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.