Part 8 (1/2)

”Yes,” he exclaimed, ”what have you done?”

Hanaud looked at Ricardo in amazement at his audacity.

”Well, what have I done?” he asked. ”Come! tell me!”

”You have destroyed a clue,” replied Ricardo impressively.

The deepest dejection at once overspread Hanaud's burly face.

”Don't say that, M. Ricardo, I beseech you!” he implored. ”A clue! and I have destroyed it! But what kind of a clue? And how have I destroyed it? And to what mystery would it be a clue if I hadn't destroyed it?

And what will become of me when I go back to Paris, and say in the Rue de Jerusalem, 'Let me sweep the cellars, my good friends, for M.

Ricardo knows that I destroyed a clue. Faithfully he promised me that he would not open his mouth, but I destroyed a clue, and his perspicacity forced him into speech.'”

It was the turn of M. Ricardo to grow red.

Hanaud turned with a smile to Besnard.

”It does not really matter whether the creases in this cus.h.i.+on remain,”

he said, ”we have all seen them.” And he replaced the gla.s.s in his pocket.

He carried that cus.h.i.+on back and replaced it. Then he took the other, which lay at the foot of the settee, and carried it in its turn to the window. This was indented too, and ridged up, and just at the marks the nap of the silk was worn, and there was a slit where it had been cut.

The perplexity upon Hanaud's face greatly increased. He stood with the cus.h.i.+on in his hands, no longer looking at it, but looking out through the doors at the footsteps so clearly defined--the foot-steps of a girl who had run from this room and sprung into a motor-car and driven away.

He shook his head, and, carrying back the cus.h.i.+on, laid it carefully down. Then he stood erect, gazed about the room as though even yet he might force its secrets out from its silence, and cried, with a sudden violence:

”There is something here, gentlemen, which I do not understand.”

Mr. Ricardo heard some one beside him draw a deep breath, and turned.

Wethermill stood at his elbow. A faint colour had come back to his cheeks, his eyes were fixed intently upon Hanaud's face.

”What do you think?” he asked; and Hanaud replied brusquely:

”It's not my business to hold opinions, monsieur; my business is to make sure.”

There was one point, and only one, of which he had made every one in that room sure. He had started confident. Here was a sordid crime, easily understood. But in that room he had read something which had troubled him, which had raised the sordid crime on to some higher and perplexing level.

”Then M. Fleuriot after all might be right?” asked the Commissaire timidly.

Hanaud stared at him for a second, then smiled.

”L'affaire Dreyfus?” he cried. ”Oh la, la, la! No, but there is something else.”

What was that something? Ricardo asked himself. He looked once more about the room. He did not find his answer, but he caught sight of an ornament upon the wall which drove the question from his mind. The ornament, if so it could be called, was a painted tambourine with a bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim; and it was hung upon the wall between the settee and the fireplace at about the height of a man's head. Of course it might be no more than it seemed to be--a rather gaudy and vulgar toy, such as a woman like Mme. Dauvray would be very likely to choose in order to dress her walls. But it swept Ricardo's thoughts back of a sudden to the concert-hall at Leamington and the apparatus of a spiritualistic show. After all, he reflected triumphantly, Hanaud had not noticed everything, and as he made the reflection Hanaud's voice broke in to corroborate him.

”We have seen everything here; let us go upstairs,” he said. ”We will first visit the room of Mlle. Celie. Then we will question the maid, Helene Vauquier.”

The four men, followed by Perrichet, pa.s.sed out by the door into the hall and mounted the stairs. Celia's room was in the southwest angle of the villa, a bright and airy room, of which one window overlooked the road, and two others, between which stood the dressing-table, the garden. Behind the room a door led into a little white-tiled bathroom.

Some towels were tumbled upon the floor beside the bath. In the bedroom a dark-grey frock of tussore and a petticoat were flung carelessly on the bed; a big grey hat of Ottoman silk was lying upon a chest of drawers in the recess of a window; and upon a chair a little pile of fine linen and a pair of grey silk stockings, which matched in shade the grey suede shoes, were tossed in a heap.