message to the rooms above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll move very carefully.  Keep a hand upon my
+coat," and Hanaud went forward.  After he had gone a
+few paces he stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's a staircase here on my right.  It turns at
+once.  Mind not to knock your foot on the first step," he
+whispered over his shoulder; and a moment later, he
+reached down and, taking hold of Jim's right arm, laid
+his hand upon a balustrade.  Jim lifted his foot, felt for
+and found the first tread of the stairs, and mounted
+behind Hanaud.  They halted on a little landing just above
+the door by which they had entered the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In front of them the darkness began to thin, to become
+opaque rather than a black, impenetrable hood drawn over
+their heads.  Jim understood that in front of him was an
+open door and that the faint glimmer came from that
+open window on their left hand beyond the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud passed through the doorway into the room.
+Jim followed and was already upon the threshold, when
+Hanaud stumbled and uttered a cry.  No doubt the cry
+was low, but coming so abruptly upon their long silence
+it startled Frobisher like the explosion of a pistol.  It
+seemed that it must clash through Dijon like the striking
+of a clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But nothing followed.  No one stirred, no one cried
+out a question.  Silence descended upon the house again,
+impenetrable, like the darkness a hood upon the senses.
+Jim was tempted to call out aloud himself, anything,
+however childish, so that he might hear a voice speaking
+words, if only his own voice.  The words came at last,
+from Hanaud and from the inner end of the room, but
+in an accent which Jim did not recognise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't move! ... There is something....  I told
+you I was frightened....  Oh!" and his voice died away
+in a sigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim could hear him moving very cautiously.  Then he
+almost screamed aloud.  For the shutters at the window
+slowly swung to and the room was once more shrouded
+in black.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who's that?" Jim whispered violently, and Hanaud
+answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's only me&mdash;Hanaud.  I don't want to show a light
+here yet with that window open.  God knows what dreadful
+thing has happened here.  Come just inside the room
+and shut the door behind you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim obeyed, and having moved his position, could see
+a line of yellow light, straight and fine as if drawn by a
+pencil, at the other end of the room on the floor.  There
+was a door there, a door into the front room where they
+had seen the light go up from the street of Gambetta.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher had hardly realised that before the door
+was burst open with a crash.  In the doorway, outlined
+against the light beyond, appeared the bulky frame of
+Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing here," he said, standing there blocking
+up the doorway with his hands in his pockets.  "The
+room is quite empty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That room, the front room&mdash;yes!  But between
+Hanaud's legs the light trickled out into the dark room
+behind, and here, on the floor illuminated by a little lane
+of light, Jim, with a shiver, saw a clenched hand and a
+forearm in a crumpled shirt-sleeve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Turn round," he cried to Hanaud.  "Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said quietly.  "That is what I stumbled
+against."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found a switch in the wall close to the door and
+snapped it down.  The dark room was flooded with light,
+and on the floor, in the midst of a scene of disorder, a
+table pushed back here, a chair overturned there, lay the
+body of a man.  He wore no coat.  He was in his waistcoat
+and his shirt sleeves, and he was crumpled up with
+a horrible suggestion of agony like a ball, his knees
+towards his chin, his head forward towards his knees.
+One arm clutched the body close, the other, the one which
+Jim had seen, was flung out, his hand clenched in a spasm
+of intolerable pain.  And about the body there was such a
+pool of blood as Jim Frobisher thought no body could
+contain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim staggered back with his hands clasped over his
+eyes.  He felt physically sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then he killed himself on our approach," he cried
+with a groan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who?" answered Hanaud steadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel.  The man who whispered to us from
+behind the window."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud stunned him with a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What with?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim drew his hands slowly from before his face and
+forced his eyes to their service.  There was no gleam of a
+knife, or a pistol, anywhere against the dark background
+of the carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You might think that he was a Japanese who had
+committed <i>hari-kari</i>," said Hanaud.  "But if he had, the
+knife would be at his side.  And there is no knife."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stooped over the body and felt it, and drew his
+hand back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is still warm," he said, and then a gasp, "Look!"  He
+pointed.  The man was lying on his side in this
+dreadful pose of contracted sinews and unendurable pain.
+And across the sleeve of his shirt there was a broad red
+mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's where the knife was wiped clean," said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim bent forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By God, that's true," he cried, and a little afterwards,
+in a voice of awe: "Then it's murder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a doubt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher stood up.  He pointed a shaking finger
+at the grotesque image of pain crumpled upon the floor,
+death without dignity, an argument that there was
+something horribly wrong with the making of the human
+race&mdash;since such things could be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must make sure," answered Hanaud.  He went
+down the stairs to the front door and, unbolting it, called
+Moreau within the house.  From the top of the stairs
+Jim heard him ask:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know Jean Cladel by sight?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," answered Moreau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then follow me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud led him up into the back room.  For a moment
+Moreau stopped upon the threshold with a blank look
+upon his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that the man?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He has been murdered," Hanaud explained.  "Will
+you fetch the Commissary of the district and a doctor?
+We will wait here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau turned on his heel and went downstairs.
+Hanaud dropped into a chair and stared moodily at the
+dead body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jean Cladel," he said in a voice of discouragement.
+"Just when he could have been of a little use in the
+world!  Just when he could have helped us to the truth!
+It's my fault, too.  I oughtn't to have waited until
+to-night.  I ought to have foreseen that this might happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who can have murdered him?" Jim Frobisher exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud roused himself out of his remorse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The man who whispered to us from behind the
+window," answered Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher felt his mind reeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's impossible!" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" Hanaud asked.  "It must have been he.
+Think it out!"  And step by step he told the story as
+he read it, testing it by speaking it aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At five minutes past ten a man of mine, still a little
+out of breath from his haste, comes to us in the Grande
+Taverne and tells us that Jean Cladel has just reached
+home.  He reached home then at five minutes to ten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Jim agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We were detained for a few minutes by Maurice
+Thevenet.  Yes."  He moistened his lips with the tip
+of his tongue and said softly: "We shall have to consider
+that very modest and promising young gentleman rather
+carefully.  He detained us.  We heard the clock strike
+half-past ten as we waited in the street."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And all was over then.  For the house was as silent
+as what, indeed, it is&mdash;a grave.  And only just over, for
+the body is still warm.  If this&mdash;lying here, is Jean Cladel,
+some one else must have been waiting for him to come
+home to-night, waiting in the lane behind, since my man
+didn't see him.  And an acquaintance, a friend&mdash;for Jean
+Cladel lets him in and locks the door behind him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He might have been here already, waiting for him
+with his knife bared in this dark room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked around the room.  It was furnished
+cheaply and stuffily, half office, half living-room.  An
+open bureau stood against the wall near the window.  A
+closed cabinet occupied the greater part of one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder," he said.  "It is possible, no doubt&mdash;&mdash;  But
+if so, why did the murderer stay so long?  No search
+has been made&mdash;no drawers are ransacked."  He tried
+the door of the cabinet.  "This is still locked.  No, I
+don't think that he was waiting.  I think that he was
+admitted as a friend or a client&mdash;I fancy Jean Cladel had
+not a few clients who preferred to call upon him by the
+back way in the dark of the night.  I think that his visitor
+came meaning to kill, and waited his time and killed, and
+that he had hardly killed before we rang the bell at the
+door."  Hanaud drew in his breath sharply.  "Imagine
+that, my friend!  He is standing here over the man he
+has murdered, and unexpectedly the shrill, clear sound of
+the bell goes through the house&mdash;as though God said, 'I
+saw you!'  Imagine it!  He turned out the light and
+stands holding his breath in the dark.  The bell rings
+again.  He must answer it or worse may befall.  He goes
+into the front room and throws open the window, and
+hears it is the police who are at the door."  Hanaud
+nodded his head in a reluctant admiration.  "But that man
+had an iron nerve!  He doesn't lose his head.  He closes
+the shutter, he turns on the light, that we may think he is
+getting up, he runs back into this room.  He will not
+waste time by stumbling down the stairs and fumbling
+with the lock of the back door.  No, he opens these
+shutters and drops to the ground.  It is done in a second.
+Another second, and he is in the lane; another, and he
+is safe, his dreadful mission ended.  Cladel will not speak.
+Cladel will not tell us the things we want to know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud went over to the cabinet and, using his skeleton
+keys, again opened its doors.  On the shelves were ranged
+a glass jar or two, a retort, the simplest utensils of a
+laboratory and a few bottles, one of which, larger than
+the rest, was half filled with a colourless liquid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alcohol," said Hanaud, pointing to the label.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher moved carefully round on the outskirts
+of the room, taking care not to alter the disarrangements
+of the furniture.  He looked the bottles over.  Not one
+of them held a drop of that pale lemon-coloured solution
+which the Professor, in his Treatise, had described.
+Hanaud shut and locked the doors of the cabinet again
+and stepped carefully over to the bureau.  It stood open,
+and a few papers were strewn upon the flap.  He sat
+down at the bureau and began carefully to search it.  Jim
+sat down in a chair.  Somehow it had leaked out that,
+since this morning, Hanaud knew of Jean Cladel.  Jean
+Cladel therefore must be stopped from any revelations;
+and he had been stopped.  Frobisher could no longer
+doubt that murder had been done on the night of April
+the 27th, in the Maison Crenelle.  Development followed
+too logically upon development.  The case was building
+itself up&mdash;another storey had been added to the edifice
+with this new crime.  Yes, certainly and solidly it was
+building itself up&mdash;this case against some one.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap18"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: <i>The White Tablet</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Within the minute that case was to be immeasurably
+strengthened.  An exclamation broke from
+Hanaud.  He sprang to his feet and turned on the light
+of a green-shaded reading lamp, which stood upon the
+ledge of the bureau.  He was holding now under the
+light a small drawer, which he had removed from the
+front of the bureau.  Very gingerly he lifted some little
+thing out of it, something that looked like a badge that
+men wear in their buttonholes.  He laid it down upon the
+blotting paper; and in that room of death laughed
+harshly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He beckoned to Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come and look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What Jim saw was a thin, small, barbed iron dart,
+with an iron stem.  He had no need to ask its nature, for
+he had seen its likeness that morning in the Treatise of
+the Edinburgh Professor.  This was the actual head of
+Simon Harlowe's poison-arrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have found it!" said Jim in a voice that shook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud gave it a little push, and said thoughtfully:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A negro thousands of miles away sits outside his hut
+in the Kombe country and pounds up his poison seed and
+mixes it with red clay, and smears it thick and slab over
+the shaft of his fine new arrow, and waits for his enemy.
+But his enemy does not come.  So he barters it, or gives
+it to his white friend the trader on the Shire river.  And
+the trader brings it home and gives it to Simon Harlowe
+of the Maison Crenelle.  And Simon Harlowe lends it to
+a professor in Edinburgh, who writes about it in a printed
+book and sends it back again.  And in the end, after all
+its travels, it comes to the tenement of Jean Cladel in a
+slum of Dijon, and is made ready in a new way to do its
+deadly work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For how much longer Hanaud would have moralised
+over the arrow in this deplorable way, no man can tell.
+Happily Jim Frobisher was reprieved from listening to
+him by the shutting of a door below and the noise of
+voices in the passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Commissary!" said Hanaud, and he went quickly
+down the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim heard him speaking in a low tone for quite a long
+while, and no doubt was explaining the position of affairs.
+For when he brought the Commissary and the doctor up
+into the room he introduced Jim as one about whom they
+already knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is that Monsieur Frobisher," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissary, a younger and more vivacious man
+than Girardot, bowed briskly to Jim and looked towards
+the contorted figure of Jean Cladel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even he could not restrain a little gesture of repulsion.
+He clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is not pretty, that one!" he said.  "Most certainly
+he is not pretty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud crossed again to the bureau and carefully
+folded the dart around with paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With your permission, Monsieur," he said ceremoniously
+to the Commissary, "I shall take this with me.
+I will be responsible for it."  He put it away in his pocket
+and looked at the doctor, who was stooping by the side
+of Jean Cladel.  "I do not wish to interfere, but I should
+be glad to have a copy of the medical report.  I think
+that it might help me.  I think it will be found that this
+murder was committed in a way peculiar to one man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly you shall have a copy of the report,
+Monsieur Hanaud," replied the young Commissary in a police
+and formal voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laid a hand on Jim's arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We are in the way, my friend.  Oh, yes, in spite of
+Monsieur le Commissaire's friendly protestations.  This
+is not our affair.  Let us go!"  He conducted Jim to the
+door and turned about.  "I do not wish to interfere," he
+repeated, "but it is possible that the shutters and the
+window will bear the traces of the murderer's fingers.  I
+don't think it probable, for that animal had taken his
+precautions.  But it is possible, for he left in a great hurry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissary was overwhelmed with gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most certainly we will give our attention to the
+shutters and the window-sill."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A copy of the finger-prints, if any are found?"
+Hanaud suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall be at Monsieur Hanaud's disposal as early as
+possible," the Commissary agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim experienced a pang of regret that Monsieur Bex
+was not present at the little exchange of civilities.  The
+Commissary and Hanaud were so careful not to tread
+upon one another's toes and so politely determined that
+their own should not be trodden upon.  Monsieur Bex
+could not but have revelled in the correctness of their
+deportment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud and Frobisher went downstairs into the street
+The neighbourhood had not been aroused.  A couple of
+<i>sergents-de-ville</i> stood in front of the door.  The street of
+Gambetta was still asleep and indifferent to the crime
+which had taken place in one of its least respectable
+houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall go to the Prefecture," said Hanaud.  "They
+have given me a little office there with a sofa.  I want
+to put away the arrow head before I go to my hotel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall come with you," said Jim.  "It will be a relief
+to walk for a little in the fresh air, after that room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Prefecture lay the better part of a mile away
+across the city.  Hanaud set off at a great pace, and reaching
+the building conducted Jim into an office with a safe
+set against the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you sit down for a moment?  And smoke,
+please," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was in a mood of such deep dejection; he was so
+changed from his mercurial self; that only now did Jim
+Frobisher understand the great store he had set upon his
+interview with Jean Cladel.  He unlocked the safe and
+brought over to the table a few envelopes of different
+sizes, the copy of the Treatise and his green file.  He
+seated himself in front of Jim and began to open his
+envelopes and range their contents in a row, when the
+door was opened and a gendarme saluted and advanced.
+He carried a paper in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A reply came over the telephone from Paris at nine
+o'clock to-night, Monsieur Hanaud.  They say that this
+may be the name of the firm you want.  It was established
+in the Rue de Batignolles, but it ceased to exist
+seven years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, that would have happened," Hanaud answered
+glumly, as he took the paper.  He read what was written
+upon it.  "Yes&mdash;yes.  That's it.  Not a doubt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took an envelope from a rack upon the table and
+put the paper inside it and stuck down the flap.  On the
+front of the envelope, Jim saw him write an illuminating
+word.  "Address."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he looked at Jim with smouldering eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is a fatality in all this," he cried.  "We become
+more and more certain that murder was committed and
+how it was committed.  We get a glimpse of possible
+reasons why.  But we are never an inch nearer to evidence&mdash;real
+convincing evidence&mdash;who committed it.  Fatality?
+I am a fool to use such words.  It's keen wits and
+audacity and nerve that stop us at the end of each lane and
+make an idiot of me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He struck a match viciously and lit a cigarette.  Frobisher
+made an effort to console him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but it's the keen wits and the audacity and the
+nerve of more than one person."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud glanced at Frobisher sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Explain, my friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have been thinking over it ever since we left the
+street of Gambetta.  I no longer doubt that
+Mrs. Harlowe was murdered in the Maison Crenelle.  It is
+impossible to doubt it.  But her murder was part of the
+activities of a gang.  Else how comes it that Jean Cladel was
+murdered too to-night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile drove for a moment the gloom from Hanaud's
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  You have been quite fifteen minutes in the
+bull-ring," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you agree with me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!"  But Hanaud's gloom had returned.  "But we
+can't lay our hands upon the gang.  We are losing time,
+and I am afraid that we have no time to lose."  Hanaud
+shivered like a man suddenly chilled.  "Yes, I am very
+troubled now.  I am very&mdash;frightened."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His fear peered out of him and entered into Frobisher.
+Frobisher did not understand it, he had no clue to what
+it was that Hanaud feared, but sitting in that brightly-lit
+office in the silent building, he was conscious of evil
+presences thronging about the pair of them, presences
+grotesque and malevolent such as some old craftsman of
+Dijon might have carved on the pillars of a cathedral
+He, too, shivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us see, now!" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the end of the arrow shaft from one envelope,
+and the barb from his pocket, and fitted them together.
+The iron barb was loose now because the hole to receive
+it at the top of the arrow shaft had been widened to take
+a nib.  But the spoke was just about the right length.  He
+laid the arrow down upon the table, and opened his green
+file.  A small square envelope, such as chemists use,
+attracted Jim's notice.  He took it up.  It seemed empty,
+but as he shook it out, a square tablet of some hard white
+substance rolled on to the table.  It was soiled with dust,
+and there was a smear of green upon it; and as Jim
+turned it over, he noticed a cut or crack in its surface, as
+though something sharp had struck it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What in the world has this to do with the affair?"
+he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked up from his file.  He reached out his
+hand swiftly to take the tablet away from Jim, and drew
+his hand in again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A good deal perhaps.  Perhaps nothing," he said
+gravely.  "But it is interesting&mdash;that tablet.  I shall know
+more about it to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim could not for the life of him remember any occasion
+which had brought this tablet into notice.  It certainly
+had not been discovered in Jean Cladel's house, for
+it was already there in the safe in the office.  Jim had
+noticed the little square envelope as Hanaud fetched it
+out of the safe.  The tablet looked as if it had been picked
+up from the road like Monsieur Bex's famous match-box.
+Or&mdash;yes, there was that smear of green&mdash;from the grass.
+Jim sat up straight in his chair.  They had all been
+together in the garden this morning.  Hanaud, himself,
+Betty and Ann Upcott.  But at that point Frobisher's
+conjectures halted.  Neither his memory nor deduction
+could connect that tablet with the half-hour the four of
+them had passed in the shade of the sycamores.  The only
+thing of which he was quite sure was the great importance
+which Hanaud attached to it.  For all the time that he
+handled and examined it Hanaud's eyes never left him,
+never once.  They followed each little movement of finger
+tip and thumb with an extraordinary alertness, and when
+Jim at last tilted it off his palm back into its little
+envelope, the detective undoubtedly drew a breath of relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher laughed good-humouredly.  He was
+getting to know his man.  He did not invite any "Aha's"
+and "Oho's" by vain questionings.  He leaned across the
+table and took up his own memorandum which Hanaud
+had just laid aside out of his file.  He laid it on the table
+in front of him and added two new questions to those
+which he had already written out.  Thus:
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+(5) What was the exact message telephoned from
+Paris to the Prefecture and hidden away in an
+envelope marked by Hanaud: "Address"?
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+(6) When and where and why was the white tablet
+picked up, and what, in the name of all the saints, does
+it mean?
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+With another laugh Frobisher tossed the memorandum
+back to Hanaud.  Hanaud, however, read them slowly
+and thoughtfully.  "I had hoped to answer all your questions
+to-night," he said dispiritedly.  "But you see!  We
+break down at every corner, and the question must wait."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was fitting methodically the memorandum back
+into the file when a look of extreme surprise came over
+Frobisher's face.  He pointed a finger at the file.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That telegram!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a telegram pinned to the three anonymous
+letters which Hanaud had in the file&mdash;the two which
+Hanaud had shown to Frobisher in Paris and the third
+which Betty Harlowe had given to him that very
+afternoon.  And the telegram was pieced together by two
+strips of stamp-paper in a cross.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's our telegram.  The telegram sent to my firm
+by Miss Harlowe on Monday&mdash;yes, by George, this last
+Monday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It quite took Jim's breath away, so crowded had his
+days been with fears and reliefs, excitements and doubts,
+discoveries and disappointments, to realise that this was
+only the Friday night; that at so recent a date as
+Wednesday he had never seen or spoken with Betty
+Harlowe.  "The telegram announcing to us in London
+that you were engaged upon the case."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded in assent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  You gave it to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you tore it up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did.  But I picked it out of the waste-paper basket
+afterwards and stuck it together."  Hanaud explained, in
+no wise disconcerted by Jim Frobisher's attack of
+perspicacity.  "I meant to make some trouble here with
+the Police for letting out the secret.  I am very glad now
+that I did pick it out.  You yourself must have realised
+its importance the very next morning before I even
+arrived at the Maison Crenelle, when you told
+Mademoiselle that you had shown it to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim cast his memory back.  He had a passion for
+precision and exactness which was very proper in one of
+his profession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was not until you came that I learnt Miss Harlowe
+had the news by an anonymous letter," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, that doesn't matter," Hanaud interposed a
+trifle quickly.  "The point of importance to me is that
+when the case is done with, and I have a little time to
+devote to these letters, the telegram may be of value."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I see," said Jim.  "I see that," he repeated, and
+he shifted uncomfortably in his chair; and opened his
+mouth and closed it again; and remained suspended
+between speech and silence, whilst Hanaud read through his
+file and contemplated his exhibits and found no hope in
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They lead me nowhere!" he cried violently; and Jim
+Frobisher made up his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud, you do not share your thoughts
+with me," he said rather formally, "but I will deal
+with you in a better way; apart from this crime in the
+Maison Crenelle, you have the mystery of these anonymous
+letters to solve.  I can help you to this extent.
