Hanaud descended and spent a quarter of an hour with the Commissaire. As he came out he looked at his watch.
“We shall be in time, I think,” he said. He climbed into the car. “The murder of Marthe Gobin on her way from the station will put our friends at their ease. It will be published, no doubt, in the evening papers, and those good people over there in Geneva will read it with amusement. They do not know that Marthe Gobin wrote a letter yesterday night. Come, let us go!”
“Where to?” asked Ricardo.
“Where to?” exclaimed Hanaud. “Why, of course, to Geneva.”
XII
The Aluminium Flask
“I have telephoned to Lemerre, the Chef de la Sûreté at Geneva,” said Hanaud, as the car sped out of Aix along the road to Annecy. “He will have the house watched. We shall be in time. They will do nothing until dark.”
But though he spoke confidently there was a note of anxiety in his voice, and he sat forward in the car, as though he were already straining his eyes to see Geneva.
Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. They were on the great journey to Geneva. They were going to arrest Mlle. Célie and her accomplices. And Hanaud had not come disguised. Hanaud, in Ricardo’s eyes, was hardly living up to the dramatic expedition on which they had set out. It seemed to him that there was something incorrect in the great detective coming out on the chase without a false beard.
“But, my dear friend, why shouldn’t I?” pleaded Hanaud. “We are going to dine together at the Restaurant du Nord, over the lake, until it grows dark. It is not pleasant to eat one’s soup in a false beard. Have you tried it? Besides, everybody stares so, seeing perfectly well that it is false. Now, I do not want tonight that people should know me for a detective; so I do not go disguised.”
“Humorist!” said Mr. Ricardo.
“There! you have found me out!” cried Hanaud, in mock alarm. “Besides, I told you this morning that that is precisely what I am.”
Beyond Annecy, they came to the bridge over the ravine. At the far end of it, the car stopped. A question, a hurried glance into the body of the car, and the officers of the Customs stood aside.
“You see how perfunctory it is,” said Hanaud and with a jerk the car moved on. The jerk threw Hanaud against Mr. Ricardo. Something hard in the detective’s pocket knocked against his companion.
“You have got them?” he whispered.
“What?”
“The handcuffs.”
Another disappointment awaited Ricardo. A detective without a false beard was bad enough, but that was nothing to a detective without handcuffs. The paraphernalia of justice were sadly lacking. However, Hanaud consoled Mr. Ricardo by showing him the hard thing; it was almost as thrilling as the handcuffs, for it was a loaded revolver.
“There will be danger, then?” said Ricardo, with a tremor of excitement. “I should have brought mine.”
“There would have been danger, my friend,” Hanaud objected gravely, “if you had brought yours.”
They reached Geneva as the dusk was falling, and drove straight to the restaurant by the side of the lake and mounted to the balcony on the first floor. A small, stout man sat at a table alone in a corner of the balcony. He rose and held out his hands.
“My friend, M. Lemerre, the Chef de la Sûreté of Geneva,” said Hanaud, presenting the little man to his companion.
There were as yet only two couples dining in the restaurant, and Hanaud spoke so that neither could overhear him. He sat down at the table.
“What news?” he asked.
“None,” said Lemerre. “No one has come out of the house, no one has gone in.”
“And if anything happens while we dine?”
“We shall know,” said Lemerre. “Look, there is a man loitering under the trees there. He will strike a match to light his pipe.”
The hurried conversation was ended.
“Good,” said Hanaud. “We will dine, then, and be gay.”
He called to the waiter and ordered dinner. It was after seven when they sat down to dinner, and they dined while the dusk deepened. In the street below the lights flashed out, throwing a sheen on the foliage of the trees at the water’s side. Upon the dark lake the reflections of lamps rippled and shook. A boat in which musicians sang to music, passed by with a cool splash of oars. The green and red lights of the launches glided backwards and forwards. Hanaud alone of the party on the balcony tried to keep the conversation upon a light and general level. But it was plain that even he was overdoing his gaiety. There were moments when a sudden contraction of the muscles would clench his hands and give a spasmodic jerk to his shoulders. He was waiting uneasily, uncomfortably, until darkness should come.
“Eat,” he cried—“eat, my friends,” playing with his own barely tasted food.
And then, at a sentence from Lemerre, his knife and fork clattered on his plate, and he sat with a face suddenly grown white.
For Lemerre said, as though it was no more than a matter of ordinary comment:
“So Mme. Dauvray’s jewels were, after all, never stolen?”
Hanaud started.
“You know that? How did you know it?”
“It was in this evening’s paper. I bought one on the way here. They were found under the floor of the bedroom.”
And even as he spoke a newsboy’s voice rang out in the street below them. Lemerre was alarmed by the look upon his friend’s face.
“Does it matter, Hanaud?” he asked, with some solicitude.
“It matters—” and Hanaud rose up abruptly.
The boy’s voice sounded louder in the street below. The words became distinct to all upon that balcony.
“The Aix murder! Discovery of the jewels!”
“We must go,” Hanaud whispered hoarsely. “Here are life and death in the
