greatest minds have failed to answer."
And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood
open during the day like the front door of any other house which is
let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and
rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it.
"Mr. Calladine is in?" said Hanaud.
"I will ask," replied the woman. "What name shall I say?"
"It does not matter. I will go straight in," said Hanaud quietly. "I
was here with my friend but a minute ago."
He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo
looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to
them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she
felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the
other hand, uttered a cry of relief.
"These are my friends," he exclaimed to the girl, "the friends of whom
I spoke to you"; and to Hanaud he said: "This is Miss Carew."
Hanaud bowed.
"You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle," he said very gently, and
a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage
revived in her.
"But you have heard it," she answered.
"Not from you," said Hanaud.
So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night.
Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable
sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl
herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls
afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of
sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr.
Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his
music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was
the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most
compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him,
each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle
of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to
suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which
had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young
and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the
tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymene all that
remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the
slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something
almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for
detail, the same which Calladine had already related.
"Thank you," said Hanaud when she had done. "Now I must ask you two
questions."
"I will answer them."
Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he
might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which
Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and
Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair.
"You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?"
Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over
her face.
"You have a right to ask," she answered. "Never." She looked into his
eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon
each knee and led to his second question.
"Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine
that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?"
"Yes."
"Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I will tell you," said Joan Carew. "I could not bear to keep the
little diamond chain in my room."
For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that
complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater
anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair.
"I was terrified," continued Joan Carew. "I kept thinking: 'They must
have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason.
I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the
door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her
chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if
I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea."
"You had locked it away?" cried Hanaud.
"Yes. My maid did not see it."
Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in
a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had
not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope,
one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford
Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the
envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her
letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden
she might enclose with it a photograph.
"And to whom did you send it?" asked Mr. Ricardo.
"To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address
carefully. Then I went out and posted it."
"Where?" Hanaud inquired.
"In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar
Square."
Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.
"You had your wits about you, I see," he said.
"What if the envelope gets lost?" said Ricardo.
Hanaud laughed grimly.
"If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will
be that one," he said. "The news of the crime is published, you see,"
and he swung round to Joan.
"Did you know that, Miss Carew?"
"No," she answered in an awe-stricken voice.
"Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to
say about it." And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found
quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of
him.
IV
There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the
mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was
of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the
administration of the anaesthetic.
"It's murder none the less," said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at
Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going
to do.
"I must tell my story to the police," she replied painfully and
slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.
Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he
spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. "Well," he asked, "and
what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went
into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers,
dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?"
"Yes."
"And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and
wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?"
"I should think so."
"Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English
idiom--putting you in the coach?"
Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line.
His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart
was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the
tablecloth with her fingers.
"Yet I think I must tell the police," she repeated, looking up and
dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were
very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed.
"And I think you are quite right," he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's
surprise. "Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will
help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I
will go with you myself to Scotland Yard."
"Thank you," said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.
Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.
"It was all right," he said. "The police were very kind. Miss Joan
Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately,
the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and
was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's
story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to
believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out
of the witness-box if they can."
"She is to stay here in London, then?" asked Ricardo.
"Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera
House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be
lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange
incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of
the disguise which they had used." Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if
the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash
of shrewdness, said:
"It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever
be caught at all."
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
"There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a
hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a
hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room
blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white
pigeon. That is the value of the chance."
"But," exclaimed Ricardo, "those pearls were of great value, and I
have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All
agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come
upon the market----"
"That is true," Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. "But how are they
known?"
"By their weight," said Mr. Ricardo.
"Exactly," replied Hanaud. "But did you not also hear at this trial of
yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove
a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle
smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer
identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that
sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and
Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy
Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a
new pearl which can be traded." He looked at Ricardo. "Who shall say
that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back
streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?"
Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. "I have some
experience in these matters," he said loftily to Hanaud. "I am sure
that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed."
Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo
had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under
Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter
rested.
The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of
early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under
England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of
youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made
acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang
"Louise" at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the
Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was
already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.
But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development.
Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in
the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud.
She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the
room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told
another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange
and--yes--yet more suspicious.
"It has been going on for some time," she began. "I thought of coming
to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never
believe me!"
"Let us hear!" said Hanaud patiently.
"I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the
still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to
sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling
asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself
awake."
"But you couldn't," said Hanaud with a smile. "Only the old can do
that."
"No, I couldn't," she admitted; "and--oh, my nights were horrible
until"--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--"until one
night the mask slipped."
"What--?" cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his
voice. "What are you saying?"
With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead
and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:
"It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of
the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead
visible--no more."
"Well?" asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between
the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a
revelation.
