he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a
little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the
depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the
groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up.
"Here is Carmen Valeri!" he cried. "Once more we are in luck. Is it
not that she is beautiful?"
Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his
eyeglass.
"So, so," he said.
"Ah!" returned Hanaud. "Then her companion will interest you still
more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein."
Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its
cord against the buttons of his waistcoat.
"What!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible!" He looked again. "Certainly
the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--" He turned back to Hanaud
utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier
recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle
imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon
Ricardo and convinced him.
"How long have you known?" he asked in a whisper of awe.
"Since ten o'clock to-night."
"But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it."
"The necklace!" said Hanaud carelessly. "That is already found."
Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it
in his very spine.
"It's found?" he said in a startled whisper.
"Yes."
Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume,
towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with
a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who
has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it.
Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that
afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the
name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of
thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the
night.
"Then she is implicated too!" he said. What a change for her, he
thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the
gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel
of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms
in Aylesbury Prison!
"She!" exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama
Ricardo was almost disappointed. "She has nothing whatever to do with
it. She knows nothing. Andre Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri!
She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to
know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the
director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is."
Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world
of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of
tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism.
"They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity," he said, "and
they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre."
He told them anecdote upon anecdote.
"And Carmen Valeri," Hanaud asked in a pause; "is she troublesome this
season?"
"Has been," replied Clements dryly. "At present she is playing at
being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago." He turned to
Ricardo. "Superstition's her trouble, and Andre Favart knows it. She
left him behind in America this spring."
"America!" suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at
him in surprise.
"She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter," he
returned. "Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with
myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a
panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night.
There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't
sing for worlds. And it was the first night of _The Jewels of the
Madonna!_ Imagine the fix I was in!"
"What did you do?" asked Ricardo.
"The only thing there was to do," replied Clements with a shrug of the
shoulders. "I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again.
She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in
the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the
ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course,
as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house.
Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm
living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never
has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a
swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and
treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except
when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks
on. Well, I suppose it's time to go."
The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr.
Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained
Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while,
greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however,
when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.
"I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your
sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama
which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave
for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday."
And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor
Square.
Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get
no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem
for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast
next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off
the top of his egg at the table.
"So I see you have found it all out, my friend," he said.
"Not all," replied Ricardo modestly, "and you will not mind, I am
sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning."
"Not at all," said Hanaud. "I am all for good manners myself."
He dipped his spoon into his egg.
"But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning."
Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.
"Joan Carew saw Andre Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw
him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that
you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen
Valeri was amongst them."
Hanaud nodded his head.
"Exactly."
"No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took
unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her,
Andre Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type."
Again Hanaud agreed.
"She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her
mind--an undeveloped film."
Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo.
Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of
the night.
"Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously
recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and
by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes
familiar. Finally she makes her debut, is entertained at supper
afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri."
"Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party,"
interjected Hanaud.
"She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when
awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its
effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask
slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the
opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in _The Jewels of the Madonna_. No
doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to
acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew
powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen
Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is
unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask
vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait
limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street,
though she does not know by what means she identified him."
"Yes," said Hanaud. "It is curious the brain working while the body
sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall."
Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.
"But of course," he said, "I could not have worked the problem out but
for you. You knew of Andre Favart and the kind of man he was."
Hanaud laughed.
"Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the
cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe." His laughter ceased suddenly, and
he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. "Here is one
of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend," he said
very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard
light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.
For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: "But have you
evidence enough?"
"Yes."
"Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it
yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?"
"But they won't appear in the case at all," Hanaud said. "Wait, wait!"
and once more he smiled. "By the way, what is the number of
Calladine's house?"
Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. "It is all for
your sake, my friend," he said with a chuckle.
"Nonsense," said Ricardo. "You have the spirit of the theatre in your
bones."
"Well, I shall not deny it," said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter
to the nearest pillar-box.
Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At
breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At
luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a
thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said
as he drank his tea:
"You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?"
"Yes. Do we?"
"Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your
box."
"That is very kind of him, I am sure," said Mr. Ricardo.
The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the
crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said
Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud
looked at his programme.
"Ah! It is _Il Ballo de Maschera_ to-night. We always seem to hit upon
something appropriate, don't we?"
Then he raised his eyebrows.
"Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing
in the role of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular
melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember."
Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the
opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take.
He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:
"By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself."
Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.
"Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself." But he had
done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate
stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the
desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the
box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.
"It was kind of you to invite me," he said and, very ill at ease, he
took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house
as it filled up.
"There's the overture," said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were
festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their
turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew
had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry
Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr.
Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was
looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to
look from his programme to the stage and back again several times
before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it
did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects,
must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the
ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes,
the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis
Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.
"You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll
be over on the Continent by one in the morning."
"No, he won't," replied Hanaud. "For one thing, he never comes to
Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part,
is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second
thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in
Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by
the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements
have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really
remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to
the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the
result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can
enjoy ourselves, eh?"
Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the
genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of
the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have
been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud
stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo
his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes.
Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had
never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a
bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his
chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and
quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.
"She is wonderful," he said, like a man waking up.
"She is very good," replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's
transports.
"We will go round to the back of the stage," said Hanaud.
They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long
corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men
standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the
dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door
was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her
face was troubled, her eyes afraid.
"Courage, little one," said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the
room. "It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen
too soon."
The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor
and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more
Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in
the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their
motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of
the corridor, he saw Clements and Andre Favart. They approached,
discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London
opera during the next season.
"We have to look ahead, my dear friend," said Clements, "and though I
should be extremely sorry----"
At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It
opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind
her. At the sound Andre Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the
panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay
figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There
was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was
as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She
trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to
swoon.
Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered
back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the
corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress.
Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.
"What does this outrage mean?" he asked, and one of the men drew a
warrant and notebook from his pocket.
"You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis
Hotel," he said, "and I have to warn you that anything you may say
will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you."
"Preposterous!" exclaimed Favart. "There's a mistake. We will go along
to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?"
Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.
"In the property-room of the theatre," he said.
At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. "You are
here, too, are you?" he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat.
Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and
when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.
Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.
"Let us go to the property-room," he said. They passed along the
corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them.
He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room.
"He would like to come, of course," said Ricardo.
"Would he?" asked Hanaud. "Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up,
you know," and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back
across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective
in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.
"What is it you really want, sir?" the property-master asked of the
director.
"Only the jewels of the Madonna," Hanaud answered.
The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling
cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge
glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's
necklace was entwined.
"Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when _The Jewels
of the Madonna_ was being performed!" exclaimed Ricardo.
Hanaud nodded.
"He came to watch over his treasure."
Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.
"No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it
to England."
Hanaud agreed.
"Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York."
"But to hide them here!" cried Mr. Clements. "He must have been mad."
"Why?" asked Hanaud. "Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is
going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to
look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an
opera house?"
"You did," said Mr. Ricardo.
"I?" replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. "Joan Carew's dreams led
me to Andre Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of
the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the
back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those
pearls through my opera glasses."
"At the end of the second act?" cried Ricardo suddenly. "I remember
now."
"Yes," replied Hanaud. "But for that second act the pearls would have
stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool
as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room
without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the
murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have
taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain."
"Shall we go?"
They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of
the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew
back.
"We will not go in, I think, eh?"
"Why?" asked Ricardo.
Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it
taking their supper.
"Perhaps," said Hanaud with a smile, "perhaps, my friend--what? Who
shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?"
They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the
season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a
wedding present.