+Another of them has been received."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To-night, whilst we sat at dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By whom?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud was out of his chair with a cry, towering up,
+his face white as the walls of the room, his eyes burning
+upon Frobisher.  Never could news have been so
+unexpected, so startling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are sure?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite.  It came by the evening post&mdash;with others.
+Gaston brought them into the dining-room.  There was
+one for me from my firm in London, a couple for Betty,
+and this one for Ann Upcott.  She opened it with a
+frown, as though she did not know from whom it came.
+I saw it as she unfolded it.  It was on the same common
+paper&mdash;typewritten in the same way&mdash;with no address
+at the head of it.  She gasped as she looked at it, and
+then she read it again.  And then with a smile she folded
+it and put it away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With a smile?" Hanaud insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  She was pleased.  The colour came into her
+face.  The distress went out of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She didn't show it to you, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor to Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she was pleased, eh?"  It seemed that to Hanaud
+this was the most extraordinary feature of the whole
+business.  "Did she say anything?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," answered Jim.  "She said 'He has been always
+right, hasn't he?'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She said that!  'He has been always right, hasn't
+he?'" Hanaud slowly resumed his seat, and sat like a
+man turned into stone.  He looked up in a little while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What happened then?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing until dinner was over.  Then she picked up
+her letter and beckoned with her head to Miss Betty, who
+said to me: 'We shall have to leave you to take your
+coffee alone.'  They went across the hall to Betty's room.
+The treasure-room.  I was a little nettled.  Ever since I
+have been in Dijon one person after another has pushed
+me into a corner with orders to keep quiet and not
+interfere.  So I came to find you at the Grande Taverne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At another moment Jim's eruption of injured vanity
+would have provoked Hanaud to one of his lamentable
+exhibitions, but now he did not notice it at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They went away to talk that letter over together,"
+said Hanaud.  "And that young lady was pleased, she
+who was so distressed this afternoon.  A way out, then!"  Hanaud
+was discussing his problem with himself, his eyes
+upon the table.  "For once the Scourge is kind?  I
+wonder!  It baffles me!"  He rose to his feet and walked once
+or twice across the room.  "Yes, I the old bull of a
+hundred corridas, I, Hanaud, am baffled!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not posturing now.  He was frankly and
+simply amazed that he could be so utterly at a loss.  Then,
+with a swift change of mood, he came back to the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Meanwhile, Monsieur, until I can explain this strange
+new incident to myself, I beg of you your help," he
+pleaded very earnestly and even very humbly.  Fear had
+returned to his eyes and his voice.  He was disturbed
+beyond Jim's comprehension.  "There is nothing more
+important.  I want you&mdash;how shall I put it so that I may
+persuade you?  I want you to stay as much as you can in
+the Maison Crenelle&mdash;to&mdash;yes&mdash;to keep a little watch on
+this pretty Ann Upcott, to&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got no further with his proposal.  Jim Frobisher
+interrupted him in a very passion of anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, I won't," he cried.  "You go much too far,
+Monsieur.  I won't be your spy.  I am not here for that.
+I am here for my client.  As for Ann Upcott, she is my
+countrywoman.  I will not help you against her.  So help
+me God, I won't!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked across the table at the flushed and angry
+face of his "junior colleague," who now resigned his
+office and, without parley, accepted his defeat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't blame you," he answered quietly.  "I could,
+indeed, hope for no other reply.  I must be quick, that's
+all.  I must be very quick!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher's anger fell away from him like a cloak one
+drops.  He saw Hanaud sitting over against him with a
+white, desperately troubled face and eyes in which there
+shone unmistakeably some gleam of terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me!" he cried in an exasperation.  "Be frank
+with me for once!  Is Ann Upcott guilty?  She's not
+alone, of course, anyway.  There's a gang.  We're agreed
+upon that.  Waberski's one of them, of course?  Is Ann
+Upcott another?  Do you believe it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud slowly put his exhibits together.  There was
+a struggle going on within him.  The strain of the night
+had told upon them both, and he was tempted for once to
+make a confidant, tempted intolerably.  On the other
+hand, Jim Frobisher read in him all the traditions of his
+service; to wait upon facts, not to utter suspicions; to be
+fair.  It was not until he had locked everything away
+again in the safe that Hanaud yielded to the temptation.
+And even then he could not bring himself to be direct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You want to know what I believe of Ann Upcott?"
+he cried reluctantly, as though the words were torn from
+him.  "Go to-morrow to the Church of Notre Dame and
+look at the façade.  There, since you are not blind, you
+will see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would say no more; that was clear.  Nay, he stood
+moodily before Frobisher, already regretting that he had
+said so much.  Frobisher picked up his hat and stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," he said.  "Good night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud let him go to the door.  Then he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are free to-morrow.  I shall not go to the Maison
+Crenelle.  Have you any plans?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I am to be taken for a motor-drive round the
+neighbourhood."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It is worth while," Hanaud answered listlessly.
+"But remember to telephone to me before you go.  I shall
+be here.  I will tell you if I have any news.  Good night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher left him standing in the middle of the
+room.  Before he had closed the door Hanaud had
+forgotten his presence.  For he was saying to himself over
+and over again, almost with an accent of despair: "I must
+be quick!  I must be very quick!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher walked briskly down to the Place Ernest
+Renan and the Rue de la Liberté, dwelling upon Hanaud's
+injunction to examine the façade of Notre Dame.  He
+must keep that in mind and obey it in the morning.  But
+that night was not yet over for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he reached the mouth of the little street of Charles-Robert
+he heard a light, quick step a little way behind
+him&mdash;a step that seemed familiar.  So when he turned
+into the street he sauntered and looked round.  He saw
+a tall man cross the entrance of the street very quickly
+and disappear between, the houses on the opposite side.
+The man paused for a second under the light of a street
+lamp at the angle of the street, and Jim could have sworn
+that it was Hanaud.  There were no hotels, no lodgings
+in this quarter of the city.  It was a quarter of private
+houses.  What was Hanaud seeking there?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speculating upon this new question, he forgot the
+façade of Notre Dame; and upon his arrival at the Maison
+Crenelle a little incident occurred which made the
+probability that he would soon remember it remote.  He let
+himself into the house with a latchkey which had been
+given to him, and turned on the light in the hall by means
+of a switch at the side of the door.  He crossed the hall
+to the foot of the stairs, and was about to turn off the
+light, using the switch there to which Ann Upcott had
+referred, when the door of the treasure-room opened.
+Betty appeared in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are still up?" he said in a low voice, half pleased
+to find her still afoot and half regretful that she was
+losing her hours of sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," and slowly her face softened to a smile.  "I
+waited up for my lodger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held the door open, and he followed her back into
+the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me look at you," she said, and having looked, she
+added: "Jim, something has happened to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let it wait till to-morrow, Betty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty smiled no longer.  The light died out of her
+dark, haunting eyes.  Lassitude and distress veiled them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something terrible, then?" she said in a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," and she stretched out a hand to the back of a
+chair and steadied herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please tell me, now, Jim!  I shall not sleep to-night
+unless you do; and oh, I am so tired!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was so deep a longing in her voice, so utter a
+weariness in the pose of her young body that Jim could
+not but yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll tell you, Betty," he said gently.  "Hanaud and
+I went to find Jean Cladel to-night.  We found him dead.
+He had been murdered&mdash;cruelly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty moaned and swayed upon her feet.  She would
+have fallen had not Jim caught her in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty buried her face upon his shoulder.  He could
+feel the heave of her bosom against his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's appalling!" she moaned.  "Jean Cladel! ... No
+one ever had heard of him till this morning ... and
+now he's swept into this horror&mdash;like the rest of us!  Oh,
+where will it end?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim placed her in a chair and dropped on his knees
+beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was sobbing now, and he tried to lift her face up
+to his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear!" he whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she would not raise her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said in a stifled voice, "no," and she pressed
+her face deeper into the crook of his shoulder and clung
+to him with desperate hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" he repeated, "I am so sorry....  But it'll
+all come right.  I'm sure it will.  Oh, Betty!"  And
+whilst he spoke he cursed himself for the banality of his
+words.  Why couldn't he find some ideas that were really
+fine with which to comfort her?  Something better than
+these stupid commonplaces of "I am sorry" and "It will
+all straighten out"?  But he couldn't, and it seemed that
+there was no necessity that he should.  For her arms crept
+round his neck and held him close.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap19"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER NINETEEN: <i>A Plan Frustrated</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The road curled like a paper ribbon round the
+shoulder of a hill and dropped into a shallow valley.
+To the left a little below the level of the road, a stream
+ran swiftly through a narrow meadow of lush green grass.
+Beyond the meadow the wall of the valley rose rough with
+outcroppings of rock, and with every tuft of its herbage
+already brown from the sun.  On the right the northern
+wall rose almost from the road's edge.  The valley was
+long and curved slowly, and half-way along to the point
+where it disappeared a secondary road, the sort of road
+which is indicated in the motorist's hand-books by a dotted
+line, branched off to the left, crossed the stream by a
+stone bridge and vanished in a cleft of the southern wall.
+Beyond this branching road grew trees.  The stream
+disappeared under them as though it ran into a cavern; the
+slopes on either side were hidden behind trees&mdash;trees so
+thick that here at this end the valley looked bare in the
+strong sunlight, but low trees, as if they had determined
+to harmonise with their environment.  Indeed, the whole
+valley had a sort of doll's-house effect&mdash;it was so shallow
+and narrow and stunted.  It tried to be a valley and
+succeeded in being a depression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the little two-seater car swooped round the
+shoulder of the hill and descended, the white ribbon of
+road was empty but for one tiny speck at the far end,
+behind which a stream of dust spurted and spread like
+smoke from the funnel of an engine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That motor dust is going to smother us when we
+pass," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall do as much for him," said Betty, looking
+over her shoulder from the steering wheel.  "No, worse!"  Behind
+the car the dust was a screen.  "But I don't mind,
+do you, Jim?" she asked with a laugh, in which for the
+first time, with a heart of thankfulness, Jim heard a note
+of gaiety.  "To be free of that town if only for an hour!
+Oh!" and Betty opened her lungs to the sunlight and the
+air.  "This is my first hour of liberty for a week!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher was glad, too, to be out upon the slopes of
+the Côte-d'Or.  The city of Dijon was ringing that
+morning with the murder of Jean Cladel; you could not
+pass down a street but you heard his name mentioned
+and some sarcasms about the police.  He wished to forget
+that nightmare of a visit to the street of Gambetta
+and the dreadful twisted figure on the floor of the back
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll be leaving it for good very soon, Betty," he
+said significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty made a little grimace at him, and laid her hand
+upon his sleeve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim!" she said, and the colour rose into her face, and
+the car swerved across the road.  "You mustn't speak like
+that to the girl at the wheel," she said with a laugh as she
+switched the car back into its course, "or I shall run down
+the motor-cyclist and that young lady in the side-car."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The young lady," said Jim, "happens to be a port-manteau!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The motor-cyclist, indeed, was slowing down as he
+came nearer to the branching road, like a tourist
+unacquainted with the country, and when he actually reached
+it he stopped altogether and dismounted.  Betty brought
+her car to a standstill beside him, and glanced at the clock
+and the speedometer in front of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can I help you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man standing beside the motor-cycle was a young
+man, slim, dark, and of a pleasant countenance.  He took
+off his helmet and bowed politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madame, I am looking for Dijon," he said in a harsh
+accent which struck Frobisher as somehow familiar to
+his ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur, you can see the tip of it through that gap
+across the valley," Betty returned.  In the very centre of
+the cleft the point of the soaring spire of the cathedral
+stood up like a delicate lance.  "But I warn you that that
+way, though short, is not good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the gradually thinning cloud of dust which
+hung behind the car they heard the jug-jug of another
+motor-cycle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The road by which we have come is the better one,"
+she continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how far is it?" the young man asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty once more consulted her speedometer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Forty kilometres, and we have covered them in forty
+minutes, so that you can see the going is good.  We
+started at eleven punctually, and it is now twenty minutes
+to twelve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely we started before eleven?" Jim interposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but we stopped for a minute or two to tighten
+the strap of the tool-box on the edge of the town.  And
+we started from there at eleven."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The motor-cyclist consulted his wrist-watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it's twenty minutes to twelve now," he said.
+"But forty kilometres!  I doubt if I have the essence.  I
+think I must try the nearer road."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second motor-cycle came out of the dust like a
+boat out of a sea mist and slowed down in turn at the side
+of them.  The rider jumped out of his saddle, pushed his
+goggles up on to his forehead and joined in the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That little road, Monsieur.  It is not one of the
+national highways.  That shows itself at a glance.  But
+it is not so bad.  From the stone bridge one can be at
+the Hôtel de Ville of Dijon in twenty-five minutes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thank you," said the young man.  "You will pardon
+me.  I have been here for seven minutes, and I am
+expected."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replaced his helmet, mounted his machine, and with
+a splutter and half a dozen explosions ran down into the
+bed of the valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second cyclist readjusted his goggles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you go first, Madame?" he suggested.  "Otherwise
+I give you my dust."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you!" said Betty with a smile, and she slipped
+in the clutch and started.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond the little forest and the curve the ground rose
+and the valley flattened out.  Across their road a broad
+highway set with kilometre stones ran north and south.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The road to Paris," said Betty as she stopped the car
+in front of a little inn with a tangled garden at the angle.
+She looked along the road Pariswards.  "Air!" she said,
+and drew a breath of longing, whilst her eyes kindled
+and her white strong teeth clicked as though she was
+biting a sweet fruit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Soon, Betty," said Jim.  "Very soon!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty drove the car into a little yard at the side of
+the river.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We will lunch here, in the garden," she said, "all
+amongst the earwigs and the roses."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An omelet, a cutlet perfectly cooked and piping hot,
+with a salad and a bottle of Clos du Prince of the 1904
+vintage brought the glowing city of Paris immeasurably
+nearer to them.  They sat in the open under the shade of
+a tall hedge; they had the tangled garden to themselves;
+they laughed and made merry in the golden May, and
+visions of wonder trembled and opened before Jim
+Frobisher's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty swept them away, however, when he had lit a
+cigar and she a cigarette; and their coffee steamed from
+the little cups in front of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us be practical, Jim," she said.  "I want to talk
+to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sparkle of gaiety had left her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About Ann."  Her eyes swept round and rested on
+Jim's face.  "She ought to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Run away!" cried Jim with a start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, at once and as secretly as possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim turned the proposal over in his mind whilst Betty
+waited in suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It couldn't be managed," he objected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It could."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even if it could, would she consent?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She does."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it's pleading guilty," he said slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it isn't, Jim.  She wants time, that's all.  Time
+for my necklace to be traced, time for the murderer of
+Jean Cladel to be discovered.  You remember what I told
+you about Hanaud?  He must have his victim.  You
+wouldn't believe me, but it's true.  He has got to go back
+to Paris and say, 'You see, they sent from Dijon for me,
+and five minutes!  That's all I needed!  Five little minutes
+and there's your murderess, all tied up and safe!'  He
+tried to fix it on me first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He did, Jim.  And now that has failed he has turned
+on Ann.  She'll have to go.  Since he can't get me he'll
+take my friend&mdash;yes, and manufacture the evidence into
+the bargain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!  Hanaud wouldn't do that!" Frobisher protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Jim, he has done it," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When he put that Edinburgh man's book about the
+arrow poison back upon the bookshelf in the library."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was utterly taken back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you know that he had done that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I couldn't help knowing," she answered.  "The
+moment he took the book down it was clear to me.  He
+knew it from end to end, as if it was a primer.  He could
+put his finger on the plates, on the history of my uncle's
+arrow, on the effect of the poison, on the solution that
+could be made of it in an instant.  He pretended that he
+had learnt all that in the half-hour he waited for us.  It
+wasn't possible.  He had found that book the afternoon
+before somewhere and had taken it away with him secretly
+and sat up half the night over it.  That's what he had
+done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher was sunk in confusion.  He had been
+guessing first this person, then that, and in the end had
+had to be told the truth; whereas Betty had reached it in
+a flash by using her wits.  He felt that he had been just
+one minute and a half in the bull-ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty added in a hot scorn:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then when he had learnt it all up by heart he puts
+it back secretly in the bookshelf and accuses us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he admits he put it back," said Jim slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty was startled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When did he admit it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Last night.  To me," replied Jim, and Betty laughed
+bitterly.  She would hear no good of Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, now that he has something better to go upon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something better?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The disappearance of my necklace.  Oh, Jim, Ann
+has got to go.  If she could get to England they couldn't
+bring her back, could they?  They haven't evidence
+enough.  It's only suspicion and suspicion and suspicion.
+But here in France it's different, isn't it?  They can hold
+people on suspicion, keep them shut up by themselves and
+question them again and again.  Oh, yesterday afternoon
+in the hall&mdash;don't you remember, Jim?&mdash;I thought
+Hanaud was going to arrest her there and then."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought so, too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been a little shocked by Betty's proposal, but
+the more familiar he became with it, the more it appealed
+to him.  There was an overpowering argument in its
+favour of which neither he nor Hanaud had told Betty
+a word.  The shaft of the arrow had been discovered in
+Ann Upcott's room, and the dart in the house of Jean
+Cladel.  These were overpowering facts.  On the whole,
+it was better that Ann should go, now, whilst there was
+still time&mdash;if, that is, Hanaud did undoubtedly believe her
+to be guilty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it is evident that he does," cried Betty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim answered slowly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose he does.  We can make sure, anyway.  I
+had a doubt last night.  So I asked him point-blank."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And he answered you?" Betty asked with a gasp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes and no.  He gave me the strangest answer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did he say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He told me to visit the Church of Notre Dame.  If
+I did, I should read upon the façade whether Ann was
+innocent or not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly every tinge of colour ebbed out of Betty's face.
+Her eyes stared at him horror-stricken.  She sat, a figure
+of ice&mdash;except for her eyes which blazed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's terrible," she said with a low voice, and again
+"That's terrible!"  Then with a cry she stood erect
+"You shall see!  Come!" and she ran towards the motorcar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunlit day was spoilt for both of them.  Betty
+drove homewards, bending over the wheel, her eyes fixed
+ahead.  But Frobisher wondered whether she saw anything
+at all of that white road which the car devoured.
+Once as they dropped from the highland and the forests
+to the plains, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall abide by what we see?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If Hanaud thinks her innocent, she should stay.  If
+he thinks her guilty, she must go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty guided the car through the streets of the city,
+and into a wide square.  A great church of the Renaissance
+type, with octagonal cupolas upon its two towers
+and another little cupola surmounted by a loggia above
+its porch, confronted them.  Betty stopped the car and
+led Frobisher into the porch.  Above the door was a
+great bas-relief of the Last Judgment, God amongst the
+clouds, angels blowing trumpets, and the damned rising
+from their graves to undergo their torments.  Both Betty
+and Frobisher gazed at the representation for a while in
+silence.  To Frobisher it was a cruel and brutal piece of
+work which well matched Hanaud's revelation of his true
+belief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, the message is easy to read," he said: and they
+drove back in a melancholy silence to the Maison Crenelle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chauffeur, Georges, came forward from the garage
+to take charge of the car.  Betty ran inside the house
+and waited for Jim Frobisher to join her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so sorry," she said in a broken voice.  "I kept
+a hope somewhere that we were all mistaken ... I
+mean as to the danger Ann was in....  I don't believe
+for a moment in her guilt, of course.  But she must
+go&mdash;that's clear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went slowly up the stairs, and Jim saw no more of
+her until dinner was served long after its usual hour.
