CHAPTER ONE: Letters of Mark (continued 4)

"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 Grenelle 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 murder had been committed arose in the first instance only from the return to its shelf of the "Treatise on Strophanthus 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. 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.

(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." 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.

(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. (4) Who then are possibly guilty? It is possible that the disappearance of the necklace is in no way connected with the murder, if murder there was.

(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 Strophanthus 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. More attention might be given to her. It is too easily accepted that she has nothing to do with it. No one suspects her. Her record is good.

(iii) Francine Rollard. She was certainly frightened this afternoon. The necklace would be a temptation. Was it she who bent over Ann Upcott in the darkness? 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.

(iv) Ann Upcott. Her introduction into the Maison Grenelle took place through Waberski and under dubious circumstances. She is poor, a paid companion, and the necklace is worth a considerable fortune. Her introductions may be explicable on favourable grounds. Until we know more of her history it is impossible to judge.

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. Her account of the night of the 27th April may be true from beginning to end.

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. Her connection with Waberski was sufficiently close to make him count upon Ann's support in his charge against Betty. 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?

(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 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. 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. But he would have collapsed equally if he had believed that no murder had been committed at all.

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 Strophanthus 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 Grenelle."

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 Grenelle?"

"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 Grenelle?" 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 Grenelle."

"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 Strophanthus 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."