the ears, was cocked up at Bencolin's like a dog's. The reddish eyes widened and shrank beseechingly.
'Please, monsieur! Please! She knows nothing of this - -!'
'Old fool !' the girl snapped. 'Stay out of this. I will handle them.'
He subsided, stroking his white moustache and whiskers with an expression of pride in his daughter, but begging her forgiveness. Her eyes challenged Bencolin again.
'Well, mademoiselle? Is the name Claudine Martel familiar to you ?'
'Monsieur, are you under the impression that I know the names, as well as the faces, of all the casual visitors to this place?'
Bencolin leaned forward. 'What makes you think Mademoiselle Martel might have been a visitor to this place?'
'You say,' the other responded grimly, 'that she is here.’
'She was murdered in the passage behind this house, communicating with the street,' said Bencolin. 'She probably never visited the museum in her life.'
'Ah! - Well, in that case,' the girl shrugged, reaching for her sewing again, 'the museum can be left out of it. Eh?'
Bencolin took out a cigar. He appeared to be considering this last remark of hers, a wrinkle between his brows. Marie Augustin applied herself again to the sewing, and she was smiling as though she had won a difficult passage at arms.
'Mademoiselle,' the detective said thoughtfully. 'I am going to ask you, in a moment, to step out and look at the body in question. .. . But my mind goes back to a conversation we had earlier this evening.'
'Yes?’
'A conversation concerning Mademoiselle Odette Duchene, the young lady we found murdered in the Seine.'
Again she put down the sewing. 'Ah, zut!' she cried, striking the table. 'Is there never to be any peace? I have told you all I know about that.'
'Captain Chaumont, if I remember correctly, asked you for a description of Mademoiselle Duchene. Whether due to a faulty memory or some other cause, your description was incorrect.'
'I have told you! I must have been mistaken. I must have been thinking of something else - somebody else — '
Bencolin finished lighting his cigar and flourished the match.
'Ah, precisely! Precisely, mademoiselle! You were thinking of somebody else. I do not think you ever saw Mademoiselle Duchene. You were called on suddenly for a description. So you took the risk; you spoke very rapidly, and obviously described somebody else who was in your mind. That is what causes me to wonder —'
'Well?'
'to wonder,5 Bencolin went on, thoughtfully, 'why that image was at the back of your brain in the first place. To wonder, in short, why you gave us so exact a description of Mademoiselle Claudine Martel.'
Bencolin had scored. You could see it in the slight droop of her lip, the holding of her breath, the fixed expression of her eyes, momentarily, while her agile brain sought for loopholes. Then she laughed.
'Why, monsieur, I don't follow you! The description I gave you might have fitted anybody —'
'Ah! You admit, then, that you never saw Mademoiselle Duchene?'
'I admit nothing! ... As I was saying, my description would fit a thousand women —' 'Only one of them lies dead here.'
'and the fact, the coincidence, that Mademoiselle
Martel happens to look something like the person I described, is nothing more than a coincidence.'
'Softly!' urged Bencolin, making an admonitory gesture with his cigar. 'How do you know what Mademoiselle Martel looks like, mademoiselle? You haven't seen her yet.'
Her face was red and angry. Not, you felt, because of any accusation against her, but because Bencolin had tripped her up. Anybody who was a little faster than she at verbal rapier-play would infuriate her. Again she tossed back the long bobbed hair from her cars, smoothing it behind them with savage gestures.
'Don't you think,' she suggested frigidly, 'you have tried your lawyer's tricks on me long enough? I've had enough!'
Bencolin shook his head in a paternal fashion which irritated her the more. He beamed. 'No, but, really, mademoiselle! There arc other questions to be discussed. I cannot let you off so easily.'
'As a policeman you have that privilege.'
'Exactly. Well, then. I think we must admit, offhand, that the deaths of Odette Duchene and Claudette Martel were connected - very closely connected. But now we come to a third lady, a more enigmatic figure than either one of them. She seems to haunt this place. I refer to a woman whose face nobody has seen, but who appears to wear a fur neckpiece and a brown hat. To-night, in speaking of the matter, your father advanced an interesting theory ... '
'O Holy Mother!’ she snarled. 'Have you been listening to that dotard's nonsense? Speak up, papa! Did you tell them-all that?'
The old man straightened up with curious dignity. He said: 'Marie, I am your father. I tried to tell them what I thought was the truth,'
For the first time that night the cold common-sense whiteness of her face was warmed by an expression of tenderness. Stepping over softly, she put her arm around his shoulders.
'Listen, papa,' she murmured, searching his face; 'listen. You are tired. Go and lie down. Rest yourself. These gentlemen won't need to talk with you any longer. I can tell them what they want to know.'
She shot a glance at us, and Bencolin nodded.
'Well,' the old man said, hesitantly - 'well - if you don't mind. It's been a great shock. A great shock. I don't know when I've been so upset. ...' He made a vague gesture. 'Forty-two years,' he continued, his voice rising, 'forty-two years, and we have a name. A name means a lot to me. Yes....'
He smiled at us in an apologetic way. Then he turned and began to waver and grope his way towards the shadows of the room, his back stooped and his dusty head bobbing in the lamplight. Then he dissolved among the ghosts of antimacassars, among horsehair-stuffed chairs, and the dim pallor of a street lamp falling between thick curtains. Marie Augustin drew a deep breath.
'And now, monsieur?'
'You are still prepared to maintain that the woman in the brown hat is a myth ?'
'Naturally. My father has - fancies.'
'Your father, yes. There is one little point in connexion with that I should like to mention. Your father spoke of his name; he is a proud man. ... Is the running of this works a profitable business?'
She was wary now, feeling for the trap. She countered slowly. 'I see no connexion.'
'And yet there is. He has mentioned his poverty. I dare say you attend to the financial arrangements?'
'Yes.'
Bencolin took the cigar out of his mouth. 'Does lie know, then, that at various banks in Paris you have on deposit sums totalling nearly a million francs ?'
She did not reply, but a pallor crept up under her cheek bones, and her eyes grew big.
'Now, then,' Bencolin said in his conversational tone, 'have you anything to tell me?'
'Nothing.' She spoke huskily, with an effort at flinging the word. 'Except - you are a clever man, O my God ! but you are a clever man! I suppose you will tell him.'
Bencolin shrugged. 'Not necessarily. Ah! I think I hear my men.'