+Ann Upcott he had not seen at all that day, nor did he
+even see her then.  Betty came to him in the library a
+few minutes before nine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We are very late, I am afraid.  There are just the
+two of us, Jim," she said with a smile, and she led the
+way into the dining-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the meal she was anxious and preoccupied,
+nodding her assent to anything that he said, with her
+thoughts far away and answering him at random, or not
+answering him at all.  She was listening, Frobisher
+fancied, for some sound in the hall, an expected sound
+which was overdue.  For her eyes went continually to
+the clock, and a flurry and agitation, very strange in one
+naturally so still, became more and more evident in her
+manner.  At length, just before ten o'clock, they both
+heard the horn of a motor-car in the quiet street.  The
+car stopped, as it seemed to Frobisher, just outside the
+gates, and upon that there followed the sound for which
+Betty had so anxiously been listening&mdash;the closing of a
+heavy door by some one careful to close it quietly.  Betty
+shot a quick glance at Jim Frobisher and coloured when
+he intercepted it.  A few seconds afterwards the car
+moved on, and Betty drew a long breath.  Jim Frobisher
+leaned forward to Betty.  Though they were alone in the
+room, he spoke in a low voice of surprise:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Upcott has gone then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So soon?  You had everything already arranged
+then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was all arranged yesterday evening.  She should
+be in Paris to-morrow morning, England to-morrow
+night.  If only all goes well!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in the stress of her anxiety Betty had been
+sensitive to a tiny note of discontent in Jim Frobisher's
+questions.  He had been left out of the counsels of the two
+girls, their arrangements had been made without his
+participation, he had only been told of them at the last
+minute, just as if he was a babbler not to be trusted and an
+incompetent whose advice would only have been a waste
+of time.  Betty made her excuses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would have been better, of course, if we had got
+you to help us, Jim.  But Ann wouldn't have it.  She
+insisted that you had come out here on my account, and
+that you mustn't be dragged into such an affair as her
+flight and escape at all.  She made it a condition, so I had
+to give way.  But you can help me now tremendously."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was appeased.  Betty at all events had wanted
+him, was still alarmed lest their plan undertaken without
+his advice might miscarry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I help?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can go to that cinema and keep Monsieur Hanaud
+engaged.  It's important that he should know nothing
+about Ann's flight until late to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim laughed at the futility of Hanaud's devices to
+hide himself.  It was obviously all over the town that
+he spent his evenings in the Grande Taverne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I'll go," he returned.  "I'll go now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Hanaud was not that night in his accustomed
+place, and Jim sat there alone until half-past ten.  Then
+a man strolled out from one of the billiard-rooms, and
+standing behind Jim with his eyes upon the screen, said
+in a whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do not look at me, Monsieur!  It is Moreau.  I go
+outside.  Will you please to follow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He strolled away.  Jim gave him a couple of minutes'
+grace.  He had remembered Hanaud's advice and had
+paid for his Bock when it had been brought to him.  The
+little saucer was turned upside down to show that he
+owed nothing.  When two minutes had elapsed he
+sauntered out and, looking neither to the right nor to the
+left, strolled indolently along the Rue de la Gare.  When
+he reached the Place Darcy Nicolas Moreau passed him
+without a sign of recognition and struck off to the right
+along the Rue de la Liberté.  Frobisher followed him
+with a sinking heart.  It was folly of course to imagine
+that Hanaud could be so easily eluded.  No doubt that
+motor-car had been stopped.  No doubt Ann Upcott was
+already under lock and key!  Why, the last words he had
+heard Hanaud speak were "I must be quick!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau turned off into the Boulevard Sevigne and,
+doubling back to the station square, slipped into one of
+the small hotels which cluster in that quarter.  The lobby
+was empty; a staircase narrow and steep led from it to the
+upper stories.  Moreau now ascended it with Frobisher
+at his heels, and opened a door.  Frobisher looked into a
+small and dingy sitting-room at the back of the house.
+The windows were open, but the shutters were closed.  A
+single pendant in the centre of the room gave it light, and
+at a table under the pendant Hanaud sat poring over a map.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The map was marked with red ink in a curious way.
+A sort of hoop, very much the shape of a tennis racket
+without its handle, was described upon it and from the
+butt to the top of the hoop an irregular line was drawn,
+separating the hoop roughly into two semi-circles.
+Moreau left Jim Frobisher standing there, and in a
+moment or two Hanaud looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you know, my friend," he asked very gravely,
+"that Ann Upcott has gone to-night to Madame Le Vay's
+fancy dress ball?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher was taken completely by surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I see that you didn't," Hanaud went on.  He
+took up his pen and placed a red spot at the edge of the
+hoop close by the butt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim recovered from his surprise.  Madame Le Vay's
+ball was the spot from which the start was to be made.
+The plan after all was not so ill-devised, if only Ann could
+have got to the ball unnoticed.  Masked and in fancy
+dress, amongst a throng of people similarly accoutred, in
+a house with a garden, no doubt thrown open upon this
+hot night and lit only by lanterns discreetly dim&mdash;she had
+thus her best chance of escape.  But the chance was
+already lost.  For Hanaud laid down his pen again and
+said in ominous tones:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The water-lily, eh?  That pretty water-lily, my friend,
+will not dance very gaily to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap20"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY: <i>Map and the Necklace</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud turned his map round and pushed it
+across the table to Jim Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you make of that?" he asked, and Jim drew
+up a chair and sat down to examine it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made first of all a large scale map of Dijon and
+its environments, the town itself lying at the bottom of
+the red hoop and constituting the top of the handle of the
+tennis racket.  As to the red circle, it seemed to
+represent a tour which some one had made out from Dijon,
+round a good tract of outlying country and back again to
+the city.  But there was more to it than that.  The wavy
+dividing line, for instance, from the top of the circle to
+the handle, that is to Dijon; and on the left-hand edge of
+the hoop, as he bent over the map, and just outside Dijon,
+the red mark, a little red square which Hanaud had just
+made.  Against this square an hour was marked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Eleven a.m.," he read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed the red curve with his eyes and just where
+this dividing line touched the rim of the hoop, another
+period was inscribed.  Here Frobisher read:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Eleven forty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher looked up at Hanaud in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, and he bent again over
+the map.  The point where the dividing line branched off
+was in a valley, as he could see by the contours&mdash;yes&mdash;he
+had found the name now&mdash;the Val Terzon.  Just before
+eleven o'clock Betty had stopped the car just outside
+Dijon, opposite a park with a big house standing back, and
+had asked him to tighten the strap of the tool box.  They
+had started again exactly at eleven.  Betty had taken note
+of the exact time&mdash;and they had stopped where the
+secondary road branched off and doubled back to Dijon, at
+the top of the hoop, at the injunction of the rim and
+the dividing line, exactly at eleven forty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is a chart of the expedition we made to-day," he
+cried.  "We were followed then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remembered suddenly the second motor-cyclist who
+had come up from behind through the screen of their
+dust and had stopped by the side of their car to join in
+their conversation with the tourist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The motor-cyclist?" he asked, and again he got no
+answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the motor-cyclist had not followed them all the way
+round.  On their homeward course they had stopped to
+lunch in the tangled garden.  There had been no sign of
+the man.  Jim looked at the map again.  He followed the
+red line from the junction of the two roads, round the
+curve of the valley, to the angle where the great National
+road to Paris cut across and where they had lunched.
+After luncheon they had continued along the National
+road into Dijon, whereas the red line crossed it and came
+back by a longer and obviously a less frequented route.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't imagine why you had us followed this morning,
+Monsieur Hanaud," he exclaimed with some heat.
+"But I can tell you this.  The chase was not very
+efficiently contrived.  We didn't come home that way at
+all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't an idea how you came home," Hanaud
+answered imperturbably.  "The line on that side of the
+circle has nothing to do with you at all, as you can see
+for yourself by looking at the time marked where the
+line begins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The red hoop at the bottom was not complete; there
+was a space where the spliced handle of the racket would
+fit in, the space filled by the town of Dijon, and at the
+point on the right hand side where the line started
+Frobisher read in small but quite clear figures:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ten twenty-five a.m."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was more bewildered than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand one word of it," he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud reached over and touched the point with the
+tip of his pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is where the motor-cyclist started, the cyclist who
+met you at the branch road at eleven-forty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The tourist?" asked Jim.  A second ago it had seemed
+to him impossible that the fog could thicken about his
+wits any more.  And yet it had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us say the man with the portmanteau on his
+trailer," Hanaud corrected.  "You see that he left his
+starting point in Dijon thirty-five minutes before you
+left yours.  The whole manoeuvre seems to have been
+admirably planned.  For you met precisely at the
+arranged spot at eleven-forty.  Neither the car nor the
+cycle had to wait one moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Manoeuvre!  Arranged spot!" Frobisher exclaimed,
+looking about him in a sort of despair.  "Has every one
+gone crazy?  Why in the world should a man start out
+with a portmanteau in a side-car from Dijon at ten
+twenty-five, run thirty or forty miles into the country by
+a roundabout road and then return by a bad straight
+track?  There's no sense in it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt it's perplexing," Hanaud agreed.  He nodded
+to Moreau who went out of the room by a communicating
+door towards the front of the house.  "But I can
+help you," Hanaud continued.  "At the point where you
+started after tightening the strap of the tool-box, on the
+edge of the town, a big country house stands back in a
+park?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is the house of Madame Le Vay where this fancy
+dress ball takes place to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madame Le Vay's château!" Frobisher repeated.
+"Where&mdash;&mdash;" he began a question and caught it back.
+But Hanaud completed it for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, where Ann Upcott now is.  You started from
+it at precisely eleven in the morning."  He looked at his
+watch.  "It is not yet quite eleven at night.  So she is
+still there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher started back in his chair.  Hanaud's words
+were like the blade of silver light cutting through the
+darkness of the cinema hall and breaking into a sheet of
+radiance upon the screen.  The meaning of the red
+diagram upon Hanaud's map, the unsuspected motive of
+Betty's expedition this morning were revealed to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a rehearsal," he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A time-rehearsal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, the sort of thing which takes place in theatres,
+without the principal members of the company," thought
+Frobisher.  But a moment later he was dissatisfied with
+that explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait a moment!" he said.  "That won't do, I fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The motor-cyclist with the side-car had brought his
+arguments to a standstill.  His times were marked upon
+the map; they were therefore of importance.  What had
+he to do with Ann Upcott's escape?  But he visualised
+the motor-cyclist and his side-car and his connection with
+the affair became evident.  The big portmanteau gave
+Frobisher the clue.  Ann Upcott would be leaving
+Madame Le Vay's house in her ball-dress, just as if she
+was returning to the Maison Crenelle&mdash;and without any
+luggage at all.  She could not arrive in Paris in the
+morning like that if she were to avoid probably suspicion
+and certainly remark.  The motor-cyclist was to meet her
+in the Val Terzon, transfer her luggage rapidly to her
+car, and then return to Dijon by the straight quick road
+whilst Ann turned off at the end of the valley to Paris.
+He remembered now that seven minutes had elapsed
+between the meeting of the cycle and the motor-car and
+their separation.  Seven minutes then were allowed for
+the transference of the luggage.  Another argument
+flashed into his thoughts.  Betty had told him nothing of
+this plan.  It had been presented to him as a mere excursion
+on a summer day, her first hours of liberty naturally
+employed.  Her silence was all of a piece with the
+determination of Betty and Ann Upcott to keep him altogether
+out of the conspiracy.  Every detail fitted like the blocks
+in a picture puzzle.  Yes, there had been a time-rehearsal.
+And Hanaud knew all about it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the disturbing certainty which first
+overwhelmed Frobisher when he had got the better of his
+surprise at the scheme itself.  Hanaud knew! and Betty
+had so set her heart on Ann's escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let her go!" he pleaded earnestly.  "Let Ann Upcott
+get away to Paris and to England!" and Hanaud leaned
+back in his chair with a little gasp.  The queerest smile
+broke over his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I know," Frobisher exclaimed, hotly appealing.
+"You are of the Sûrété and I am a lawyer, an officer of
+the High Court in my country and I have no right to
+make such a petition.  But I do without a scruple.  You
+can't get a conviction against Ann Upcott.  You haven't
+a chance of it.  But you can throw such a net of suspicion
+about her that she'll never get out of it.  You can ruin
+her&mdash;yes&mdash;but that's all you can do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You speak very eagerly, my friend," Hanaud interposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim could not explain that it was Betty's anxiety to
+save her friend which inspired his plea.  He fell back
+upon the scandal which such a trial would cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There has been enough publicity already owing to
+Boris Waberski," he continued.  "Surely Miss Harlowe
+has had distress enough.  Why must she stand in the
+witness-box and give evidence against her friend in a
+trial which can have no result?  That's what I want you
+to realise, Monsieur Hanaud.  I have had some experience
+of criminal trials"&mdash;O shade of Mr. Haslitt!  Why
+was that punctilious man not there in the flesh to wipe
+out with an indignant word the slur upon the firm of
+Frobisher and Haslitt?&mdash;"And I assure you that no jury
+could convict upon such evidence.  Why, even the pearl
+necklace has not been traced&mdash;and it never will be.  You
+can take that from me, Monsieur Hanaud!  It never
+will be!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud opened a drawer in the table and took out one
+of those little cedar-wood boxes made to hold a hundred
+cigarettes, which the better class of manufacturers use
+in England for their wares.  He pushed this across the
+table towards Jim.  Something which was more substantial
+than cigarettes rattled inside of it.  Jim seized upon
+it in a panic.  He had not a doubt that Betty would far
+sooner lose her necklace altogether than that her friend
+Ann Upcott should be destroyed by it.  He opened the
+lid of the box.  It was filled with cotton-wool.  From
+the cotton-wool he took a string of pearls perfectly graded
+in size, and gleaming softly with a pink lustre which,
+even to his untutored eyes, was indescribably lovely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would have been more correct if I had found them
+in a matchbox," said Hanaud.  "But I shall point out to
+Monsieur Bex that after all matches and cigarettes are
+akin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim was still staring at the necklace in utter
+disappointment when Moreau knocked upon the other side of
+the communicating door.  Hanaud looked again at his
+watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is eleven o'clock.  We must go.  The car has
+started from the house of Madame Le Vay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose from his chair, buried the necklace again
+within the layers of cotton-wool, and locked it up once
+more in the drawer.  The room had faded away from
+Jim Frobisher's eyes.  He was looking at a big, brilliantly
+illuminated house, and a girl who slipped from a
+window and, wrapping a dark cloak about her glistening
+dress, ran down the dark avenue in her dancing slippers
+to where a car waited hidden under trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The car may not have started," Jim said with sudden
+hopefulness.  "There may have been an accident to it.
+The chauffeur may be late.  Oh, a hundred things may
+have happened!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously
+rehearsed?  No, my friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against
+the wall and placed it in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are going to leave that necklace just like that
+in a table drawer?" Jim asked.  "We ought to take it
+first to the Prefecture."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This room is not unwatched," replied Hanaud.  "It
+will be safe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at
+the branch road," he argued.  "It is past eleven, as you
+say&mdash;well past eleven.  And thirty-five minutes on a
+motor-cycle in the daytime means fifty minutes in a car
+at night, especially with a bad road to travel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We don't intend to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch
+road," Hanaud returned.  He folded up the map and
+put it aside upon the mantelshelf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I take a big risk, you know," he said softly.  "But I
+must take it!  And&mdash;no!  I can't be wrong!"  But he
+turned from the mantelshelf with a very anxious and
+troubled face.  Then, as he looked at Jim, a fresh idea
+came into his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By the way," he said.  "The façade of Notre Dame?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The bas-relief of The Last Judgment.  We went to
+see it.  We thought your way of saying what you
+believed a little brutal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud remained silent with his eyes upon the floor
+for a few seconds.  Then he said quietly: "I am
+sorry."  He tacked on a question.  "You say 'we'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle Harlowe and I," Jim explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes&mdash;to be sure.  I should have thought of that,"
+and once more his troubled cry broke from him.  "It
+must be that!&mdash;No, I can't be wrong....  Anyway, it's
+too late to change now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time Moreau rapped upon the communicating
+door.  Hanaud sprang to alertness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's it," he said.  "Take your hat and stick,
+Monsieur Frobisher!  Good!  You are ready?" and the room
+was at once plunged into darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud opened the communicating door, and they
+passed into the front room&mdash;a bedroom looking out upon
+the big station square.  This room was in darkness too.
+But the shutters were not closed, and there were patches
+of light upon the walls from the lamps in the square and
+the Grande Taverne at the corner.  The three men could
+see one another, and to Jim in this dusk the faces of his
+companions appeared of a ghastly pallor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daunay took his position when I first knocked," said
+Moreau.  "Patinot has just joined him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed across the square to the station buildings.
+Some cabs were waiting for the Paris train, and in front
+of them two men dressed like artisans were talking.  One
+of them lit a cigarette from the stump of a cigarette held
+out to him by his companion.  The watchers in the room
+saw the end of the cigarette glow red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The way is clear, Monsieur," said Moreau.  "We can
+go."  And he turned and went out of the inn to the
+staircase.  Jim started to follow him.  Whither they were
+going Jim had not a notion, not even a conjecture.  But
+he was gravely troubled.  All his hopes and Betty's hopes
+for the swift and complete suppression of the Waberski
+affair had seemingly fallen to the ground.  He was not
+reassured when Hanaud's hand was laid on his arm and
+detained him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You understand, Monsieur Frobisher," said Hanaud
+with a quiet authority, his eyes shining very steadily in
+the darkness, his face glimmering very white, "that now
+the Law of France takes charge.  There must not be a
+finger raised or a word spoken to hinder officers upon
+their duty.  On the other hand, I make you in return the
+promise you desire.  No one shall be arrested on
+suspicion.  Your own eyes shall bear me out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men followed Moreau down the stairs and into
+the street.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap21"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: <i>The Secret House</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was a dark, clear night, the air very still and warm,
+and the sky bright with innumerable stars.  The small
+company penetrated into the town by the backways and
+narrow alleys.  Daunay going on ahead, Patinot the last
+by some thirty yards, and Moreau keeping upon the
+opposite side of the street.  Once they had left behind them
+the lights of the station square, they walked amongst
+closed doors and the blind faces of unlit houses.
+Frobisher's heart raced within his bosom.  He strained his
+eyes and ears for some evidence of spies upon their heels.
+But no one was concealed in any porch, and not the
+stealthiest sound of a pursuit was borne to their hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On a night like this," he said in tones which, strive
+as he might to steady them, were still a little tremulous,
+"one could hear a footstep on the stones a quarter of a
+mile away, and we hear nothing.  Yet, if there is a gang,
+it can hardly be that we are unwatched."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud disagreed.  "This is a night for alibis," he
+returned, lowering his voice; "good, sound, incontestable
+alibis.  All but those engaged will be publicly with their
+friends, and those engaged do not know how near we are
+to their secrets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They turned into a narrow street and kept on its
+left-hand side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know where we are?" Hanaud asked.  "No?
+Yet we are near to the Maison Crenelle.  On the other
+side of these houses to our left runs the street of
+Charles-Robert."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher stopped dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was here, then, that you came last night after I
+left you at the Prefecture," he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, you recognised me, then!" Hanaud returned
+imperturbably.  "I wondered whether you did when you
+turned at the gates of your house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the opposite side of the street the houses were
+broken by a high wall, in which two great wooden doors
+were set.  Behind the wall, at the end of a courtyard, the
+upper storey and the roof of a considerable house rose
+in a steep ridge against the stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud pointed towards it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look at that house, Monsieur!  There Madame
+Raviart came to live whilst she waited to be set free.  It
+belongs to the Maison Crenelle.  After she married Simon
+Harlowe, they would never let it, they kept it just as it
+was, the shrine of their passion&mdash;that strange romantic
+couple.  But there was more romance in that, to be sure.
