"That was madness," said Ricardo.
"But what else could they do over there in Geneva? They did not know that Harry Wethermill was suspected. Harry Wethermill had no idea of it himself. But, even if they had known, they must take the risk. Put yourself into their place for a moment. They had seen my advertisement about Celie Harland in the Geneva paper. Marthe Gobin, that busybody who was always watching her neighbours, was no doubt watched herself. They see her leave the house, an unusual proceeding for her with her husband ill, as her own letter tells us. Hippolyte follows her to the station, sees her take her ticket to Aix and mount into the train. He must guess at once that she saw Celie Harland enter their house, that she is travelling to Aix with the information of her whereabouts. At all costs she must be prevented from giving that information. At all risks, therefore, the warning telegram must be sent to Harry Wethermill."
Ricardo recognised the force of the argument.
"If only you had heard of the telegram yesterday in time!" he cried.
"Ah, yes!" Hanaud agreed. "But it was only sent off at a quarter to one. It was delivered to Wethermill and a copy was sent to the Prefecture, but the telegram was delivered first."
"When was it delivered to Wethermill?" asked Ricardo.
"At three. We had already left for the station. Wethermill was sitting on the verandah. The telegram was brought to him there. It was brought by a waiter in the hotel who remembers the incident very well. Wethermill has seven minutes and the time it will take for Marthe Gobin to drive from the station to the Majestic. What does he do? He runs up first to your rooms, very likely not yet knowing what he must do. He runs up to verify his telegram."
"Are you sure of that?" cried Ricardo. "How can you be? You were at the station with me. What makes you sure?"
Hanaud produced a brown kid glove from his pocket.
"This."
"That is your glove; you told me so yesterday."
"I told you so," replied Hanaud calmly; "but it is not my glove. It is Wethermill’s; there are his initials stamped upon the lining-see? I picked up that glove in your room, after we had returned from the station. It was not there before. He went to your rooms. No doubt he searched for a telegram. Fortunately he did not examine your letters, or Marthe Gobin would never have spoken to us as she did after she was dead."
"Then what did he do?" asked Ricardo eagerly; and, though Hanaud had been with him at the entrance to the station all this while, he asked the question in absolute confidence that the true answer would be given to him.
"He returned to the verandah wondering what he should do. He saw us come back from the station in the motor-car and go up to your room. We were alone. Marthe Gobin, then, was following. There was his chance. Marthe Gobin must not reach us, must not tell her news to us. He ran down the garden steps to the gate. No one could see him from the hotel. Very likely he hid behind the trees, whence he could watch the road. A cab comes up the hill; there’s a woman in it-not quite the kind of woman who stays at your hotel, M. Ricardo. Yet she must be going to your hotel, for the road ends. The driver is nodding on his box, refusing to pay any heed to his fare lest again she should bid him hurry. His horse is moving at a walk. Wethermill puts his head in at the window and asks if she has come to see M. Ricardo. Anxious for her four thousand francs, she answers 'Yes.' Perhaps he steps into the cab, perhaps as he walks by the side he strikes, and strikes hard and strikes surely. Long before the cab reaches the hotel he is back again on the verandah."
"Yes," said Ricardo, "it’s the daring of which you spoke which made the crime possible-the same daring which made him seek your help. That was unexampled."
"No," replied Hanaud. "There’s an historic crime in your own country, monsieur. Cries for help were heard in a by-street of a town. When people ran to answer them, a man was found kneeling by a corpse. It was the kneeling man who cried for help, but it was also the kneeling man who did the murder. I remembered that when I first began to suspect Harry Wethermill."
Ricardo turned eagerly.
"And when-when did you first begin to suspect Harry Wethermill?"
Hanaud smiled and shook his head.
"That you shall know in good time. I am the captain of the ship." His voice took on a deeper note. "But I prepare you. Listen! Daring and brains, those were the property of Harry Wethermill-yes. But it is not he who is the chief actor in the crime. Of that I am sure. He was no more than one of the instruments."
"One of the instruments? Used, then, by whom?" asked Ricardo.
"By my Normandy peasant-woman, M. Ricardo," said Hanaud. "Yes, there’s the dominating figure-cruel, masterful, relentless-that strange woman, Helene Vauquier. You are surprised? You will see! It is not the man of intellect and daring; it’s my peasant-woman who is at the bottom of it all."
"But she’s free!" exclaimed Ricardo. "You let her go free!"
"Free!" repeated Ricardo. "She was driven straight from the Villa Rose to the depot. She has been kept au secret ever since."
Ricardo stared in amazement.
"Already you knew of her guilt?"
"Already she had lied to me in her description of Adele Rossignol. Do you remember what she said-a black-haired woman with beady eyes; and I only five minutes before had picked up from the table-this."
He opened his pocket-book, and took from an envelope a long strand of red hair.
"But it was not only because she lied that I had her taken to the depot. A pot of cold cream had disappeared from the room of Mlle Celie."
"Then Perrichet after all was right."
"Perrichet after all was quite wrong-not to hold his tongue. For in that pot of cold cream, as I was sure, were hidden those valuable diamond earrings which Mlle. Celie habitually wore."
The two men had reached the square in front of the Etablissement des Bains. Ricardo dropped on to a bench and wiped his forehead.
"But I am in a maze," he cried. "My head turns round. I don’t know where I am."
Hanaud stood in front of Ricardo, smiling. He was not displeased with his companion’s bewilderment; it was all so much of tribute to himself.
"I am the captain of the ship," he said.
His smile irritated Ricardo, who spoke impatiently.
"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would tell me how you discovered all these things. And what it was that the little salon on the first morning had to tell to you? And why Celia Harland ran from the glass doors across the grass to the motor-car and again from the carriage into the house on the lake? Why she did not resist yesterday evening? Why she did not cry for help? How much of Helene Vauquier’s evidence was true and how much false? For what reason Wethermill concerned himself in this affair? Oh! and a thousand things which I don’t understand."
"Ah, the cushions, and the scrap of paper, and the aluminium flask," said Hanaud; and the triumph faded from his face. He spoke now to Ricardo with a genuine friendliness. "You must not be angry with me if I keep you in the dark for a little while. I, too, Mr. Ricardo, have artistic inclinations. I will not spoil the remarkable story which I think Mlle. Celie will be ready to tell us. Afterwards I will willingly explain to you what I read in the evidences of the room, and what so greatly puzzled me then. But it is not the puzzle or its solution," he said modestly, "which is most interesting here. Consider the people. Mme. Dauvray, the old, rich, ignorant woman, with her superstitions and her generosity, her desire to converse with Mme. de Montespan and the great ladies of the past, and her love of a young, fresh face about her; Helene Vauquier, the maid with her six years of confidential service, who finds herself suddenly supplanted and made to tend and dress in dainty frocks the girl who has supplanted her; the young girl herself, that poor child, with her love of fine clothes, the Bohemian who, brought up amidst trickeries and practising them as a profession, looking upon them and upon misery and starvation and despair as the commonplaces of life, keeps a simplicity and a delicacy and a freshness which would have withered in a day had she been brought up otherwise; Harry Wethermill, the courted and successful man of genius."