"I waked up," the girl continued, "in the darkness, and for a moment
the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me
to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white
forehead showing above the mask."
"When was that?" asked Ricardo.
"A fortnight ago."
"Why didn't you come with your story then?"
"I waited," said Joan. "What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I
thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides,
I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important
just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to
talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to
imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's
carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at
all. Do you understand that?" she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal
on Hanaud's face.
"Yes," replied Hanaud. "I follow your thought."
"I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the
truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it," and she turned
eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn
her batteries on his companion. "My whole point of view was changed. I
was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished
to dream, but----"
"But you could not," suggested Hanaud.
"No, that is the truth," replied Joan Carew. "Whereas before I was
anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that
I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all
through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming
through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber."
Hanaud nodded.
"It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by
contraries."
Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look
of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other.
Hanaud was listening patiently.
"Then came my rehearsals," Joan Carew continued, "and that wonderful
opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if
only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that
haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember
it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to
sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?"
Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the
psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that
question.
"It is true, my friend," he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. "The
great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While
the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the
picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great
part."
"Thank you," said Hanaud gravely. "And now Miss Carew may perhaps
resume her story."
"It was the very night of my debut," she continued. "I had supper with
some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her
presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again."
"Yes?"
"This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a
black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was
sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man."
"And it did vanish?"
"Three nights afterwards."
"And you did know the man?"
The girl's face became troubled. She frowned.
"I knew the face, that was all," she answered. "I was disappointed. I
had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I
have seen him."
"You don't even remember when?" asked Hanaud.
"No." Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet,
and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. "No. I try all
the time to remember. But it is no good."
Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being
played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a
real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier
suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was
implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse
cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew,
just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her
frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace
was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men,
an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl
of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat
and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly
searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of
questions:
"How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed
complete the face of your assailant?"
Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.
"I know," she exclaimed. "I was at the opera."
"And what was being given?"
"_The Jewels of the Madonna_."
Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected
precisely that answer.
"Now," he continued, "you are sure that you have seen this man?"
"Yes."
"Very well," said Hanaud. "There is a game you play at children's
parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you
get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I."
Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin
propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put
each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered
doubtfully he pressed it.
"You crossed on the _Lucania_ from New York?"
"Yes."
"Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture
quite clear?"
"Yes."
"Was it at breakfast that you saw him?"
"No."
"At luncheon?"
"No."
"At dinner?"
She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at
the tables.
"No."
"Not in the dining-table at all, then?"
"No."
"In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day
lift your head and see him?"
"No."
"On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your
deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?"
"No."
Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to
journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had
studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud
knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From
Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start
of joy, she cried: "Yes, it was there."
Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
"Ouf!" he grunted. "To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it
makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear."
It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth
Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to
New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst
she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left
the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall
in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should
single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing,
and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.
"I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly," she said. "He was
tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five
or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow
stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I
noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people."
"Do you remember to whom?"
"No."
"Did he notice you, do you think?"
"I am sure he didn't," the girl replied emphatically. "He never looked
at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me
afterwards."
She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and
singers as she knew at that party. "And that is all," she said.
"Thank you," said Hanaud. "It is perhaps a good deal. But it is
perhaps nothing at all."
"You will let me hear from you?" she cried, as she rose to her feet.
"Miss Carew, I am at your service," he returned. She gave him her hand
timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a
bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no
right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the
table at Ricardo.
"Yes," he said, "all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who
slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace,
a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all,
this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it.
But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the
Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned."
"You have an idea?" exclaimed Ricardo.
"Perhaps!" said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the
_Times_. "Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre."
"You are the most irritating man!" Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively.
"If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger
against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '_I_ know,' when
you know nothing at all."
Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. "We will go and sit in your box at
the opera to-night," he said, "and you shall explain to me all through
the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa."
They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box
was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box.
"We are near the stage," said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the
corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was
hidden from view. "I like that."
The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and
satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction
had made its tryst there that night.
"Yes, this is wonderful," said Hanaud. "What opera do they play?" He
glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise:
"We are in luck. It is _The Jewels of the Madonna_."
"Do you believe in omens?" Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet
recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon.
"No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part,"
said Hanaud.
Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil
your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great
artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera
was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when
the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri,
on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image,
gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr.
Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently.
"How Calve would have brought out the psychological value of that
scene!" he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with
his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently
concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the
act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx,
staring through his glasses.
"That is all," said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time.
"They will come out," said Hanaud. "Wait!" And from between the
curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the
footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at
last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of
exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that
season-worn dilettante with envy.
"What a night!" said Hanaud. "What a wonderful night!" And he
applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried:
"We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will
finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of
the morning." And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the
back.