+It has been unoccupied ever since."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher felt a chill close about his heart.  Was
+that house the goal to which Hanaud was leading him
+with so confident a step?  He looked at the gates and
+the house.  Even in the night it had a look of long neglect
+and decay, the paint peeling from the doors and not a
+light in any window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some one in the street, however, was awake, for just
+above their heads, a window was raised with the utmost
+caution and a whisper floated down to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one has appeared."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud took no open notice of the whisper.  He did
+not pause in his walk, but he said to Frobisher:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And, as you hear, it is still unoccupied."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the street Daunay melted away
+altogether.  Hanaud and Frobisher crossed the road and,
+with Moreau just ahead, turned down a passage between,
+the houses to the right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond the passage they turned again to the right into
+a narrow lane between high walls; and when they had
+covered thirty yards or so, Frobisher saw the branches of
+leafy trees over the wall upon his right.  It was so dark
+here under the shade of the boughs that Frobisher could
+not even see his companions; and he knocked against
+Moreau before he understood that they had come to the
+end of their journey.  They were behind the garden of
+the house in which Madame Raviart had lived and loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's hand tightened upon Jim Frobisher's arm,
+constraining him to absolute immobility.  Patinot had
+vanished as completely and noiselessly as Daunay.  The
+three men left stood in the darkness and listened.  A
+sentence which Ann Upcott had spoken in the garden of the
+Maison Crenelle, when she had been describing the terror
+with which she had felt the face bending over her in
+the darkness, came back to him.  He had thought it false
+then.  He took back his criticism now.  For he too
+imagined that the beating of his heart must wake all
+Dijon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood there motionless for the space of a minute,
+and then, at a touch from Hanaud, Nicolas Moreau
+stooped.  Frobisher heard the palm of his hand sliding
+over wood and immediately after the tiniest little click as
+a key was fitted into a lock and turned.  A door in the
+wall swung silently open and let a glimmer of light into
+the lane.  The three men passed into a garden of weeds
+and rank grass and overgrown bushes.  Moreau closed
+and locked the door behind them.  As he locked the door
+the clocks of the city struck the half hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud whispered in Frobisher's ear:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They have not yet reached the Val Terzon.  Come!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They crept over the mat of grass and weeds to the
+back of the house.  A short flight of stone steps, patched
+with mould, descended from a terrace; at the back of the
+terrace were shuttered windows.  But in the corner of
+the house, on a level with the garden, there was a door.
+Once more Moreau stooped, and once more a door swung
+inwards without a sound.  But whereas the garden door
+had let through some gleam of twilight, this door opened
+upon the blackness of the pit.  Jim Frobisher shrank
+back from it, not in physical fear but in an appalling dread
+that some other man than he, wearing his clothes and his
+flesh, would come out of that door again.  His heart
+came to a standstill, and then Hanaud pushed him gently
+into the passage.  The door was closed behind them, an
+almost inaudible sound told him that now the door was
+locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Listen!" Hanaud whispered sharply.  His trained ear
+had caught a sound in the house above them.  And in a
+second Frobisher heard it too, a sound regular and
+continuous and very slight, but in that uninhabited house
+filled with uttermost blackness, very daunting.
+Gradually the explanation dawned upon Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a clock ticking," he said under his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!  A clock ticking away in the empty house!"
+returned Hanaud.  And though his answer was rather
+breathed than whispered, there was a queer thrill in it
+the sound of which Jim could not mistake.  The hunter
+had picked up his spoor.  Just beyond the quarry would
+come in view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly a thread of light gleamed along the passage,
+lit up a short flight of stairs and a door on the right at the
+head of them, and went out again.  Hanaud slipped his
+electric torch back into his pocket and, passing Moreau,
+took the lead.  The door at the head of the stairs opened
+with a startling whine of its hinges.  Frobisher stopped
+with his heart in his throat, though what he feared he
+could not have told even himself.  Again the thread of
+light shone, and this time it explored.  The three found
+themselves in a stone-flagged hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud crossed it, extinguished his torch and opened
+a door.  A broken shutter, swinging upon a hinge, enabled
+them dimly to see a gallery which stretched away into the
+gloom.  The faint light penetrating from the window
+showed them a high double door leading to some room
+at the back of the house.  Hanaud stole over the boards
+and laid his ear to the panel.  In a little while he was
+satisfied; his hand dropped to the knob and a leaf of the
+door opened noiselessly.  Once more the torch glowed.
+Its beam played upon the high ceiling, the tall windows
+shrouded in heavy curtains of red silk brocade, and
+revealed to Frobisher's amazement a room which had a
+look of daily use.  All was orderly and clean, the furniture
+polished and in good repair; there were fresh flowers
+in the vases, whose perfume filled the air; and it was
+upon the marble chimney-piece of this room that the clock
+ticked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was furnished with lightness and elegance,
+except for one fine and massive press, with double doors
+in marquetry, which occupied a recess near to the
+fireplace.  Girandoles with mirrors and gilt frames, now
+fitted with electric lights, were fixed upon the walls, with
+a few pictures in water-colour.  A chandelier glittering
+with lustres hung from the ceiling, an Empire writing-table
+stood near the window, a deep-cushioned divan
+stretched along the wall opposite the fire-place.  So much
+had Frobisher noticed when the light again went out.
+Hanaud closed the door upon the room again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall be hidden in the embrasure of any of these
+windows," Hanaud whispered, when they were once more
+in the long gallery.  "No light will be shown here with
+that shutter hanging loose, we may be sure.  Meanwhile
+let us watch and be very silent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They took their stations in the deep shadows by the
+side of the window with the broken shutter.  They could
+see dimly the courtyard and the great carriage doors in
+the wall at the end of it, and they waited; Jim Frobisher
+under such a strain of dread and expectancy that each
+second seemed an hour, and he wondered at the immobility
+of his companions.  The only sound of breathing
+that he heard came from his own lungs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a while Hanaud laid a hand upon his sleeve, and the
+clasp of the hand tightened and tightened.  Motionless
+though he stood like a man in a seizure, Hanaud too was
+in the grip of an intense excitement.  For one of the
+great leaves of the courtyard door was opening silently.
+It opened just a little way and as silently closed again.
+But some one had slipped in&mdash;so vague and swift and
+noiseless a figure that Jim would have believed his
+imagination had misled him but for a thicker blot of darkness
+at the centre of the great door.  There some one stood
+now who had not stood there a minute before, as silent
+and still as any of the watchers in the gallery, and more
+still than one.  For Hanaud moved suddenly away on
+the tips of his toes into the deepest of the gloom and,
+sinking down upon his heels, drew his watch from his
+pocket.  He drew his coat closely about it and for a
+fraction of a second flashed his torchlight on the dial.  It was
+now five minutes past twelve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is the time," he breathed as he crept back to his
+place.  "Listen now!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A minute passed and another.  Frobisher found himself
+shivering as a man shivers at a photographer's when
+he is told by the operator to keep still.  He had a notion
+that he was going to fall.  Then a distant noise caught his
+ear, and at once his nerves grew steady.  It was the throb
+of a motor-cycle, and it grew louder and louder.  He felt
+Hanaud stiffen at his side.  Hanaud had been right,
+then!  The conviction deepened in his mind.  When all
+had been darkness and confusion to him, Hanaud from
+the first had seen clearly.  But what had he seen?
+Frobisher was still unable to answer that question, and whilst
+he fumbled amongst conjectures a vast relief swept over
+him.  For the noise of the cycle had ceased altogether.
+It had roared through some contiguous street and gone
+upon its way into the open country.  Not the faintest
+pulsation of its engine was any longer audible.  That
+late-faring traveller had taken Dijon in his stride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a revulsion of relief he pictured him devouring the
+road, the glow of his lamp putting the stars to shame, the
+miles leaping away behind him; and suddenly the pleasant
+picture was struck from before his vision and his heart
+fluttered up into his throat.  For the leaf of the great
+coach-door was swung wider, and closed again, and the
+motor-cycle with its side-car was within the courtyard.
+The rider had slipped out his clutch and stopped his engine
+more than a hundred yards away in the other street.  His
+own impetus had been enough and more than enough to
+swing him round the corner along the road and into the
+courtyard.  The man who had closed the door moved to
+his side as he dismounted.  Between them they lifted
+something from the side-car and laid it on the ground.
+The watchman held open the door again, the cyclist
+wheeled out his machine, the door was closed, a key
+turned in the lock.  Not a word had been spoken, not an
+unnecessary movement made.  It had all happened within
+the space of a few seconds.  The man waited by the gate,
+and in a little while from some other street the cyclist's
+engine was heard once more to throb.  His work was
+done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher wondered that Hanaud should let him
+go.  But Hanaud had eyes for no one but the man who
+was left behind and the big package upon the ground
+under the blank side wall.  The man moved to it, stooped,
+raised it with an appearance of effort, then stood upright
+holding it in his arms.  It was something shapeless and
+long and heavy.  So much the watchers in the gallery
+could see, but no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man in the courtyard moved towards the door
+without a sound; and Hanaud drew his companions back
+from the window of the broken shutter.  Quick as they
+were, they were only just in time to escape from that
+revealing twilight.  Already the intruder with his burden
+stood within the gallery.  The front door was unlatched,
+that was clear.  It had needed but a touch to open it.
+The intruder moved without a sound to the double door,
+of which Hanaud had opened one leaf.  He stood in front
+of it, pushed it with his foot and both the leaves swung
+inwards.  He disappeared into the room.  But the faint
+misty light had fallen upon him for a second, and though
+none could imagine who he was, they all three saw that
+what he carried was a heavy sack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, at all events, Hanaud would move, thought
+Frobisher.  But he did not.  They all heard the man now,
+but not his footsteps.  It was just the brushing of his
+clothes against furniture: then came a soft, almost
+inaudible sound, as though he had laid his burden down
+upon the deep-cushioned couch: then he himself
+reappeared in the doorway, his arms empty, his hat pressed
+down upon his forehead, and a dim whiteness where his
+face should be.  But dark as it was, they saw the glitter
+of his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will be now," Frobisher said to himself, expecting
+that Hanaud would leap from the gloom and bear the
+intruder to the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this man, too, Hanaud let go.  He closed the doors
+again, drawing the two leaves together, and stole from
+the gallery.  No one heard the outer door close, but
+with a startling loudness some metal thing rang upon
+stone, and within the house.  Even Jim Frobisher
+understood that the outer door had been locked and the key
+dropped through the letter slot.  The three men crept
+back to their window.  They saw the intruder cross the
+courtyard, open one leaf of the coach door, peer this way
+and that and go.  Again a key tinkled upon stones.  The
+key of the great door had been pushed or kicked
+underneath it back into the courtyard.  The clocks suddenly
+chimed the quarter.  To Frobisher's amazement it was
+a quarter-past twelve.  Between the moment when the
+cyclist rode his car in at the doors and now, just five
+minutes had elapsed.  And again, but for the three men,
+the house was empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or was it empty?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Hanaud had slipped across to the door of the room
+and opened it; and a slight sound broke out of that black
+room, as of some living thing which moved uneasily.
+At Jim Frobisher's elbow Hanaud breathed a sigh of
+relief.  Something, it seemed, had happened for which
+he had hardly dared to hope; some great dread he knew
+with certainty had not been fulfilled.  On the heels of that
+sigh a sharp loud click rang out, the release of a spring,
+the withdrawal of a bolt.  Hanaud drew the door swiftly
+to and the three men fell back.  Some one had somehow
+entered that room, some one was moving quietly about it.
+From the corner of the corridor in which they had taken
+refuge, the three men saw the leaves of the door swing
+very slowly in upon their hinges.  Some one appeared
+upon the threshold, and stood motionless, listening, and
+after a few seconds advanced across the gallery to the
+window.  It was a girl&mdash;so much they could determine
+from the contour of her head and the slim neck.  To the
+surprise of those three a second shadow flitted to her
+side.  Both of them peered from the window into the
+courtyard.  There was nothing to tell them there whether
+the midnight visitors had come and gone or not yet come
+at all.  One of them whispered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The key!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the other, the shorter one, crept into the hall and
+returned with the key which had been dropped through
+the letter slot in her hand.  The taller of the two laughed,
+and the sound of it, so clear, so joyous like the trill of a
+bird, it was impossible for Jim Frobisher even for a
+second to mistake.  The second girl standing at the window
+of this dark and secret house, with the key in her hand to
+tell her that all that had been plotted had been done, was
+Betty Harlowe.  Jim Frobisher had never imagined a
+sound so sinister, so alarming, as that clear, joyous
+laughter lilting through the silent gallery.  It startled
+him, it set his whole faith in the world shuddering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There must be some good explanation," he argued,
+but his heart was sinking amidst terrors.  Of what
+dreadful event was that laughter to be the prelude?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two figures at the window flitted back across the
+gallery.  It seemed that there was no further reason for
+precautions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shut the door, Francine," said Betty in her ordinary
+voice.  And when this was done, within the room the
+lights went on.  But time and disuse had warped the
+doors.  They did not quite close, and between them a
+golden strip of light showed like a wand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us see now!" cried Betty.  "Let us see," and
+again she laughed; and under the cover of her laughter
+the three men crept forward and looked in: Moreau upon
+his knees, Frobisher stooping above him, Hanaud at his
+full height behind them all.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap22"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: <i>The Corona Machine</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The detective's hand fell softly upon Frobisher's
+shoulder warning him to silence; and this warning
+was needed.  The lustres of the big glass chandelier were
+so many flashing jewels; the mirrors of the girandoles
+multiplied their candle-lamps; the small gay room was
+ablaze; and in the glare Betty stood and laughed.  Her
+white shoulders rose from a slim evening frock of black
+velvet; from her carefully dressed copper hair to her
+black satin shoes she was as trim as if she had just been
+unpacked from a bandbox; and she was laughing
+whole-heartedly at a closed sack on the divan, a sack which
+jerked and flapped grotesquely like a fish on a beach.
+Some one was imprisoned within that sack.  Jim Frobisher
+could not doubt who that some one was, and it
+seemed to him that no sound more soulless and cruel had
+ever been heard in the world than Betty's merriment.  She
+threw her head back: Jim could see her slender white
+throat working, her shoulders flashing and shaking.  She
+clapped her hands with a horrible glee.  Something died
+within Frobisher's breast as he heard it.  Was it in his
+heart, he wondered?  It was, however, to be the last
+time that Betty Harlowe laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can get her out, Francine," she said, and whilst
+Francine with a pair of scissors cut the end of the sack
+loose, she sat down with her back to it at the writing-table
+and unlocked a drawer.  The sack was cut away and
+thrown upon the floor, and now on the divan Ann Upcott
+lay in her gleaming dancing-dress, her hands bound
+behind her back, and her ankles tied cruelly together.  Her
+hair was dishevelled, her face flushed, and she had the
+look of one quite dazed.  She drew in deep breaths of
+air, with her bosom labouring.  But she was unaware
+for the moment of her predicament or surroundings, and
+her eyes rested upon Francine and travelled from her to
+Betty's back without a gleam of recognition.  She
+wrenched a little at her wrists, but even that movement
+was instinctive; and then she closed her eyes and lay
+still, so still that but for her breathing the watchers at
+the door would hardly have believed that she still lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty, meanwhile, lifted from the open drawer, first a
+small bottle half-filled with a pale yellow liquid, and next
+a small case of morocco leather.  From the case she took
+a hypodermic syringe and its needle, and screwed the
+two parts together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she ready?" Betty asked as she removed the stopper
+from the bottle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite, Mademoiselle," answered Francine.  She began
+with a giggle, but she looked at the prisoner as she spoke
+and she ended with a startled gasp.  For Ann was looking
+straight at her with the strangest, disconcerting stare.
+It was impossible to say whether she knew Francine or
+knowing her would not admit her knowledge.  But her
+gaze never faltered, it was actually terrifying by its fixity,
+and in a sharp, hysterical voice Francine suddenly cried
+out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Turn your eyes away from me, will you?" and she
+added with a shiver: "It's horrible, Mademoiselle!  It's
+like a dead person watching you as you move about the
+room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty turned curiously towards the divan and Ann's
+eyes wandered off to her.  It seemed as though it needed
+just that interchange of glances to awaken her.  For as
+Betty resumed her work of filling the hypodermic syringe
+from the bottle, a look of perplexity crept into Ann
+Upcott's face.  She tried to sit up, and finding that she
+could not, tore at the cords which bound her wrists.  Her
+feet kicked upon the divan.  A moan of pain broke from
+her lips, and with that consciousness returned to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" she whispered, and Betty turned with the
+needle ready in her hand.  She did not speak, but her
+face spoke for her.  Her upper lip was drawn back a
+little from her teeth, and there was a look in her great
+eyes which appalled Jim Frobisher outside the door.
+Once before he had seen just that look&mdash;when Betty
+was lying on Mrs. Harlowe's bed for Hanaud's experiment
+and he had lingered in the treasure-room with Ann
+Upcott.  It had been inscrutable to him then, but it was
+as plain as print now.  It meant murder.  And so Ann
+Upcott understood it.  Helpless as she was, she shrank
+back upon the divan; in a panic she spoke with faltering
+lips and her eyes fixed upon Betty with a dreadful
+fascination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!  You had me taken and brought here!  You
+sent me to Madame Le Vay's&mdash;on purpose.  Oh!  The
+letter, then!  The anonymous letter!"&mdash;and a new light
+broke in upon Ann's mind, a new terror shook her.  "You
+wrote it!  Betty, you!  You&mdash;the Scourge!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sank back and again struggled vainly with her
+bonds.  Betty rose from her chair and crossed the room
+towards her, the needle shining bright in her hand.  Her
+hapless prisoner saw it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's that?" she cried, and she screamed aloud.
+The extremity of her horror lent to her an unnatural
+strength.  Somehow she dragged herself up and got her
+feet to the ground.  Somehow she stood upright, swaying
+as she stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are going to&mdash;&mdash;" she began, and broke off.
+"Oh, no!  You couldn't!  You couldn't!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty put out a hand and laid it on Ann's shoulder
+and held her so for a moment, savouring her vengeance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whose face was it bending so close down over yours
+in the darkness?" she asked in a soft and dreadful voice.
+"Whose face, Ann?  Guess!"  She shook her swaying
+prisoner with a gentleness as dreadful as her quiet voice.
+"You talk too much.  Your tongue's dangerous, Ann.
+You are too curious, Ann!  What were you doing in the
+treasure-room yesterday evening with your watch in your
+hand?  Eh?  Can't you answer, you pretty fool?"  Then
+Betty's voice changed.  It remained low and quiet, but
+hatred crept into it, a deep, whole-hearted hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have been interfering with me too, haven't you,
+Ann?  Oh, we both understand very well!"  And
+Hanaud's hand tightened upon Frobisher's shoulder.
+Here was the real key and explanation of Betty's hatred.
+Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more,
+might at any moment light upon the whole truth.  Yes!
+Ann Upcott's disappearance would look like a panic-stricken
+flight, would have the effect of a confession&mdash;no
+doubt!  But above all these considerations, paramount
+in Betty Harlowe's mind was the resolve at once to punish
+and rid herself of a rival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my
+way!" she said.  "And here's your reward for it, Ann.
+Yes.  I had you bound hand and foot and brought here.
+The water-lily!"  She looked her victim over as she stood
+in her delicate bright frock, her white silk stockings and
+satin slippers, swaying in terror.  "Fifteen minutes, Ann!
+That fool of a detective was right!  Fifteen minutes!
+That's all the time the arrow-poison takes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann's eyes opened wide.  The blood rushed into her
+white face and ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Arrow-poison!" she cried.  "Betty!  It was you, then!
+Oh!" she would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe
+pushed her shoulder gently and she fell back upon the
+divan.  That Betty had been guilty of that last
+infamy&mdash;the murder of her benefactress&mdash;not until this
+moment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected.  It was
+clear to her, too, that there was not the slightest hope
+for her.  She burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and
+watched her closely and curiously with a devilish enjoyment.
