He was smartly dressed in a tight-fitting frock-coat and a white drill waistcoat, which showed above the opening.
“Come on!” he said, in an undertone. “I have a hard day’s work before me, I expect.”
He opened a door leading into a large room where a few people sat waiting, and said:
“Is Varnier there? Come in, Varnier.”
A man looking like a small tradesman, squat, solidly built, firmly set upon his legs, entered at the summons. The prince closed the door behind him:
“Well, Varnier, how far are you?”
“Everything’s ready for this evening, governor.”
“Good. Tell me in a few words.”
“It’s like this. After her husband’s murder, Mrs. Kesselbach, on the strength of the prospectuses which you ordered to be sent to her, selected as her residence the establishment known as the Retreat for Gentlewomen, at Garches. She occupies the last of the four small houses, at the bottom of the garden, which the management lets to ladies who prefer to live quite apart from the other boarders, the house known as the Pavillon de l’Impératrice.”
“What servants has she?”
“Her companion, Gertrude, with whom she arrived a few hours after the crime, and Gertrude’s sister Suzanne, whom she sent for to Monte Carlo and who acts as her maid. The two sisters are devoted to her.”
“What about Edwards, the valet?”
“She did not keep him. He has gone back to his own country.”
“Does she see people?”
“No. She spends her time lying on a sofa. She seems very weak and ill. She cries a great deal. Yesterday the examining-magistrate was with her for two hours.”
“Very good. And now about the young girl.”
“Mlle. Geneviève Ernemont lives across the way … in a lane running toward the open country, the third house on the right in the lane. She keeps a free school for backward children. Her grandmother, Mme. Ernemont, lives with her.”
“And, according to what you wrote to me, Geneviève Ernemont and Mrs. Kesselbach have become acquainted?”
“Yes. The girl went to ask Mrs. Kesselbach for a subscription for her school. They must have taken a liking to each other, for, during the past four days, they have been walking together in the Parc de Villeneuve, of which the garden of the Retreat is only a dependency.”
“At what time do they go out?”
“From five to six. At six o’clock exactly the young lady goes back to her school.”
“So you have arranged the thing?”
“For six o’clock today. Everything is ready.”
“Will there be no one there?”
“There is never anyone in the park at that hour.”
“Very well. I shall be there. You can go.”
He sent him out through the door leading to the hall, and, returning to the waiting-room, called:
“The brothers Doudeville.”
Two young men entered, a little overdressed, keen-eyed and pleasant-looking.
“Good morning, Jean. Good morning, Jacques. Any news at the Prefecture?”
“Nothing much, governor.”
“Does M. Lenormand continue to have confidence in you?”
“Yes. Next to Gourel, we are his favorite inspectors. A proof is that he has posted us in the Palace Hotel to watch the people who were living on the first-floor passage at the time of Chapman’s murder. Gourel comes every morning, and we make the same report to him that we do to you.”
“Capital. It is essential that I should be informed of all that happens and all that is said at the Prefecture of Police. As long as Lenormand looks upon you as his men, I am master of the situation. And have you discovered a trail of any kind in the hotel?”
Jean Doudeville, the elder of the two, replied:
“The Englishwoman who occupied one of the bedrooms has gone.”
“That doesn’t interest me. I know all about her. But her neighbor, Major Parbury?”
They seemed embarrassed. At last, one of them replied:
“Major Parbury, this morning, ordered his luggage to be taken to the Gare du Nord, for the twelve-fifty train, and himself drove away in a motor. We were there when the train left. The major did not come.”
“And the luggage?”
“He had it fetched at the station.”
“By whom?”
“By a commissionaire, so we were told.”
“Then his tracks are lost?”
“Yes.”
“At last!” cried the prince, joyfully.
The others looked at him in surprise.
“Why, of course,” he said, “that’s a clue!”
“Do you think so?”
“Evidently. The murder of Chapman can only have been committed in one of the rooms on that passage. Mr. Kesselbach’s murderer took the secretary there, to an accomplice, killed him there, changed his clothes there; and, once the murderer had got away, the accomplice placed the corpse in the passage. But which accomplice? The manner of Major Parbury’s disappearance goes to show that he knows something of the business. Quick, telephone the good news to M. Lenormand or Gourel. The Prefecture must be informed as soon as possible. The people there and I are marching hand in hand.”
He gave them a few more injunctions, concerning their double role as police-inspectors in the service of Prince Sernine, and dismissed them.
Two visitors remained in the waiting-room. He called one of them in:
“A thousand pardons, Doctor,” he said. “I am quite at your orders now. How is Pierre Leduc?”
“He’s dead.”
“Aha!” said Sernine. “I expected it, after your note of this morning. But, all the same, the poor beggar has not been long. …”
“He was wasted to a shadow. A fainting-fit; and it was all over.”
“Did he not speak?”
“No.”
“Are you sure that, from the day when the two of us picked him up under the table in that low haunt at Belleville, are you sure that nobody in your nursing-home suspected that he was the Pierre Leduc whom the police were looking for, the mysterious Pierre Leduc whom Mr. Kesselbach was trying to find at all costs?”
“Nobody. He had a room to himself. Moreover, I bandaged up his left hand so that
