“What were they going to do?” asked Ricardo.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
“It is not pretty—what they were going to do. We reach the garden in our launch. At that moment Hippolyte and Adèle, who is most likely Hippolyte’s wife, are in the lighted parlour on the basement floor. Adèle is preparing her morphia-needle. Hippolyte is going to get ready the rowing-boat which was tied at the end of the landing-stage. Quietly as we came into the bank, they heard or saw us. They ran out and hid in the garden, having no time to lock the garden door, or perhaps not daring to lock it lest the sound of the key should reach our ears. We find that door upon the latch, the door of the room open; on the table lies the morphia-needle. Upstairs lies Mlle. Célie—she is helpless, she cannot see what they are meaning to do.”
“But she could cry out,” exclaimed Ricardo. “She did not even do that!”
“No, my friend, she could not cry out,” replied Hanaud very seriously. “I know why. She could not. No living man or woman could. Rest assured of that!”
Ricardo was mystified; but since the captain of the ship would not show his observation, he knew it would be in vain to press him.
“Well, while Adèle was preparing her morphia-needle and Hippolyte was about to prepare the boat, Jeanne upstairs was making her preparation too. She was mending a sack. Did you see Mlle. Célie’s eyes and face when first she saw that sack? Ah! she understood! They meant to give her a dose of morphia, and, as soon as she became unconscious, they were going perhaps to take some terrible precaution—” Hanaud paused for a second. “I only say perhaps as to that. But certainly they were going to sew her up in that sack, row her well out across the lake, fix a weight to her feet, and drop her quietly overboard. She was to wear everything which she had brought with her to the house. Mlle. Célie would have disappeared forever, and left not even a ripple upon the water to trace her by!”
Ricardo clenched his hands.
“But that’s horrible!” he cried; and as he uttered the words the car swerved into the drive and stopped before the door of the Hotel Majestic.
Ricardo sprang out. A feeling of remorse seized hold of him. All through that evening he had not given one thought to Harry Wethermill, so utterly had the excitement of each moment engrossed his mind.
“He will be glad to know!” cried Ricardo. “Tonight, at all events, he shall sleep. I ought to have telegraphed to him from Geneva that we and Miss Celia were coming back.” He ran up the steps into the hotel.
“I took care that he should know,” said Hanaud, as he followed in Ricardo’s steps.
“Then the message could not have reached him, else he would have been expecting us,” replied Ricardo, as he hurried into the office, where a clerk sat at his books.
“Is Mr. Wethermill in?” he asked.
The clerk eyed him strangely.
“Mr. Wethermill was arrested this evening,” he said.
Ricardo stepped back.
“Arrested! When?”
“At twenty-five minutes past ten,” replied the clerk shortly.
“Ah,” said Hanaud quietly. “That was my telephone message.”
Ricardo stared in stupefaction at his companion.
“Arrested!” he cried. “Arrested! But what for?”
“For the murders of Marthe Gobin and Mme. Dauvray,” said Hanaud. “Good night.”
XIV
Mr. Ricardo Is Bewildered
Ricardo passed a most tempestuous night. He was tossed amongst dark problems. Now it was Harry Wethermill who beset him. He repeated and repeated the name, trying to grasp the new and sinister suggestion which, if Hanaud were right, its sound must henceforth bear. Of course Hanaud might be wrong. Only, if he were wrong, how had he come to suspect Harry Wethermill? What had first directed his thoughts to that seemingly heartbroken man? And when? Certain recollections became vivid in Mr. Ricardo’s mind—the luncheon at the Villa Rose, for instance. Hanaud had been so insistent that the woman with the red hair was to be found in Geneva, had so clearly laid it down that a message, a telegram, a letter from Aix to Geneva, would enable him to lay his hands upon the murderer in Aix. He was isolating the house in Geneva even so early in the history of his investigations, even so soon he suspected Harry Wethermill. Brains and audacity—yes, these two qualities he had stipulated in the criminal. Ricardo now for the first time understood the trend of all Hanaud’s talk at that luncheon. He was putting Harry Wethermill upon his guard, he was immobilising him, he was fettering him in precautions; with a subtle skill he was forcing him to isolate himself. And he was doing it deliberately to save the life of Celia Harland in Geneva. Once Ricardo lifted himself up with the hair stirring on his scalp. He himself had been with Wethermill in the baccarat-rooms on the very night of the murder. They had walked together up the hill to the hotel. It could not be that Harry Wethermill was guilty. And yet, he suddenly remembered, they had together left the rooms at an early hour. It was only ten o’clock when they had separated in the hall, when they had gone, each to his own room. There would have been time for Wethermill to reach the Villa Rose and do his dreadful work upon that night before