+The sound of the girl's sobbing was music in her
+ears.  She would not let it flag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and
+alone," she said in a low voice, bending over her,
+"To-morrow Espinosa will put you under one of the stone flags
+in the kitchen.  But to-night you shall lie just as you
+are.  Come!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her
+arm with one hand and advancing the needle with the
+other; and a piercing scream burst from Francine Rollard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!" she cried, and she pointed to the door.  It
+was open and Hanaud stood upon the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from
+her face.  She sat like an image of wax, staring at the
+open doorway, and a moment afterwards with a gesture
+swift as lightning she drove the needle into the flesh of
+her own arm and emptied it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to
+prevent her, but Hanaud roughly thrust him back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere," he said
+with a savage note in his voice, which Jim had not heard
+before; and Betty Harlowe dropped the needle on to the
+couch, whence it rolled to the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sprang up now to her full height, her heels
+together, her arms outstretched from her sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud," she cried with
+bravado.  "I am safe from you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptuously
+in her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn't kill."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!" she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We shall see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The confidence of his tone convinced her.  She flashed
+across the room to her writing-table.  Swift as she was,
+Hanaud met her there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, no!" he cried.  "That's quite a different thing!"  He
+seized her wrists.  "Moreau!" he called, with a nod
+towards Francine.  "And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will
+you release that young lady, if you please!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and
+locked her safely away.  Jim seized upon the big scissors
+and cut the cords about Ann's wrists and ankles, and
+unwound them.  He was aware that Hanaud had flung the
+chair from the writing-table into an open space, that
+Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had
+forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords
+which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor.  When he
+had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with
+her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the
+legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his
+handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled.  Betty had
+bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning
+I met you," Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you
+didn't wear a wrist-watch, because you hated things on
+your wrists.  My apologies!  I had forgotten!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand
+into the drawer.  He drew out a small cardboard box
+and removed the lid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Five!" he said.  "Yes!  Five!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who
+was standing against the wall with a face like death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were five white tablets in the box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We know where the sixth is.  Or, rather, we know
+where it was.  For I had it analysed to-day.  Cyanide
+of potassium, my friend!  Crunch one of them between
+your teeth and&mdash;fifteen minutes?  Not a bit of it!  A
+fraction of a second!  That's all!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher leaned forward and whispered in Hanaud's
+ear.  "Leave them within her reach!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His first instinctive thought had been to hinder Betty
+from destroying herself.  Now he prayed that she might,
+and with so desperate a longing that a deep pity softened
+Hanaud's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must not, Monsieur," he said gently.  He turned to
+Moreau.  "There is a cab waiting at the corner of the
+Maison Crenelle," and Moreau went in search of it.
+Hanaud went over to Ann Upcott, who was sitting upon
+the divan her head bowed, her body shivering.  Every
+now and then she handled and eased one of her tortured
+wrists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle," he said, standing in front of her, "I
+owe you an explanation and an apology.  I never from
+the beginning&mdash;no, not for one moment&mdash;believed that
+you were guilty of the murder of Madame Harlowe.  I
+was sure that you had never touched the necklace of pink
+pearls&mdash;oh, at once I was sure, long before I found it.
+I believed every word of the story you told us in the
+garden.  But none of this dared I shew you.  For only
+by pretending that I was convinced of your guilt, could I
+protect you during this last week in the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied with a wan effort
+at a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, for to-night, I owe you an apology," he
+continued.  "I make it with shame.  That you were to be
+brought back here to the tender mercies of Mademoiselle
+Betty, I hadn't a doubt.  And I was here to make sure
+you should be spared them.  But I have never in my life
+had a more difficult case to deal with, so clear a conviction
+in my own mind, so little proof to put before a court.  I
+had to have the evidence which I was certain to find in
+this room to-night.  But I ask you to believe me that if
+I had imagined for a moment the cruelty with which
+you were to be handled, I should have sacrificed this
+evidence.  I beg you to forgive me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott held out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Hanaud," she replied simply, "but for you
+I should not be now alive.  I should be lying here in the
+dark and alone, as it was promised to me, waiting for
+Espinosa&mdash;and his spade."  Her voice broke and she
+shuddered violently so that the divan shook on which she
+sat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must forget these miseries," he said gently.
+"You have youth, as I told you once before.  A little
+time and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The return of Nicolas Moreau interrupted him; and
+with Moreau came a couple of gendarmes and Girardot
+the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have Francine Rollard?" Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can hear her," Moreau returned dryly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the corridor a commotion arose, the scuffling of
+feet and a woman's voice screaming abuse.  It died
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle here will not give you so much trouble,"
+said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty was sitting huddled in her chair, her face averted
+and sullen, her lips muttering inaudible words.  She had
+not once looked at Jim Frobisher since he had entered
+the room; nor did she now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau stooped and untied her ankles and a big gendarme
+raised her up.  But her knees failed beneath her;
+she could not stand; her strength and her spirit had left
+her.  The gendarme picked her up as if she had been a
+child; and as he moved to the door, Jim Frobisher planted
+himself in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was strong and
+resonant.  "Monsieur Hanaud, you have said just now
+that you believed every word of Mademoiselle Ann's
+story."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You believe then that Madame Harlowe was murdered
+at half-past ten on the night of the 27th of April.
+And at half-past ten Mademoiselle here was at Monsieur
+de Pouillac's ball!  You will set her free."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud did not argue the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what of to-night?" he asked.  "Stand aside, if
+you please!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim held his ground for a moment or two, and then
+drew aside.  He stood with his eyes closed, and such a
+look of misery upon his face as Betty was carried out
+that Hanaud attempted some clumsy word of condolence:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This has been a bitter experience for you, Monsieur
+Frobisher," he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would that you had taken me into your confidence at
+the first!" Jim cried volubly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you have believed me if I had?" asked
+Hanaud, and Jim was silent.  "As it was, Monsieur
+Frobisher, I took a grave risk which I know now I
+had not the right to take and I told you more than you
+think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned away towards Moreau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lock the courtyard doors and the door of the house
+after they have gone and bring the keys here to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Girardot had made a bundle of the solution, the hypodermic
+syringe, the tablets of cyanide, and the pieces of
+cord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is something here of importance," Hanaud
+observed and, stooping at the writing-table, he picked up
+a square, flat-topped black case.  "You will recognise
+this," he remarked to Jim as he handed it to Girardot.
+It was the case of a Corona typewriting machine; and
+from its weight, the machine itself was clearly within
+the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Hanaud explained, as the door closed upon the
+Commissary.  "This pretty room is the factory where all
+those abominable letters were prepared.  Here the
+information was filed away for use; here the letters were
+typed; from here they were issued."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blackmailing letters!" cried Jim.  "Letters demanding
+money!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some of them," answered Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Betty Harlowe had money.  All that she needed,
+and more if she chose to ask for it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All that she needed?  No," answered Hanaud with
+a shake of the head.  "The blackmailer never has enough
+money.  For no one is so blackmailed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden and irrational fury seized upon Frobisher.
+They had agreed, he and Hanaud, that there was a gang
+involved in all these crimes.  It might be that Betty was
+of them, yes, even led them, but were they all to go
+scot-free?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are others," he exclaimed.  "The man who rode
+this motor-cycle&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Young Espinosa," replied Hanaud.  "Did you notice
+his accent when you stopped at the fork of the roads in
+the Val Terzon?  He did not mount his cycle again.  No!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the man who carried in the&mdash;the sack?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Maurice Thevenet," said Hanaud.  "That promising
+young novice.  He is now at the Depot.  He will never
+get that good word from me which was to unlock Paris
+for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Espinosa himself&mdash;who was to come here
+to-morrow&mdash;&mdash;" he stopped abruptly with his eyes on Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And who murdered Jean Cladel, eh?" Hanaud went
+on.  "A fool that fellow!  Why use the Catalan's knife
+in the Catalan's way?"  Hanaud looked at his watch.  "It
+is over.  No doubt Espinosa is under lock and key by
+now.  And there are others, Monsieur, of whom you
+have never heard.  The net has been cast wide to-night.
+Have no fear of that!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau returned with the keys and handed them to
+Hanaud.  Hanaud put them into a pocket and went over
+to Ann Upcott.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, I shall not trouble you with any
+questions to-night.  To-morrow you will tell me why you
+went to Madame Le Vay's ball.  It was given out that
+you meant to run away.  That, of course, was not true.
+You shall give me the real reason to-morrow and an
+account of what happened to you there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann shivered at the memories of that night, but she
+answered quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I will tell you everything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good.  Then we can go," said Hanaud cheerfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go?" Ann Upcott asked in wonderment.  "But you
+have had us all locked in."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed.  He had a little surprise to spring on
+the girl, and he loved surprises so long as they were of
+his own contriving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Frobisher, I think, must have guessed the
+truth.  This house, Mademoiselle, the Hôtel de Brebizart
+is very close, as the crow flies, to the Maison Crenelle.
+There is one row of houses, the houses of the street of
+Charles-Robert, between.  It was built by Etienne
+Bouchart de Crenelle, President of the Parliament during
+the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, a very dignified and
+important figure; and he built it, Mademoiselle&mdash;this is the
+point&mdash;at the same time that he built the Maison Crenelle.
+Having built it, he installed in it a joyous lady of the
+province from which it takes its name&mdash;Madame de
+Brebizart.  There was no scandal.  For the President
+never came visiting Madame de Brebizart.  And for the
+best of reasons.  Between this house and the Maison
+Crenelle he had constructed a secret passage in that age
+of secret passages."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher was startled.  Hanaud had given credit to
+him for an astuteness which he did not possess.  He had
+been occupied heart and brain by the events of the
+evening, so rapidly had they followed one upon the other,
+so little time had they allowed for speculations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How in the world did you discover this?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall know in due time.  For the moment let us
+content ourselves with the facts," Hanaud continued.
+"After the death of Etienne de Crenelle, at some period
+or another the secret of this passage was lost.  It is clear,
+too, I think that it fell into disrepair and became blocked.
+At all events at the end of the eighteenth century, the
+Hôtel de Brebizart passed into other hands than those of
+the owner of the Maison Crenelle.  Simon Harlowe, however,
+discovered the secret.  He bought back the Hôtel de
+Brebizart, restored the passage and put it to the same use
+as old Etienne de Crenelle had done.  For here Madame
+Raviart came to live during the years before the death
+of her husband set her free to marry Simon.  There!
+My little lecture is over.  Let us go!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bowed low to Ann like a lecturer to his audience
+and unlatched the double doors of the big buhl cabinet
+in the recess of the wall.  A cry of surprise broke from
+Ann, who had risen unsteadily to her feet.  The cabinet
+was quite empty.  There was not so much as a shelf, and
+all could see that the floor of it was tilted up against one
+end and that a flight of steps ran downwards in the
+thickness of the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come," said Hanaud, producing his electric torch.
+"Will you take this, Monsieur Frobisher, and go first
+with Mademoiselle.  I will turn out the lights and
+follow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ann with a little frown upon her forehead drew
+sharply back.  She put a hand to Hanaud's sleeve and
+steadied herself by it.  "I will come with you," she said.
+"I am not very steady on my legs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed her action off but both men understood it.
+Jim Frobisher had thought her guilty&mdash;guilty of theft
+and murder.  She shrank from him to the man who had
+had no doubt that she was innocent.  And even that was
+not all.  She was wounded by Jim's distrust more deeply
+than any one else could have wounded her.  Frobisher
+inclined his head in acknowledgment and, pressing the
+button of the torch, descended five or six of the narrow
+steps.  Moreau followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are ready, Mademoiselle?  So!" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put an arm about her to steady her and pressed up
+a switch by the open doors of the cabinet.  The room
+was plunged in darkness.  Guided by the beam of light,
+they followed Frobisher on to the steps.  Hanaud closed
+the doors of the cabinet and fastened them together with
+the bolts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Forward," he cried, "and you, Mademoiselle, be
+careful of your heels on these stone steps."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When his head was just below the level of the first
+step he called upon Frobisher to halt and raise the torch.
+Then he slid the floor board of the cabinet back into its
+place.  Beneath this a trap-door hung downwards.
+Hanaud raised it and bolted it in place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We can go on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten more steps brought them to a tiny vaulted hall.
+From that a passage, bricked and paved, led into darkness.
+Frobisher led the way along the passage until the
+foot of another flight of steps was reached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where do these steps lead, my friend?" Hanaud asked
+of Frobisher, his voice sounding with a strange
+hollowness in that tunnel.  "You shall tell me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim, with memories of that night when he and Ann and
+Betty had sat in the dark of the perfumed garden and
+Ann's eyes had searched this way and that amidst the
+gloom of the sycamores, answered promptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Into the garden of the Maison Crenelle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud chuckled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you, Mademoiselle, what do you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann's face clouded over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know now," she said gravely.  Then she shivered
+and drew her cloak slowly about her shoulders.  "Let us
+go up and see!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud took the lead.  He lowered a trap-door at the
+top of the steps, touched a spring and slid back a panel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait," said he, and he sprang out and turned on a
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott, Jim Frobisher and Moreau climbed out of
+Simon Harlowe's Sedan chair into the treasure room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap23"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: <i>The Truth<br />
+About the Clock on the Marquetry Cabinet</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+To the amazement of them all Moreau began to
+laugh.  Up till now he had been alert, competent
+and without expression.  Stolidity had been the mark
+of him.  And now he laughed in great gusts, holding his
+sides and then wringing his hands, as though the humour
+of things was altogether unbearable.  Once or twice he
+tried to speak, but laughter leapt upon the words and
+drowned them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What in the world is the matter with you, Nicolas?"
+Hanaud asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I beg your pardon," Moreau stammered, and
+again merriment seized and mastered him.  At last two
+intelligible words were heard.  "We, Girardot," he cried,
+settling an imaginary pair of glasses on the bridge of
+his nose, and went off into a fit.  Gradually the reason
+of his paroxysms was explained in broken phrases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We, Girardot!&mdash;We fix the seals upon the doors&mdash;And
+all the time there is a way in and out under our
+nose!  These rooms must not be disturbed&mdash;No!  The
+great Monsieur Hanaud is coming from Paris to look
+at them.  So we seal them tight, we, Girardot.  My God! but
+we, Girardot look the fool!  So careful and pompous
+with our linen bands!  We, Girardot shall make the
+laughter at the Assize Court!  Yes, yes, yes!  I think,
+we, Girardot shall hand in our resignation before the trial
+is over?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps Moreau's humour was a little too professional
+for his audience.  Perhaps, too, the circumstances of that
+night had dulled their appreciation; certainly Moreau had
+all the laughter to himself.  Jim Frobisher was driven to
+the little Louis Quinze clock upon the marquetry cabinet.
+He never could for a moment forget it.  So much hung
+for Betty Harlowe upon its existence.  Whatever wild
+words she might have used to-night, there was the
+incontrovertible testimony of the clock to prove that she had
+had no hand whatever in the murder of Mrs. Harlowe.
+He drew his own watch from his pocket and compared it
+with the clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is exact to the minute," he declared with a little
+accent of triumph.  "It is now twenty-three minutes past
+one&mdash;&mdash;" and suddenly Hanaud was at his side with a
+curious air of alertness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it so?" he asked, and he too made sure by a
+comparison with his own watch that Frobisher's statement
+was correct.  "Yes.  Twenty-three minutes past one.
+That is very fortunate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He called Ann Upcott and Moreau to him and they all
+now stood grouped about the cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The key to the mystery about this clock," he remarked,
+"is to be found in the words which Mademoiselle Ann
+used, when the seals were removed from the doors and
+she saw this clock again, in the light of day.  She was
+perplexed.  Isn't that so, Mademoiselle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Ann returned.  "It seemed to me&mdash;it seems
+to me still&mdash;that the clock was somehow placed higher
+than it actually is&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly.  Let us put it to the test!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the clock and saw that the hands now
+reached twenty-six minutes past one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will ask you all to go out of this room and wait in
+the hall in the dark.  For it was in the dark, you will
+remember, that Mademoiselle descended the stairs.  I
+shall turn the lights out here and call you in.  When I
+do, Mademoiselle will switch the lights on and off swiftly,
+just as she did it on the night of the 27th of April.  Then
+I think all will be clear to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He crossed to the door leading into the hall, and found
+it locked with the key upon the inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," he said, "when the passage is used to
+the Hôtel de Brebizart, this door would be locked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned the key and drew the door towards him.
+The hall gaped before them black and silent.  Hanaud
+stood aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you please!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreau and Frobisher went out; Ann Upcott hesitated
+and cast a look of appeal towards Hanaud.  Her perplexities
+were to be set at rest.  She did not doubt that.  This
+man had saved her from death when it seemed that nothing
+could save her.  Her trust in him was absolute.  But
+her perplexities were unimportant.  Some stroke was to
+be delivered upon Betty Harlowe from which there could
+be no recovery.  Ann Upcott was not a good hater of
+Betty's stamp.  She shrank from the thought that it was
+to be her hand which would deliver that stroke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Courage, Mademoiselle!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud exhorted her with a friendly smile and Ann
+joined the others in the dark hall.  Hanaud closed the
+door upon them and returned to the clock.  It was
+twenty-eight minutes past one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have two minutes," he said to himself.  "That will
+just do if I am quick."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside the three witnesses waited in the darkness.
+One of the three shivered suddenly so that her teeth
+rattled in her mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann," Jim Frobisher whispered and he put his hand
+within her arm.  Ann Upcott had come to the end of
+her strength.  She clung to his hand spasmodically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim!" she answered under her breath.  "Oh, but you
+were cruel to me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's voice called to them from within the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann stepped forward, felt for and found the handle.
+She threw open the door with a nervous violence.  The
+treasure-room was pitch dark like the hall.  Ann stepped
+through the doorway and her fingers reached for the
+switch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," she warned them in a voice which shook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the treasure-room blazed with light; as
+suddenly it was black again; and in the darkness rose a
+clamour of voices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Half-past ten!  I saw the hour!" cried Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And again the clock was higher!" exclaimed Ann.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is true," Moreau agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud's voice, from the far corner of the room,
+joined in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that exactly what you saw, Mademoiselle, on the
+night of the twenty-seventh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then turn on the lights again and know the truth!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The injunction was uttered in tones so grave that it
+sounded like a knell.  For a second or two Ann's fingers
+refused their service.  Once more the conviction forced
+itself into her mind.  Some irretrievable calamity waited
+upon the movement of her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Courage, Mademoiselle!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the lights shone, and this time they remained
+burning.  The three witnesses advanced into the room,
+and as they looked again, from close at hand and with
+a longer gaze, a cry of surprise broke from all of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no clock upon the marquetry cabinet at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But high above it in the long mirror before which it
+stood there was the reflection of a clock, its white face so
+clear and bright that even now it was difficult to disbelieve
+that this was the clock itself.  And the position of
+the hands gave the hour as precisely half-past ten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now turn about and see!" said Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clock itself stood upon the shelf of the Adam
+mantelpiece and there staring at them, the true hour was
+marked.  It was exactly half-past one; the long minute
+hand pointing to six, the shorter hour hand on the right-hand
+side of the figure twelve, half-way between the one
+and the two.  With a simultaneous movement they all
+turned again to the mirror; and the mystery was
+explained.  The shorter hour-hand seen in the mirror was
+on the left-hand side of the figure twelve, and just where
+it would have been if the hour had been half-past ten and
+the clock actually where its reflection was.  The figures
+on the dial were reversed and difficult at a first glance to
+read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see," Hanaud explained, "it is the law of nature
+to save itself from effort even in the smallest things.  We
+live with clocks and watches.  They are as customary as
+our daily bread.  And with the instinct to save ourselves
+from effort, we take our time from the position of the
+hands.  We take the actual figures of the hours for
+granted.  Mademoiselle comes out of the dark.  In the
+one swift flash of light she sees the hands upon the clock's
+face.  Half-past ten!  She herself, you will remember,
+Monsieur Frobisher, was surprised that the hour was
+so early.  She was cold, as though she had slept long in
+her arm-chair.  She had the impression that she had slept
+long.  And Mademoiselle was right.  For the time was
+half-past one, and Betty Harlowe had been twenty
+minutes home from Monsieur de Pouillac's ball."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud ended with a note of triumph in his voice
+which exasperated Frobisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aren't you going a little too fast?" he asked.  "When
+the seals were removed and we entered this room for the
+first time, the clock was not upon the mantelshelf but
+upon the marquetry cabinet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle Upcott told us her story before
+luncheon.  We entered this room after luncheon.
+During the luncheon hours the position of the clock was
+changed."  He pointed to the Sedan chair.  "You know
+now with what ease that could be done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Could, could!'" Frobisher repeated impatiently.  "It
+doesn't follow that it was done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is true," Hanaud replied.  "So I will answer
+now one of the questions in your memorandum.  What
+was it that I saw from the top of the Terrace Tower?
+I saw the smoke rising from this chimney into the air.
+Oh, Monsieur, I had paid attention to this house, its
+windows, and its doors, and its chimney-stacks.  And
+there at midday, in all the warmth of late May, the
+smoke was rising from the chimney of the sealed room.
+There was an entrance then of which we knew nothing!
