"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 Grenelle!" 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
Grenelle 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 Grenelle 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 Strophanthus 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.