Bencolin's telephone rang stridently. He picked it up.
'Allo!' I heard his voice from a distance, and a buying. Who? Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet? ... Hm. Well, all right. Send them up,'
Some Charming Habits of Red-nose
Bencolin's words I scarcely heard. I knew he was speaking on the telephone, but I heard him as one hears a radio programme when absorbed in a book. More than any person I know, he has in his choice of words the power to suggest. A few phrases clang in the mind like bells, and then go reverberating with multitudinous echoes through every corner of that brain, so that spectres are roused. The whitewashed passage, with the green light falling into it, seemed now more ghastly than ever before. The sudden spring of the murderer from his cubbyhole in the dark took on a suggestion of the inexorable savagery of an animal. I could feel the shock of horror, like a blow under the heart, which Claudine Martel must have experienced when the thing, he or she, leapt. And, more terrifying than even the rest was the thought of the dying girl crying the name of her murderer to the senseless walls . . .
'Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet.' For the first time I recalled the words. Bencolin had switched on the hanging light over his desk; its yellow pool threw into shadow all the room save the vast flat-topped desk, which was littered to confusion with papers. He sat down in a padded chair behind it, a slouching image with heavy-lidded eyes, face shadowed and lined harshly, and the greying black hair which was parted in the middle and twirled up like horns. One hand lay on the desk, idly. Beside it, as he stared at the door, I saw glittering on the blotter a small silver key.
An attendant ushered in Mme Duchene and Robiquet; Bencolin rose to greet them, and indicated chairs beside his desk. Despite bad weather, the woman was exquisitely turned out - sealskin and pearls, her face almost youthful under the wings of a tight black hat. The pouches under her eyes might have been shadows, like her pinched look; she hardly seemed the bedraggled and sharp-featured woman we had seen that morning. Her eyes, I now perceived, were not black; they were of a misty dark grey. With one gloved hand she tapped on the desk a copy of a newspaper, and, as she tapped, her wet face became grey with something like despair....
'Monsieur Bencolin,' she said in her dry voice, 'I have taken the liberty of coming to you. Certain insinuations were dropped to me by an inspector of police who called this afternoon. I did not understand them. I should have forgotten them entirely, but ... I saw this.' Again she tapped the paper. 'I asked Paul to bring me here.'
'Of course,' said Robiquet, nervously. He was bundled into a thick overcoat, and I saw that he was glancing at the silver key.
'The pleasure is mine, madame,' said Bencolin. She made a gesture, as of brushing politeness aside. 'Will you speak to me frankly?' 'About what, madame?'
'About my daughter's - death. And Claudine Martel's,' breathlessly. 'You did not tell me about that this morning.'
'But why should I, madame? You surely had enough on your mind, and any other painful —'
'Please, please don't try to evade me! I must know. I am sure they are related. This matter of Claudine's being found in a waxworks, that is police subterfuge, is it not?'
Bencolin studied her, his fingers at his temple. He did not reply.
'Because, you see,' she went on, with an effort, 'I myself was once a member of that Club of Masks. Oh. years ago! Fifteen years. It is not a new institution, though I suppose,' bitterly, 'it is under new management since my time I know where it is situated. The waxworks - no, I might never have suspected the waxworks at all. But I sometimes suspected that Claudine went there, to the club. And when I learned of her death - and thought of Odette's death. ... She moistened her lips with her tongue. The greyness had settled on her face. She continued to tap the newspaper spasmodically. . . .
'All of a sudden, monsieur, it rushed over me. I knew. Mothers do. I have felt something wrong. Odette was concerned. Wasn't she?'
'I do not know, madame. If so - innocently.'
A blankness had come into her eyes. She murmured:
' "Unto" ... what is it? . .. "unto the third and fourth generation." I have never been religious. But I believe in God now. Oh, yes. And His wrath. On me.'
She had begun to tremble. Robiquet was so pale that his face resembled wax; he dug his chin into his coat collar and said, in a muffled voice:
'Aunt Beatrice, I told you - you shouldn't have come out. It's useless. The gentlemen are doing all they can. And - - '
'Then, this morning,' she rushed on, 'when you sent your friend down to listen to Gina talking to that man, I should have known. Of course. Gina is concerned. Her behaviour! Her horrible behaviour. My little Odette. They were all concerned in it. ...'
'Madame, surely you are overwrought,' the detective observed, gently. 'The mere formality of a man calling at the house, and Mademoiselle Prevost's seeing him . . .'
'Now I will tell you something. I got a shock then, and it made me think. It was the voice of that man.'
'Yes?' prompted Bencolin. His fingers began to tap softly on the desk.
'As I say, it started me thinking. I have heard it before.' 'Ah ! You are acquainted with this Monsieur Galant?' 'I have never seen him. But I have heard his voice four times.'
'Robiquet stared, hypnotized, at the gleaming silver key as madame went on steadily:
'The second time was ten years ago. I was upstairs, and Odette - she was a little girl - was with me, learning how to do fancy-work. My husband was reading down in the library; I could smell the smoke of his cigar. The door-bell rang, the maid admitted a visitor, and I heard a voice in the hall. It was pleasant. My husband received him. I could hear them talking, though not what was said. But several times the visitor laughed. Later the maid let him out. . .. I remember that his shoes squeaked and he was still laughing. A few hours after that I noticed powder fumes instead of cigar smoke, and I went downstairs. My husband used a silencer on his pistol when he shot himself, because - because he didn't want to wake Odette. ...’
'Then I remembered when I had heard that voice for the first time. In the Club of Masks, where I had been - oh, before I was married, I swear it! I heard it from a masked man, who was laughing. That must have been twenty-three or four years ago. I remembered it only because the man had a hole cut in the mask for his nose, which was a horrible red thing, all twisted; and to see him was like a nightmare; so I never forgot it, or the voice... .'
She bowed her head.
'And the third time, madame?' said Bencolin.
'The third time,' she replied, swallowing, 'was less than six months ago, in early summer. It was at the home of Gina Prevost's parents, at Neuilly. It was in the garden. Towards evening. There was a yellow sky, and I could see a summer-house down at the end of the garden walk, dark against it. I heard somebody's voice talking inside the summer-house. It had a spell in it, as though the man were making love; but all the high trees seemed to get cold, and the sun turned dark, because I recognized it. I ran away. Ran, I tell you! But I saw Gina Prevost come out of the summer-house, smiling to herself. Then I said to myself I was mistaken, and hysterical. . ..