+And somebody had just made use of it.  Who?  Ask
+yourself that!  Who went straight out from the Maison
+Crenelle the moment I had gone, and went alone?  That
+clock had to be changed.  Apparently some letters also
+had to be burnt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim hardly heard the last sentence.  The clock still
+occupied his thoughts.  His great argument had been
+riddled; his one dream of establishing Betty's innocence
+in despite of every presumption and fact which could be
+brought against her had been dispelled.  He dropped on
+to a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You understood it all so quickly," he said with bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I was not quick!" Hanaud answered.  "Ascribe
+to me no gifts out of the ordinary run, Monsieur.  I am
+trained&mdash;that is all.  I have been my twenty minutes in
+the bull-ring.  Listen how it came about!"  He looked
+at Frobisher with a comical smile.  "It is a pity our eager
+young friend, Maurice Thevenet, is not here to profit by
+the lesson.  First of all, then!  I knew that Mademoiselle
+Betty was here doing something of great importance.  It
+may be only burning those letters in the hearth.  It may
+be more.  I must wait and see.  Good!  There, standing
+before the mirror, Mademoiselle Ann makes her little
+remark that the clock seemed higher.  Do I understand
+yet?  No, no!  But I am interested.  Then I notice a
+curious thing, a beautiful specimen of Benvenuto Cellini's
+work set up high and flat on that mantelshelf where no
+one can see it.  So I take it down, and I carry it to the
+window, and I admire it very much and I carry it back
+to the mantelshelf; and then I notice four little marks
+upon the wood which had been concealed by the flat case
+of the jewel; and those four little marks are just the
+marks which the feet of that very pretty Louis Quinze
+clock might have made, had it stood regularly there&mdash;in
+its natural place.  Yes, and the top of that marquetry
+cabinet so much lower than the mantelshelf is too the
+natural place for the Cellini jewel.  Every one can see it
+there.  So I say to myself: 'My good Hanaud, this young
+lady has been rearranging her ornaments.'  But do I
+guess why?  No, my friend.  I told you once, and I tell
+you again very humbly, that we are the servants of
+Chance.  Chance is a good mistress if her servants do not
+go to sleep; and she treated me well that afternoon.  See!
+I am standing in the hall, in great trouble about this case.
+For nothing leads me anywhere.  There is a big
+old-fashioned barometer like a frying-pan on the wall behind
+me and a mirror on the opposite wall in front of me.  I
+raise my eyes from the floor and by chance I see in the
+mirror the barometer behind me.  By chance my attention
+is arrested.  For I see that the indicator in the
+barometer points to stormy weather&mdash;which is ridiculous.
+I turn me about so.  It is to fine weather that the
+indicator points.  And in a flash I see.  I look at the
+position of the hand without looking at the letters.  If I look
+the barometer in the face the hand points to the fair
+weather.  If I turn my back and look into the mirror the
+hand points to the stormy weather.  Now indeed I have
+it!  I run into the treasure-room.  I lock the door, for I
+do not wish to be caught.  I do not move the clock.  No,
+no, for nothing in the world will I move that clock.  But
+I take out my watch.  I face the mirror.  I hold my watch
+facing the mirror, I open the glass and I move the hands
+until in the mirror they seem to mark half-past ten.
+Then I look at my watch itself.  It is half-past one.  So
+now I know!  Do I want more proof?  Monsieur, I get
+it.  For as I unlock the door and open it again, there is
+Mademoiselle Betty face to face with me!  That young
+girl!  Even though already I suspect her I get a shock,
+I can tell you.  The good God knows that I am hardened
+enough against surprises.  But for a moment the mask
+had slipped from her face.  I felt a trickle of ice down
+my spine.  For out of her beautiful great eyes murder
+looked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood held in a spell by the memory of that fierce
+look.  "Ugh," he grunted; and he shook himself like
+a great dog coming up out of the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you are talking too much, Monsieur Frobisher,"
+he cried in a different voice, "and you are keeping
+Mademoiselle from her bed, where she should have been an
+hour ago.  Come!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drove his companions out into the hall, turned on
+the lights, locked the door of the treasure-room and
+pocketed the key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, we will leave these lights burning,"
+he said gently to Ann, "and Moreau will keep watch in
+the house.  You have nothing to fear.  He will not be
+far from your door.  Good night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann gave him her hand with a wan smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall thank you to-morrow," she said, and she
+mounted the stairs slowly, her feet dragging, her body
+swaying with her fatigue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud watched her go.  Then he turned to Frobisher
+with a whimsical smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a pity!" he said.  "You&mdash;she!  No?  After
+all, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;" and he broke off hurriedly.  Frobisher
+was growing red and beginning to look "proper"; and the
+last thing which Hanaud wished to do was to offend him
+in this particular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I make my apologies," he said.  "I am impertinent
+and a gossip.  If I err, it is because I wish you very
+well.  You understand that?  Good!  Then a further
+proof.  To-morrow Mademoiselle will tell us what
+happened to her to-night, how she came to go to the house
+of Madame Le Vay&mdash;everything.  I wish you to be present.
+You shall know everything.  I shall tell you myself
+step by step, how my conclusions were reached.  All your
+questions shall be answered.  I shall give you every help,
+every opportunity.  I shall see to it that you are not even
+called as a witness of what you have seen to-night.  And
+when all is over, Monsieur, you will see with me that
+whatever there may be of pain and distress, the Law must
+take its course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a new Hanaud whom Frobisher was contemplating
+now.  The tricks, the Gasconnades, the buffooneries
+had gone.  He did not even triumph.  A dignity
+shone out of the man like a strong light, and with it he
+was gentle and considerate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, Monsieur!" he said, and bowed; and Jim
+on an impulse thrust out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night!" he returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud took it with a smile of recognition and went
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher locked the front door and with a sense
+of desolation turned back to the hall.  He heard the big
+iron gates swing to.  They had been left open, of course,
+he recognised, in the usual way when one of the household
+was going to be late.  Yes, everything had been
+planned with the care of a commander planning a battle.
+Here in this house, the servants were all tucked up in
+their beds.  But for Hanaud, Betty Harlowe might at
+this very moment have been stealing up these stairs
+noiselessly to her own room, her dreadful work accomplished.
+The servants would have waked to-morrow to the knowledge
+that Ann Upcott had fled rather than face a trial.
+Sometime in the evening, Espinosa would have called,
+would have been received in the treasure-room, would
+have found the spade waiting for him in the great
+stone-vaulted kitchen of the Hôtel de Brebizart.  Oh, yes, all
+dangers had been foreseen&mdash;except Hanaud.  Nay, even
+he in a measure had been foreseen!  For a panic-stricken
+telegram had reached Frobisher and Haslitt before
+Hanaud had started upon his work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall be on the stairs, Monsieur, below Mademoiselle's
+door, if you should want me," said Moreau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher roused himself from his reflections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you," he answered, and he went up the stairs
+to his room.  A lot of use to Betty that telegram had
+been, he reflected bitterly!  "Where was she to-night?"
+he asked, and shut up his mind against the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was to know that it was precisely that panic-stricken
+telegram and nothing else which had brought Betty
+Harlowe's plans crashing about her ears.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap24"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: <i>Ann Upcott's Story</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Early the next morning Hanaud rang up the Maison
+Crenelle and made his appointment for the afternoon.
+Jim accordingly spent the morning with Monsieur
+Bex, who was quite overwhelmed with the story which
+was told to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Prisoners have their rights nowadays," he said.
+"They can claim the presence of their legal adviser when
+they are being examined by the Judge.  I will go round
+at once to the Prefecture"; with his head erect and his
+little chest puffed out like a bantam cock, he hurried to
+do battle for his client.  There was no battle to be waged,
+however.  Certainly Monsieur Bex's unhappy client was
+for the moment <i>au secret</i>.  She would not come before
+the Judge for a couple of days.  It was the turn of
+Francine Rollard.  Every opportunity was to be given to the
+defence, and Monsieur Bex would certainly be granted an
+interview with Betty Harlowe, if she so wished, before
+she was brought up in the Judge's office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur Bex returned to the Place Etienne Dolet
+to find Jim Frobisher restlessly pacing his office.  Jim
+looked up eagerly, but Monsieur Bex had no words of
+comfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't like it!" he cried.  "It displeases me.  I am
+not happy.  They are all very polite&mdash;yes.  But they
+examine the maid first.  That's bad, I tell you," and he
+tapped upon the table.  "That is Hanaud.  He knows
+his affair.  The servants.  They can be made to talk, and
+this Francine Rollard&mdash;&mdash;"  He shook his head.  "I shall
+get the best advocate in France."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim left him to his work and returned to the Maison
+Crenelle.  It was obvious that nothing of these new and
+terrible developments of the "Affaire Waberski" had yet
+leaked out.  There was not a whisper of it in the streets,
+not a loiterer about the gates of the Maison Crenelle.
+The "Affaire Waberski" had, in the general view, become
+a stale joke.  Jim sent up word to Ann Upcott in her
+room that he was removing his luggage to the hotel in
+the Place Darcy, and leaving the house to her where he
+prayed her to remain.  Even at that moment Ann's lips
+twitched a little with humour as she read the
+embarrassed note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is very correct, as Monsieur Bex would say,"
+she reflected, "and proper enough to make every nerve
+of Monsieur Hanaud thrill with delight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim returned in the afternoon and once more in the
+shade of the sycamores whilst the sunlight dappled the
+lawn and the bees hummed amongst the roses, Ann
+Upcott told a story of terror and darkness, though to a
+smaller audience.  Certain additions were made to the
+story by Hanaud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should never have dreamed of going to Madame
+Le Vay's Ball," she began, "except for the anonymous
+letter," and Hanaud leaned forward alertly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The anonymous letter had arrived whilst she, Betty
+and Jim Frobisher were sitting at dinner.  It had been
+posted therefore in the middle of the day and very soon
+after Ann had told her first story in the garden.  Ann
+opened the envelope expecting a bill, and was amazed
+and a little terrified to read the signature, "The
+Scourge."  She was more annoyed than ever when she read the
+contents, but her terror had decreased.  "The Scourge" bade
+her attend the Ball.  He gave her explicit instructions
+that she should leave the ball-room at half-past ten, follow
+a particular corridor leading to a wing away from the
+reception-rooms, and hide behind the curtains in a small
+library.  If she kept very still she would overhear in a
+little while the truth about the death of Mrs. Harlowe.
+She was warned to tell no one of her plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told no one then," Ann declared.  "I thought the
+letter just a malicious joke quite in accord with 'The
+Scourge's' character.  I put it back into its envelope.  But
+I couldn't forget it.  Suppose that by any chance there
+was something in it&mdash;and I didn't go!  Why should 'The
+Scourge' play a trick on me, who had no money and was
+of no importance?  And all the while the sort of hope
+which no amount of reasoning can crush, kept growing
+and growing!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner Ann took the letter up to her sitting-room
+and believed it and scorned herself for believing it,
+and believed it again.  That afternoon she had almost
+felt the handcuffs on her wrists.  There was no chance
+which she ought to refuse of clearing herself from
+suspicion, however wild it seemed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann made up her mind to consult Betty, and ran down
+to the treasure-room, which was lit up but empty.  It
+was half-past nine o'clock.  Ann determined to wait for
+Betty's return, and was once more perplexed by the low
+position of the clock upon the marquetry cabinet.  She
+stood in front of it, staring at it.  She took her own
+watch in her hand, with a sort of vague idea that it
+might help her.  And indeed it was very likely to.  Had
+she turned its dial to the mirror behind the clock, the
+truth would have leapt at her.  But she had not the time.
+For a slight movement in the room behind her arrested
+her attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned abruptly.  The room was empty.  Yet without
+doubt it was from within the room that the faint
+noise had come.  And there was only one place from
+which it could have come.  Some one was hiding within
+the elaborate Sedan chair with its shining grey panels,
+its delicate gold beading.  Ann was uneasy rather than
+frightened.  Her first thought was to ring the bell by the
+fire-place&mdash;she could do that well out of view of the
+Sedan chair&mdash;and carry on until Gaston answered it.
+There were treasures enough in the room to repay a hundred
+thieves.  Then, without arguing at all, she took the
+bolder line.  She went quietly towards the chair, advancing
+from the back, and then with a rush planted herself
+in front of the glass doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started back with a cry of surprise.  The rail in
+front of the doors was down, the doors were open, and
+leaning back upon the billowy cushions sat Betty Harlowe.
+She sat quite still, still as an image even after
+Ann had appeared and uttered a cry of surprise; but she
+was not asleep.  Her great eyes were blazing steadily out
+of the darkness of the chair in a way which gave Ann a
+curious shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have been watching you," said Betty very slowly;
+and if ever there had been a chance that she would relent,
+that chance was gone for ever now.  She had come up
+out of the secret passage to find Ann playing with her
+watch in front of the mirror, seeking for an explanation
+of the doubt which troubled her and so near to it&mdash;so
+very near to it!  Ann heard her own death sentence
+pronounced in those words, "I have been watching you."  And
+though she did not understand the menace they conveyed,
+there was something in the slow, steady utterance
+of them which a little unnerved her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty," she cried, "I want your advice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty came out of the chair and took the anonymous
+letter from her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ought I to go?" Ann Upcott asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's your affair," Betty replied.  "In your place I
+should.  I shouldn't hesitate.  No one knows yet that
+there's any suspicion upon you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann put forward her objection.  To go from this house
+of mourning might appear an outrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're not a relation," Betty argued.  "You can go
+privately, just before the time.  I have no doubt we can
+arrange it all.  But of course it's your affair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why should the Scourge help me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't suppose that he is, except indirectly," Betty
+reasoned.  "I imagine that he's attacking other people,
+and using you."  She read through the letter again.  "He
+has always been right, hasn't he?  That's what would
+determine me in your place.  But I don't want to interfere."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann spun round on her heel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well.  I shall go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I should destroy that letter"; and she made as
+if to tear it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!" cried Ann, and she held out her hand for it
+"I don't know Madame Le Vay's house very well.  I
+might easily lose my way without the instructions.  I
+must take it with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty agreed and handed the letter back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You want to go quite quietly," she said, and she threw
+herself heart and soul into the necessary arrangements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She would give Francine Rollard a holiday and herself
+help Ann to dress in her fanciful and glistening frock.
+She wrote a letter to Michel Le Vay, Madame Le Vay's
+second son and one of Betty's most indefatigable
+courtiers.  Fortunately for himself, Michel Le Vay kept that
+letter, and it saved him from any charge of complicity
+in her plot.  For Betty used to him the same argument
+which had persuaded Jim Frobisher.  She wrote frankly
+that suspicion had centred upon Ann Upcott and that it
+was necessary that she should get away secretly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All the plans have been made, Michel," she wrote.
+"Ann will come late.  She is to meet the friends who will
+help her&mdash;it is best that you should know as little as
+possible about them&mdash;in the little library.  If you will keep
+the corridor clear for a little while, they can get out by
+the library doors into the park and be in Paris the next
+morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sealed up this letter without showing it to Ann
+and said, "I will send this by a messenger to-morrow
+morning, with orders to deliver it into Michel's own
+hands.  Now how are you to go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over that point the two girls had some discussion.
+It would be inviting Hanaud's interference if the big
+limousine were ordered out.  What more likely than that
+he should imagine Ann meant to run away and that
+Betty was helping her?  That plan certainly would
+not do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know," Betty cried.  "Jeanne Leclerc shall call
+for you.  You will be ready to slip out.  She shall stop
+her car for a second outside the gates.  It will be quite
+dark.  You'll be away in a flash."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jeanne Leclerc!" Ann exclaimed, drawing back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had always perplexed Ann that Betty, so exquisite
+and fastidious in her own looks and bearing, should have
+found her friends amongst the flamboyant and the cheap.
+But she would rather throne it amongst her inferiors
+than take her place amongst her equals.  Under her
+reserved demeanour she was insatiable of recognition.
+The desire to be courted, admired, looked up to as a
+leader and a chief, burned within her like a raging flame.
+Jeanne Leclerc was of her company of satellites&mdash;a big,
+red-haired woman of excessive manners, not without
+good looks of a kind, and certainly received in the society
+of the town.  Ann Upcott not merely disliked, but
+distrusted her.  She had a feeling that there was something
+indefinably wrong in her very nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She will do anything for me, Ann," said Betty.
+"That's why I named her.  I know that she is going to
+Madame Le Vay's dance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Upcott gave in, and a second letter was written to
+Jeanne Leclerc.  This second letter asked Jeanne to call
+at the Maison Crenelle at an early hour in the morning;
+and Jeanne Leclerc came and was closeted with Betty for
+an hour between nine and ten.  Thus all the arrangements
+were made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this point that Frobisher interrupted Hanaud's
+explanations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he said.  "There remain Espinosa and the young
+brother to be accounted for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle has just told us that she heard a slight
+noise in the treasure-room and found Betty Harlowe
+seated in the Sedan chair," Hanaud replied.  "Betty
+Harlowe had just returned from the Hôtel de Brebizart,
+whither Espinosa went that night after it had grown dark
+and about the time when dinner was over in the Maison
+Crenelle....  From the Hôtel de Brebizart Espinosa
+went to the Rue Gambetta and waited for Jean Cladel.  It
+was a busy night, that one, my friends.  That old wolf,
+the Law, was sniffing at the bottom of the door.  They
+could hear him.  They had no time to waste!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next night came.  Dinner was very late, Jim
+remembered.  It was because Betty was helping Ann to
+dress, Francine having been given her holiday.  Jim and
+Betty dined alone, and whilst they dined Ann Upcott
+stole downstairs, a cloak of white ermine hiding her
+pretty dress.  She held the front door a little open, and
+the moment Jeanne Leclerc's car stopped before the gates,
+she flashed across the courtyard.  Jeanne had the door of
+her car open.  It had hardly stopped before it went on
+again.  Jim, as the story was told, remembered vividly
+Betty's preoccupation whilst dinner went on, and the
+immensity of her relief when the hall door so gently closed
+and the car moved forward out of the street of
+Charles-Robert.  Ann Upcott had gone for good from the Maison
+Crenelle.  She would not interfere with Betty Harlowe
+any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeanne Leclerc and Ann Upcott reached Madame Le
+Vay's house a few minutes after ten.  Michel Le Vay
+came forward to meet them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so glad that you came, Mademoiselle," he said
+to Ann, "but you are late.  Madame my mother has left
+her place at the door of the ball-room, but we shall find
+her later."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took them to the cloak-room, and coming away
+they were joined by Espinosa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are going to dance now?" Michel Le Vay asked.
+"No, not yet!  Then Señor Espinosa will take you to
+the buffet while I look after others of our guests."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hurried away towards the ball-room, where a clatter
+of high voices competed with the music of the band.
+Espinosa conducted the two ladies to the buffet.  There
+was hardly anybody in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We are still too early," said Jeanne Leclerc in a low
+voice.  "We shall take some coffee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ann would not.  Her eyes were on the door, her
+feet danced, her hands could not keep still.  Was the
+letter a trick?  Would she, indeed, within the next few
+minutes learn the truth?  At one moment her heart sank
+into her shoes, at another it soared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mademoiselle, you neglect your coffee," said Espinosa
+urgently.  "And it is good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt," Ann replied.  She turned to Jeanne
+Leclerc.  "You will send me home, won't you?  I shall
+not wait&mdash;afterwards."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But of course," Jeanne Leclerc agreed.  "All that is
+arranged.  The chauffeur has his orders.  You will take
+your coffee, dear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Ann would not
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want nothing," she declared.  "It is time that I
+went."  She caught a swift and curious interchange of
+glances between Jeanne Leclerc and Espinosa, but she
+was in no mood to seek an interpretation.  There could
+be no doubt that the coffee set before her had had some
+drug slipped into it by Espinosa when he fetched it from
+the buffet to the little table at which they sat; a drug
+which would have half stupefied her and made her easy
+to manage.  But she was not to be persuaded, and she rose
+to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall get my cloak," she said, and she fetched it,
+leaving her two companions together.  She did not return
+to the buffet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the far side of the big central hall a long corridor
+stretched out.  At the mouth of the corridor, guarding
+it, stood Michel Le Vay.  He made a sign to her, and
+when she joined him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Turn down to the right into the wing," he said in a
+low voice.  "The small library is in front of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann slipped past him.  She turned into a wing of the
+house which was quite deserted and silent.  At the end
+of it a shut door confronted her.  She opened it softly.
