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."
Hanaud went over to the cabinet and, using his skeleton keys, again
opened its doors. On the shelves were ranged a glass jar or two, a
retort, the simplest utensils of a laboratory and a few bottles, one
of which, larger than the rest, was half filled with a colourless
liquid.
"Alcohol," said Hanaud, pointing to the label.
Jim Frobisher moved carefully round on the outskirts of the room,
taking care not to alter the disarrangements of the furniture. He
looked the bottles over. Not one of them held a drop of that pale
lemon-coloured solution which the Professor, in his Treatise, had
described. Hanaud shut and locked the doors of the cabinet again and
stepped carefully over to the bureau. It stood open, and a few
papers were strewn upon the flap. He sat down at the bureau and
began carefully to search it. Jim sat down in a chair. Somehow it
had leaked out that, since this morning, Hanaud knew of Jean Cladel.
Jean Cladel therefore must be stopped from any revelations; and he
had been stopped. Frobisher could no longer doubt that murder had
been done on the night of April the 27th, in the Maison Grenelle.
Development followed too logically upon development. The case was
building itself up--another storey had been added to the edifice with
this new crime. Yes, certainly and solidly it was building itself
up--this case against some one.