+It was all dark within.  But enough light entered from
+the corridor to show her the high bookcases ranged
+against the walls, the position of the furniture, and some
+dark, heavy curtains at the end.  She was the first, then,
+to come to the tryst.  She closed the door behind her and
+moved slowly and cautiously forwards with her hands
+outstretched, until she felt the curtains yield.  She passed
+in between them into the recess of a great bow window
+opening on to the park; and a sound, a strange, creaking
+sound, brought her heart into her mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some one was already in the room, then.  Somebody
+had been quietly watching as she came in from the
+lighted corridor.  The sound grew louder.  Ann peered
+between the curtains, holding them apart with shaking
+hands, and through that chink from behind her a vague
+twilight flowed into the room.  In the far corner, near
+to the door, high up on a tall bookcase, something was
+clinging&mdash;something was climbing down.  Whoever it
+was, had been hiding behind the ornamental top of the
+heavy mahogany book-case; was now using the shelves
+like the rungs of a ladder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann was seized with a panic.  A sob broke from her
+throat.  She ran for the door.  But she was too late.  A
+black figure dropped from the book-case to the ground
+and, as Ann reached out her hands to the door, a scarf
+was whipped about her mouth, stifling her cry.  She was
+jerked back into the room, but her fingers had touched
+the light switch by the door, and as she stumbled and fell,
+the room was lighted up.  Her assailant fell upon her,
+driving the breath out of her lungs, and knotted the scarf
+tightly at the back of her head.  Ann tried to lift herself,
+and recognised with a gasp of amazement that the assailant
+who pinned her down by the weight of her body and
+the thrust of her knees was Francine Rollard.  Her panic
+gave place to anger and a burning humiliation.  She
+fought with all the strength of her supple body.  But the
+scarf about her mouth stifled and weakened her, and with
+a growing dismay she understood that she was no match
+for the hardy peasant girl.  She was the taller of the two,
+but her height did not avail her; she was like a child
+matched with a wildcat.  Francine's hands were made of
+steel.  She snatched Ann's arms behind her back and
+bound her wrists, as she lay face downwards, her bosom
+labouring, her heart racing so that she felt that it must
+burst.  Then, as Ann gave up the contest, she turned and
+tied her by the ankles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Francine was upon her feet again in a flash.  She ran
+to the door, opened it a little way and beckoned.  Then
+she dragged her prisoner up on to a couch, and Jeanne
+Leclerc and Espinosa slipped into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's done?" said Espinosa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Francine laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, but she fought, the pretty baby!  You should
+have given her the coffee.  Then she would have walked
+with us.  Now she must be carried.  She's wicked, I can
+tell you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeanne Leclerc twisted a lace scarf about the girl's face
+to hide the gag over her mouth, and, while Francine held
+her up, set her white cloak about her shoulders and
+fastened it in front.  Espinosa then turned out the light
+and drew back the curtains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was at the back of the house.  In the front
+of the window the park stretched away.  But it was the
+park of a French château, where the cattle feed up to the
+windows, and only a strip about the front terrace is
+devoted to pleasure-gardens and fine lawns.  Espinosa
+looked out upon meadow-land thickly studded with trees,
+and cows dimly moving in the dusk of the summer night
+like ghosts.  He opened the window, and the throb of
+the music from the ball-room came faintly to their ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must be quick," said Espinosa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted the helpless girl in his arms and passed out
+into the park.  They left the window open behind them,
+and between them they carried their prisoner across the
+grass, keeping where it was possible in the gloom of the
+trees, and aiming for a point in the drive where a motorcar
+waited half-way between the house and the gates.  A
+blur of light from the terrace and ornamental grounds in
+front of it became visible away upon their left, but here
+all was dark.  Once or twice they stopped and set Ann
+upon her feet, and held her so, while they rested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few more yards," Espinosa whispered and, stifling
+an oath, he stopped again.  They were on the edge of the
+drive now, and just ahead of him he saw the glimmer of a
+white dress and close to it the glow of a cigarette.
+Swiftly he put Ann down again and propped her against
+a tree.  Jeanne Leclerc stood in front of her and, as the
+truants from the ball-room approached, she began to talk
+to Ann, nodding her head like one engrossed in a lively
+story.  Espinosa's heart stood still as he heard the man
+say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, there are some others here!  That is curious.
+Shall we see?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even as he moved across the drive, the girl in the
+white dress caught him by the arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That would not be very tactful," she said with a
+laugh.  "Let us do as we would be done by," and the
+couple sauntered past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Espinosa waited until they had disappeared.  "Quick!
+Let us go!" he whispered in a shaking voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few yards farther on they found Espinosa's closed
+car hidden in a little alley which led from the main drive.
+They placed Ann in the car.  Jeanne Leclerc got in beside
+her, and Espinosa took the wheel.  As they took the road
+to the Val Terzon a distant clock struck eleven.  Within
+the car Jeanne Leclerc removed the gag from Ann
+Upcott's mouth, drew the sack over her and fastened it
+underneath her feet.  At the branch road young Espinosa
+was waiting with his motor-cycle and side-car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can add a few words to that story, Mademoiselle,"
+said Hanaud when she had ended.  "First, Michel Le Vay
+went later into the library, and bolted the window again,
+believing you to be well upon your way to Paris.  Second,
+Espinosa and Jeanne Leclerc were taken as they returned
+to Madame Le Vay's ball."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap25"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: <i>What Happened<br />
+on the Night of the 27th</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"We are not yet quite at the end," said Hanaud, as
+he sat with Frobisher for awhile upon the lawn
+after Ann Upcott had gone in.  "But we are near to it.
+There is still my question to be answered.  'Why was the
+communicating door open between the bedroom of
+Madame Harlowe and the treasure-room on the night
+when Ann Upcott came down the stairs in the dark?'  When
+we know that, we shall know why Francine Rollard
+and Betty Harlowe between them murdered Madame
+Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you believe Francine Rollard had a hand in
+that crime too?" asked Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure," returned Hanaud.  "Do you remember
+the experiment I made, the little scene of reconstruction?
+Betty Harlowe stretched out upon the bed to represent
+Madame, and Francine whispering 'That will do now'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud lit a cigarette and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Francine Rollard would not stand at the side of the
+bed.  No!  She would stand at the foot and whisper
+those simple but appalling words.  But nowhere else.
+That was significant, my friend.  She would not stand
+exactly where she had stood when the murder was
+committed."  He added softly, "I have great hopes of
+Francine Rollard.  A few days of a prison cell and that
+untamed little tiger-cat will talk."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what of Waberski in all this?" Jim exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud laughed and rose from his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waberski?  He is for nothing in all this.  He brought
+a charge in which he didn't believe, and the charge
+happened to be true.  That is all."  He took a step or two
+away and returned.  "But I am wrong.  That is not all.
+Waberski is indeed for something in all this.  For when
+he was pressed to make good his charge and must rake
+up some excuse for it somehow, by a piece of luck he
+thinks of a morning when he saw Betty Harlowe in the
+street of Gambetta near to the shop of Jean Cladel.  And
+so he leads us to the truth.  Yes, we owe something to
+that animal Boris Waberski.  Did I not tell you,
+Monsieur, that we are all the servants of Chance?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud went from the garden and for three days Jim
+Frobisher saw him no more.  But the development which
+Monsieur Bex feared and for which Hanaud hoped took
+place, and on the third day Hanaud invited Jim to his
+office in the Prefecture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had Jim's memorandum in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked.
+"See!"  He pushed the memorandum in front of Jim
+and pointed to a paragraph.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+"But in the absence of any trace of poison in the dead
+woman's body, it is difficult to see how the criminal can
+be brought to justice except by:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"(<i>a</i>) A confession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"(<i>b</i>) The commission of another crime of a similar
+kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hanaud's theory&mdash;once a poisoner, always a poisoner."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher read it through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now that is very true," said Hanaud.  "Never have
+I come across a case more difficult.  At every step we
+break down.  I think I have my fingers on Jean Cladel.
+I am five minutes too late.  I think that I shall get some
+useful evidence from a firm in Paris.  The firm has
+ceased to be for the last ten years.  All the time I strike
+at air.  So I must take a risk&mdash;yes, and a serious one.
+Shall I tell you what that risk was?  I have to assume
+that Mademoiselle Ann will be brought alive to the Hôtel
+de Brebizart on that night of Madame Le Vay's ball.
+That she would be brought back I had no doubt.  For
+one thing, there could be no safer resting-place for her
+than under the stone flags of the kitchen there.  For
+another, there was the portmanteau in the side-car.  It
+was not light, the portmanteau.  Some friends of mine
+watched it being put into the side-car before young
+Espinosa started for his rendezvous.  I have no doubt it
+weighed just as many kilos as Mademoiselle Ann."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never understood the reason of that portmanteau,"
+Frobisher interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a matter of timing.  There were twenty-five
+kilometres of a bad track, with many sharp little twists
+between the Val Terzon and the Hôtel de Brebizart.  And
+a motor-cycle with an empty side-car would take
+appreciably longer to cover the distance than a cycle with
+a side-car weighted, which could take the corners at its
+top speed.  They were anxious to get the exact time the
+journey would take with Ann Upcott in the side-car, so
+that there might be no needless hanging about waiting
+for its arrival.  But they were a little too careful.  Our
+friend Boris said a shrewd thing, didn't he?  Some crimes
+are discovered because the alibis are too unnaturally
+perfect.  Oh, there was no doubt they meant to bring back
+Mademoiselle Ann!  But suppose they brought her back
+dead!  It wasn't likely&mdash;no!  It would be so much easier
+to finish her off with a dose of the arrow-poison.  No
+struggle, no blood, no trouble at all.  I reckoned that
+they would dope her at Madame Le Vay's ball and bring
+her back half conscious, as indeed they meant to do.  But
+I shivered all that evening at the risk I had taken, and
+when that cycle shut off its engine, as we stood in the
+darkness of the gallery, I was in despair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his shoulders uncomfortably as though the
+danger was not yet passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anyway, I took the risk," he resumed, "and so we
+got fulfilled your condition (<i>b</i>).  The commission or, in
+this case, the attempted commission of another crime of
+the same kind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frobisher nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But now," said Hanaud, leaning forward, "we have
+got your condition (<i>a</i>) fulfilled&mdash;a confession; a clear
+and complete confession from Francine Rollard, and so
+many admissions from the Espinosas, and Jeanne Leclerc
+and Maurice Thevenet, that they amount to confessions.
+We have put them all together, and here is the new part
+of the case with which Monsieur Bex and you will have
+to deal&mdash;the charge not of murder attempted but of
+murder committed&mdash;the murder of Madame Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher was upon the point of interrupting, but
+he thought better of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go on!" he contented himself with saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why Betty Harlowe took to writing anonymous
+letters, Monsieur&mdash;who shall say?  The dulness of life
+for a girl young and beautiful and passionate in a
+provincial town, as our friend Boris suggests?  The craving
+for excitement?  Something bad and vicious and
+abnormal born in her, part of her, and craving more and
+more expression as she grew in years?  The exacting
+attendance upon Madame?  Probably all of these elements
+combined to suggest the notion to her.  And suddenly it
+became easy for her.  She discovered a bill in that box in
+Madame Harlowe's bedroom, a receipted bill ten years
+old from the firm of Chapperon, builders, of the Rue
+de Batignolles in Paris.  You, by the way, saw an
+unburnt fragment of the bill in the ashes upon the hearth
+of the treasure-room.  This bill disclosed to her the
+existence of the hidden passage between the treasure-room
+and the Hôtel de Brebizart.  For it was the bill
+of the builders who had repaired it at the order of Simon
+Harlowe.  An old typewriting machine belonging to
+Simon Harlowe and the absolute privacy of the Hôtel de
+Brebizart made the game easy and safe.  But as the
+opportunity grew, so did the desire.  Betty Harlowe tasted
+power.  She took one or two people into her confidence&mdash;her
+maid Francine, Maurice Thevenet, Jeanne Leclerc,
+and Jean Cladel, a very useful personage&mdash;and once
+started the circle grew; blackmail followed.  Blackmail of
+Betty Harlowe, you understand!  She, the little queen,
+became the big slave.  She must provide Thevenet with
+his mistress, Espinosa with his car and his house, Jeanne
+Leclerc with her luxuries.  So the anonymous letters
+become themselves blackmailing letters.  Maurice Thevenet
+knows the police side of Dijon and the province.  Jeanne
+Leclerc has a&mdash;friend, shall we say?&mdash;in the Director of
+an Insurance Company, and, believe me, for a blackmailer
+nothing is more important than to know accurately the
+financial resources of one's&mdash;let us say, clients.  Thus the
+game went merrily on until money was wanted and it
+couldn't be raised.  Betty Harlowe looked around Dijon.
+There was no one for the moment to exploit.  Yes, one
+person!  Let us do Betty Harlowe the justice to believe
+that the suggestion came from that promising young
+novice, Maurice Thevenet!  Who was that person,
+Monsieur Frobisher?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even now Jim Frobisher was unable to guess the truth,
+led up to it though he had been by Hanaud's exposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, Madame Harlowe herself," Hanaud explained,
+and, as Jim Frobisher started back in a horror of
+disbelief, he continued: "Yes, it is so!  Madame Harlowe
+received a letter at dinner-time, just as Ann Upcott did,
+on the night of Monsieur de Pouillac's ball.  She took
+her dinner in bed, you may remember, that night.  That
+letter was shown to Jeanne Baudin the nurse, who
+remembers it very well.  It demanded a large sum of money,
+and something was said about a number of passionate
+letters which Madame Harlowe might not care to have
+published&mdash;not too much, you understand, but enough to
+make it clear that the liaison of Madame Raviart and
+Simon Harlowe was not a secret from the Scourge.  I'll
+tell you something else which will astonish you, Monsieur
+Frobisher.  That letter was shown not only to Jeanne
+Baudin, but to Betty Harlowe herself when she came to
+say good night and show herself in her new dance frock
+of silver tissue and her silver slippers.  It was no wonder
+that Betty Harlowe lost her head a little when I set my
+little trap for her in the library and pretended that I did
+not want to read what Madame had said to Jeanne Baudin
+after Betty Harlowe had gone off to her ball.  I hadn't
+one idea what a very unpleasant little trap it was!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But wait a moment!" Frobisher interrupted.  "If
+Madame Harlowe showed this letter first of all to Jeanne
+Baudin, and afterwards to Betty Harlowe in Jeanne
+Baudin's presence, why didn't Jeanne Baudin speak of it
+at once to the examining magistrate when Waberski
+brought his accusation?  She kept silent!  Yes, she kept
+silent!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why shouldn't she?" returned Hanaud.  "Jeanne
+Baudin is a good and decent girl.  For her, Madame
+Harlowe had died a natural death in her sleep, the very form
+in which death might be expected to come for her.
+Jeanne Baudin didn't believe a word of Waberski's
+accusation.  Why should she rake up old scandals?  She
+herself proposed to Betty Harlowe to say nothing about
+the anonymous letter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher thought over the argument and accepted
+it.  "Yes, I see her point of view," he admitted, and
+Hanaud continued his narrative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, Betty Harlowe is off to her ball on the
+Boulevard Thiers.  Ann Upcott is in her sitting-room.
+Jeanne Baudin has finished her offices for the night.
+Madame Harlowe is alone.  What does she do?  Drink?
+For that night&mdash;no!  She sits and thinks.  Were there
+any of the letters which passed between her and Simon
+Harlowe, before she was Simon Harlowe's wife, still
+existing?  She had thought to have destroyed them all.
+But she was a woman, she might have clutched some
+back.  If there were any, where would they be?  Why
+in that house at the end of the secret passage.  Some
+such thoughts must have passed through her mind.  For
+she rose from her bed, slipped on her dressing-gown and
+shoes, unlocked the communicating door between her and
+the treasure-room and passed by the secret way into the
+empty Hôtel de Brebizart.  And what does she find there,
+Monsieur?  A room in daily use, a bundle of her letters
+ready in the top drawer of her Empire writing-table, and
+on the writing-table Simon's Corona machine, and the
+paper and envelopes of the anonymous letters.  Monsieur,
+there is only one person who can have access to that
+room, the girl whom she has befriended, whom in her
+exacting way she no doubt loved.  And at eleven o'clock
+that night Francine Rollard is startled by the entrance of
+Madame Harlowe into her bedroom.  For a moment
+Francine fancied that Madame had been drinking.  She
+was very quickly better informed.  She was told to get
+up, to watch for Betty Harlowe's return and to bring her
+immediately to Madame Harlowe's bedroom.  At one
+o'clock Francine Rollard is waiting in the dark hall.  As
+Betty comes in from her party, Francine Rollard gives
+her the message.  Neither of these two girls know as yet
+how much of their villainies has been discovered.  But
+something at all events.  Betty Harlowe bade Francine
+wait and ran upstairs silently to her room.  Betty
+Harlowe was prepared against discovery.  She had been
+playing with fire, and she didn't mean to be burnt.  She had
+the arrow-poison ready&mdash;yes, ready for herself.  She
+filled her hypodermic needle, and with that concealed in
+the palm of her glove she went to confront her
+benefactress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can imagine that scene, the outraged woman
+whose romance and tragedy were to be exploited blurting
+out her fury in front of Francine Rollard.  It wasn't
+Waberski who was to be stripped to the skin&mdash;no, but
+the girl in the pretty silver frock and the silver slippers.
+You can imagine the girl, too, her purpose changing under
+the torrent of abuse.  Why should she use the arrow-poison
+to destroy herself when she can save everything&mdash;fortune,
+liberty, position&mdash;by murder?  Only she must be
+quick.  Madame's voice is rising in gusts of violence.
+Even in that house of the old thick walls, Jeanne Baudin,
+some one, might be wakened by the clamour.  And in a
+moment the brutal thing is done.  Madame Harlowe is
+flung back upon her bed.  Her mouth is covered and held
+by Francine Rollard.  The needle does its work.  'That
+will do now,' whispers Betty Harlowe.  But at the door
+of the treasure-room in the darkness Ann Upcott is standing,
+unable to identify the voice which whispered, just
+as you and I were unable, Monsieur, to identify a voice
+which whispered to us from the window of Jean Cladel's
+house, but taking deep into her memory the terrible
+words.  And neither of the murderesses knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They go calmly about their search for the letters.
+They cannot find them, because Madame had pushed them
+into the coffer of old bills and papers.  They rearrange
+the bed, they compose their victim in it as if she were
+asleep, they pass into the treasure-room, and they forget
+to lock the door behind them.  Very likely they visit the
+Hôtel de Brebizart.  Betty Harlowe has the rest of the
+arrow-poison and the needle to put in some safe place,
+and where else is safe?  In the end when every care has
+been taken that not a scrap of incriminating evidence is
+left to shout 'Murder' the next morning, Betty creeps
+up the stairs to make sure that Ann Upcott is asleep; and
+Ann Upcott waking, stretches up her hands and touches
+her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That, Monsieur," and Hanaud rose to his feet, "is
+what you would call the case for the Crown.  It is the
+case which you and Monsieur Bex have to meet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher made up his mind to say the things
+which he had almost said at the beginning of this
+interview.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall tell Monsieur Bex exactly what you have told
+me.  I shall give him every assistance that I personally or
+my firm can give.  But I have no longer any formal
+connection with the defence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud looked at Frobisher in perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand, Monsieur.  This is not the
+moment to renounce a client."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor do I," rejoined Frobisher.  "It is the other way
+about.  Monsieur Bex put it to me very&mdash;how shall I
+say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud supplied the missing word with a twitch of his
+lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very correctly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He told me that Mademoiselle did not wish to see
+me again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud walked over to the window.  The humiliation
+evident in Frobisher's voice and face moved him.  He
+said very gently, "I can understand that, can't you?  She
+has fought for a great stake all this last week, her liberty,
+her fortune, her good name&mdash;and you.  Oh, yes," he
+continued, as Jim stirred at the table.  "Let us be frank!
+And you, Monsieur!  You were a little different from
+her friends.  From the earliest moment she set her
+passions upon you.  Do you remember the first morning I
+came to the Maison Crenelle?  You promised Ann Upcott
+to put up there though you had just refused the same
+invitation from Betty Harlowe.  Such a fury of jealousy
+blazed in her eyes, that I had to drop my stick with a
+clatter in the hall lest she should recognise that I could not
+but have discovered her secret.  Well, having fought for
+this stake and lost, she would not wish to see you.  You
+had seen her, too, in her handcuffs and tied by the legs
+like a sheep.  I understand her very well."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher remembered that from the moment
+Hanaud burst into the room at the Hôtel de Brebizart,
+Betty had never once even looked at him.  He got up
+from his chair and took up his hat and stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must go back to my partner in London with this
+story as soon as I have told it to Monsieur Bex," he
+said.  "I should like it complete.  When did you first
+suspect Betty Harlowe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That, too, I shall tell you.  Oh, don't thank me!  I am
+not so sure that I should be so ready with all these
+confidences, if I was not certain what the verdict in the Assize
+Court must be.  I shall gather up for you the threads
+which are still loose, but not here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See, it is past noon!  We shall once more have
+Philippe Le Bon's Terrace Tower to ourselves.  It may
+be, too, that we shall see Mont Blanc across all the
+leagues of France.  Come!  Let us take your
+memorandum and go there."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap26"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: <i>The Façade of Notre Dame</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+For a second time they were fortunate.  It was a day
+without mist or clouds, and the towering silver ridge
+hung in the blue sky distinct and magical.  Hanaud lit
+one of his black cigarettes and reluctantly turned away
+from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There were two great mistakes made," he said.  "One
+at the very beginning by Betty Harlowe.  One at the very
+end by me, and of the two mine was the least excusable.
+Let us begin, therefore, at the beginning.  Madame
+Harlowe has died a natural death.  She is buried; Betty
+Harlowe inherits the Harlowe fortune.  Boris Waberski asks
+her for money and she snaps her the fingers.  Why should
+she not?  Ah, but she must have been very sorry a week
+later that she snapped her the fingers!  For suddenly he
+flings his bomb.  Madame Harlowe was poisoned by her
+niece Betty.  Imagine Betty Harlowe's feelings when she
+heard of that!  The charge is preposterous.  No doubt!
+But it is also true.  A minute back she is safe.  Nothing
+can touch her.  Now suddenly her head is loose upon her
+neck.  She is frightened.  She is questioned in the
+examining magistrate's room.  The magistrate has nothing
+against her.  All will be well if she does not make a slip.
+But there is a good chance she may make a slip.  For she
+has done the murder.  Her danger is not any evidence
+which Waberski can bring, but just herself.  In two days
+she is still more frightened, for she hears that Hanaud is
+called in from Paris.  So she makes her mistake.  She
+sends a telegram to you in London."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why was that a mistake?" Frobisher asked quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I begin to ask myself at once: 'How does
+Betty Harlowe know that Hanaud has been called in?'
+Oh, to be sure, I made a great fluster in my office about
+the treachery of my colleagues in Dijon.  But I did not
+believe a word of that.  No!  I am at once curious about
+Betty Harlowe.  That is all.  Still, I am curious.  Well,
+we come to Dijon and you tell her that you have shown
+me that telegram."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Jim admitted.  "I did.  I remember, too," he
+added slowly, "that she put out her hand on the window
+sill&mdash;yes, as if to steady herself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she was quick to recover," returned Hanaud with
+a nod of appreciation.  "She must account for that
+telegram.  She cannot tell me that Maurice Thevenet sent a
+hurried word to her.  No!  So when I ask her if she
+has ever received one of these anonymous letters&mdash;which,
+remember, were my real business in Dijon&mdash;she says at
+once 'Yes, I received one on the Sunday morning which
+told me that Monsieur Hanaud was coming from Paris
+to make an end of me.'  That was quick, eh?  Yes, but I
+know it is a lie.  For it was not until the Sunday evening
+that any question of my being sent for arose at all.  You
+see Mademoiselle Betty was in a corner.  I had asked
+her for the letter.  She does not say that she has
+destroyed it, lest I should at once believe that she never
+received any such letter at all.  On the contrary she says
+that it is in the treasure-room which is sealed up, knowing
+quite well that she can write it and place it there by way
+of the Hôtel de Brebizart before the seals are removed.
+But for the letter to be in the treasure-room she must
+have received it on the Sunday morning, since it was
+on the Sunday morning that the seals were affixed.  She
+did not know when it was first proposed to call me in.
+She draws a bow at a venture, and I know that she is
+lying; and I am more curious than ever about Betty
+Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped.  For Jim Frobisher was staring at him
+with a look of horror in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was I then who put you on her track?&mdash;I who
+came out to defend her!" he cried.  "For it was I who
+showed you the telegram."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Frobisher, that would not have mattered
+if Betty Harlowe had been, as you believed her, innocent,"
+Hanaud replied gravely; and Frobisher was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, after my first interview with Betty Harlowe,
+I went over the house whilst you and Betty talked
+together in the library!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And in Mademoiselle Ann's sitting-room I found
+something which interested me at the first glance.  Now
+tell me what it was!" and he cocked his head at Jim with
+the hope that his riddle would divert him from his
+self-reproaches.  And in that to some extent he succeeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I can guess," Frobisher answered with the ghost
+of a smile.  "It was the treatise on Sporanthus."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!  The arrow-poison!  The poison which leaves
+no trace!  Monsieur, that poison has been my nightmare.
+Who would be the first poisoner to use it?  How should I
+cope with him and prove that it brought no more security
+than arsenic or prussic-acid?  These are questions which
+have terrified me.  And suddenly, unexpectedly, in a
+house where a death from heart failure has just occurred,
+I find a dry-as-dust treatise upon the poison tucked away
+under a pile of magazines in a young lady's sitting-room.
+I tell you I was staggered.  What was it doing there?
+How did it come there?  I see a note upon the cover,
+indicating a page.  I turn to the page and there, staring at
+me, is an account of Simon Harlowe's perfect specimen
+of a poison-arrow.  The anonymous letters?  They are
+at once forgotten.  What if that animal Waberski,
+without knowing it, were right, and Madame Harlowe was
+murdered in the Maison Crenelle?  I must find that out.
+I tuck the treatise up my back beneath my waistcoat and
+I go downstairs again, asking myself some questions.  Is
+Mademoiselle Ann interested in such matters as Sporanthus
+Hispidus?  Or had she anything to hope for from
+Madame Harlowe's death?  Or did she perhaps not know
+at all that the treatise was under that pile of magazines
+upon the table at the side?  I do not know, and my head
+is rather in a whirl.  Then I catch that wicked look of
+Betty Harlowe at her friend&mdash;Monsieur, a revealing look!
+I have not the demure and simple young lady of convention
+to deal with at all.  No.  I go away from the Maison
+Crenelle, still more curious about Betty Harlowe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher sat quickly down at Hanaud's side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you sure of that?" he asked suspiciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite," Hanaud replied in wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have forgotten, haven't you, that immediately
+after you left the Maison Crenelle that day you had the
+<i>sergent-de-ville</i> removed from its gates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't forget that at all," Hanaud answered
+imperturbably.  "The <i>sergent-de-ville</i> in his white trousers
+was an absurdity&mdash;worse than that, an actual hindrance.
+There is little use in watching people who know that they
+are being watched.  So I remove the <i>sergent-de-ville</i> and
+now I can begin really to watch those young ladies of
+the Maison Crenelle.  And that afternoon, whilst
+Monsieur Frobisher is removing his luggage from his hotel,
+Betty Harlowe goes out for a walk, is discreetly followed
+by Nicolas Moreau&mdash;and vanishes.  I don't blame Nicolas.
+He must not press too close upon her heels.  She
+was in that place of small lanes about the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  No doubt it was through the little postern in the
+wall which we ourselves used a few days afterwards that
+she vanished.  There was the anonymous letter to be
+written, ready for me to receive when the seals of the
+treasure-room were broken.  But I don't know that yet.
+No!  All that I know is that Betty Harlowe goes out for
+a walk and is lost, and after an hour reappears in another
+street.  Meanwhile I pass my afternoon examining so far
+as I can how these young ladies pass their lives and who
+are their friends.  An examination not very productive,
+and not altogether futile.  For I find some curious friends
+in Betty Harlowe's circle.  Now, observe this, Monsieur!
+Young girls with advanced ideas, social, political, literary,
+what you will&mdash;in their case curious friends mean
+nothing!  They are to be expected.  But with a young girl
+who is to all appearance leading the normal life of her
+class, the case is different.  In her case curious friends
+are&mdash;curious.  The Espinosas, Maurice Thevenet, Jeanne
+Leclerc&mdash;flashy cheap people of that type&mdash;how shall we
+account for them as friends of that delicate piece of china,
+Betty Harlowe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher nodded his head.  He, too, had been a
+trifle disconcerted by the familiarity between Espinosa
+and Betty Harlowe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The evening," Hanaud continued, "which you spent
+so pleasantly in the cool of the garden with the young
+ladies, I spent with the Edinburgh Professor.  And I
+prepared a little trap.  Yes, and the next morning I came
+early to the Maison Crenelle and I set my little trap.  I
+replace the book about the arrows on the bookshelf in its
+obvious place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud paused in his explanation to take another black
+cigarette from his eternal blue bundle, and to offer one to
+Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then comes our interview with the animal Waberski;
+and he tells me that queer story about Betty Harlowe in
+the street of Gambetta close to the shop of Jean Cladel.
+He may be lying.  He may be speaking the truth and
+what he saw might be an accident.  Yes!  But also it fits
+in with this theory of Madame Harlowe's murder which
+is now taking hold of me.  For if that poison was used,
+then some one who understood the composition of drugs
+must have made the solution from the paste upon the
+arrow.  I am more curious than ever about Betty Harlowe!
+And the moment that animal has left me, I spring
+my trap; and I have a success beyond all my expectations.
+I point to the treatise of the Edinburgh Professor.  It was
+not in its place yesterday.  It is to-day.  Who then
+replaced it?  I ask that question and Mademoiselle Ann is
+utterly at sea.  She knows nothing about that book.
+That is evident as Mont Blanc over there in the sky.  On
+the other hand Betty Harlowe knows at once who has
+replaced that book; and in a most unwise moment of
+sarcasm, she allows me to see that she knows.  She knows
+that I found it yesterday, that I have studied it since and
+replaced it.  And she is not surprised.  No, for she
+knows where I found it.  I am at once like Waberski.  I
+know it in my heart that she put it under those magazines
+in Ann Upcott's room, although I do not yet know
+it in my head.  Betty Harlowe had prepared to divert
+suspicion from herself upon Ann Upcott, should
+suspicion arise.  But innocent people do not do that,
+Monsieur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we go into the garden and Mademoiselle Ann
+tells us her story.  Monsieur Frobisher, I said to you
+immediately afterwards that all great criminals who are
+women are great actresses.  But never in my life have I
+seen one who acted so superbly as Betty Harlowe while
+that story was being unfolded.  Imagine it!  A cruel
+murder has been secretly committed and suddenly the
+murderess has to listen to a true account of that murder
+in the presence of the detective who is there to fix the
+guilt!  There was some one at hand all the time&mdash;almost
+an eye-witness&mdash;perhaps an actual eye-witness.  For she
+cannot know that she is safe until the last word of the
+story is told.  Picture to yourself Betty Harlowe's
+feelings during that hour in the pleasant garden, if you can!
+The questions which must have been racing through her
+mind!  Did Ann Upcott in the end creep forward and
+peer through the lighted doorway?  Does she know the
+truth&mdash;and has she kept it hidden until this moment when
+Hanaud and Frobisher are present and she can speak it
+safely?  Will her next words be 'And here at my side sits
+the murderess'?  Those must have been terrible moments
+for Betty Harlowe!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yet she gave no sign of any distress," Frobisher
+added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she took a precaution," Hanaud remarked.  "She
+ran suddenly and very swiftly into the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  You seemed to me on the point of stopping her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I was," continued Hanaud.  "But I let her go
+and she returned&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With the photographs of Mrs. Harlowe," Frobisher
+interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, with more than those photographs," Hanaud
+exclaimed.  "She turned her chair towards Mademoiselle
+Ann.  She sat with her handkerchief in her hand and her
+face against her handkerchief, listening&mdash;the tender,
+sympathetic friend.  But when Mademoiselle Ann told us
+that the hour of the murder was half-past ten, a weakness
+overtook her&mdash;could not but overtake her.  And in that
+moment of weakness she dropped her handkerchief.  Oh,
+she picked it up again at once.  Yes, but where the
+handkerchief had fallen her foot now rested, and when the
+story was all ended, and we got up from our chairs, she
+spun round upon her heel with a certain violence so that
+there was left a hole in that well-watered turf.  I was
+anxious to discover what it was that she had brought out
+from the house in her handkerchief, and had dropped with
+her handkerchief and had driven with all the weight of
+her body into the turf so that no one might see it.  In
+fact I left my gloves behind in order that I might come
+back and discover it.  But she was too quick for me.  She
+fetched my gloves herself, much to my shame that I,
+Hanaud, should be waited on by so exquisite a young lady.
+However, I found it afterwards when you and Girardot
+and the others were all waiting for me in the library.  It
+was that tablet of cyanide of potassium which I showed
+to you in the Prefecture.  She did not know how much
+Ann Upcott was going to reveal.  The arrow-poison had
+been hidden away in the Hôtel de Brebizart.  But she had
+something else at hand&mdash;more rapid&mdash;death like a thunderbolt.
+So she ran into the house for it.  I tell you, Monsieur,
+it wanted nerve to sit there with that tablet close
+to her mouth.  She grew very pale.  I do not wonder.
+What I do wonder is that she did not topple straight off
+her chair in a dead faint before us all.  But no!  She sat
+ready to swallow that tablet at once if there were need,
+before my hand could stop her.  Once more I say to you,
+people who are innocent do not do that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim had no argument wherewith to answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he was forced to admit.  "She could have got
+the tablets no doubt from Jean Cladel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, then," Hanaud resumed.  "We have separated
+for luncheon and in the afternoon the seals are to
+be removed.  Before that takes place, certain things must
+be done.  The clock must be moved from the mantelshelf
+in the treasure-room on to the marquetry cabinet.  Some
+letters too must be burnt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Why?" Frobisher asked eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The letters were burned.  It is difficult to say.  For
+my part I think those old letters between Simon Harlowe
+and Madame Raviart alluded too often to the secret passage.
+But here I am guessing.  What I learnt for certain
+during that luncheon hour is that there is a secret passage
+and that it runs from the treasure-room to the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  For this time Nicolas Moreau makes no
+mistake.  He follows her to the Hôtel de Brebizart and I
+from this tower see the smoke rising from the chimney.
+Look, Monsieur, there it is!  But no smoke rises from it
+to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose to his feet and turned his back upon Mont
+Blanc.  The trees in the garden, the steep yellow-patterned
+roof, and the chimneys of the Maison Crenelle stood out
+above the lesser buildings which surrounded them.  Only
+from one of the chimneys did the smoke rise to-day, and
+that one at the extreme end of the building where the
+kitchens were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We are back then in the afternoon.  The seals are
+removed.  We are in Madame Harlowe's bedroom and
+something I cannot explain occurs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The disappearance of the necklace," Frobisher
+exclaimed confidently; and Hanaud grinned joyfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See, I set a trap for you and at once you are caught!"
+he cried.  "The necklace?  Oh, no, no!  I am prepared
+for that.  The guilt is being transferred to Mademoiselle
+Ann.  Good!  But it is not enough to hide the book
+about the arrow in her room.  No, we must provide her
+also with a motive.  Mademoiselle is poor; Mademoiselle
+inherits nothing.  Therefore the necklace worth a
+hundred thousand pounds vanishes, and you must draw from
+its vanishing what conclusion you will.  No, the little
+matter I cannot explain is different.  Betty Harlowe and
+our good Girardot pay a visit to Jeanne Baudin's bedroom
+to make sure that a cry from Madame's room could not
+be heard there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Our good Girardot comes back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he comes alone.  That is the little thing I cannot
+explain.  Where is Betty Harlowe?  I ask for her before
+I go into the treasure-room, and lo! very modestly and
+quietly she has slipped in amongst us again.  I am very
+curious about that, my friend, and I keep my eyes open
+for an explanation, I assure you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I remember," said Frobisher.  "You stopped with
+your hand upon the door and asked for Mademoiselle
+Harlowe.  I wondered why you stopped.  I attached no
+importance to her absence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud flourished his hand.  He was happy.  He was
+in the artist's mood.  The work was over, the long strain
+and pain of it.  Now let those outside admire!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of all that the treasure-room had to tell us, you know,
+Monsieur Frobisher.  But I answer a question in your
+memorandum.  The instant I am in the room, I look for
+the mouth of that secret passage from the Hôtel de
+Brebizart.  At once I see.  There is only one place.  The
+elegant Sedan chair framed so prettily in a recess of the
+wall.  So I am very careful not to pry amongst its
+cushions for the poison arrow; just as I am very careful
+not to ask for the envelope with the post mark in which
+the anonymous letter was sent.  If Betty Harlowe thinks
+that she has overreached the old fox Hanaud&mdash;good!
+Let her think so.  So we go upstairs and I find the
+explanation of that little matter of Betty Harlowe's absence
+which has been so troubling me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher stared at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he said.  "I haven't got that.  We went into
+Ann Upcott's sitting-room.  I write my memorandum
+with the shaft of the poison arrow and you notice it
+Yes!  But the matter of Betty Harlowe's absence!  No, I
+haven't got that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you have," cried Hanaud.  "That pen!  It was
+not there in the pen-tray on the day before, when I found
+the book.  There was just one pen&mdash;the foolish thing
+young ladies use, a great goose-quill dyed red&mdash;and
+nothing else.  The arrow shaft had been placed there
+since.  When?  Why, just now.  It is clear, that.  Where
+was that shaft of the poison-arrow before?  In one of
+two places.  Either in the treasure-room or in the Hôtel
+de Brebizart.  Betty Harlowe has fetched it away during
+that hour of freedom; she carries it in her dress; she seizes
+her moment when we are all in Madame Harlowe's
+bedroom and&mdash;pau, pau!&mdash;there it is in the pen-tray of
+Mademoiselle Ann, to make suspicion still more
+convincing!  Monsieur, I walk away with Monsieur Bex, who
+has some admirable scheme that I should search the
+gutters for a match-box full of pearls.  I agree&mdash;oh yes,
+that is the only way.  Monsieur Bex has found it!  On
+the other hand I get some useful information about the
+Maison Crenelle and the Hôtel de Brebizart.  I carry
+that information to a very erudite gentleman in the Palace
+of the Departmental Archives, and the next morning I
+know all about the severe Etienne de Crenelle and the
+joyous Madame de Brebizart.  So when you and Betty
+Harlowe are rehearsing in the Val Terzon, Nicolas
+Moreau and I are very busy in the Hôtel de
+Brebizart&mdash;with the results which now are clear to you, and one of
+which I have not told you.  For the pearl necklace was in
+the drawer of the writing-table."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher took a turn across the terrace.  Yes, the
+story was clear to him now&mdash;a story of dark passions and
+vanity, and greed of power with cruelties for its methods.
+Was there no spark of hope and cheer in all this desolation?
+He turned abruptly upon Hanaud.  He wished to
+know the last hidden detail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said that you had made the inexcusable mistake.
+What was it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I bade you read my estimate of Ann Upcott on the
+façade of the Church of Notre Dame."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I did," cried Jim Frobisher.  He was still looking
+towards the Maison Crenelle, and his arm swept to
+the left of the house.  His fingers pointed at the
+Renaissance church with its cupolas and its loggia, to which
+Betty Harlowe had driven him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There it is and under its porch is that terrible relief
+of the Last Judgment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Hanaud quietly.  "But that is the Church
+of St. Michel, Monsieur."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned Frobisher about.  Between him and Mont
+Blanc, close at his feet, rose the slender apse of a Gothic
+church, delicate in its structure like a jewel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is the Church of Notre Dame.  Let us go down
+and look at the façade."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanaud led Frobisher to the wonderful church and
+pointed to the frieze.  There Frobisher saw such images
+of devils half beast, half human, such grinning hog-men,
+such tortured creatures with heads twisted round so that
+they looked backwards, such old and drunken and vicious
+horrors as imagination could hardly conceive; and
+amongst them one girl praying, her sweet face tormented,
+her hands tightly clasped, an image of terror and faith,
+a prisoner amongst all these monsters imploring the
+passers-by for their pity and their help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That, Monsieur Frobisher, is what I sent you out to
+see," said Hanaud gravely.  "But you did not see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face changed as he spoke.  It shone with kindness.
+He lifted his hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim Frobisher, with his eyes fixed in wonder upon that
+frieze, heard Ann Upcott's voice behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how do you interpret that strange work, Monsieur
+Hanaud?"  She stopped beside the two men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That, Mademoiselle, I shall leave Monsieur Frobisher
+to explain to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both Ann Upcott and Jim Frobisher turned hurriedly
+towards Hanaud.  But already he was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW ***</div>
+<div style='text-align:left'>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Updated editions will replace the previous one&#8212;the old editions will
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