“Good! ‘Dear Sirs,’ ” Hanaud repeated. “But we want a date for that letter. April 30th, eh? That will do. The day Madame Harlowe’s will was read and you found you were left no money. April 30th—put it in. So! Now we go on. ‘Dear Sirs, Send me at once one thousand pounds by the recommended post, or I make some awkwardnesses—’ ”
Waberski dropped his pen and sprang back out of his chair.
“I don’t understand—I can’t write that. … There is an error—I never meant …” he stammered, his hands raised as if to ward off an attack.
“Ah, you never meant the blackmail!” Hanaud cried savagely. “Ah! Ha! Ha! It is good for you that I now know that! For when, as you put it so delicately to Mademoiselle, the moment comes for the extenuating pleas, I can rise up in the Court and urge it. Yes! I will say: ‘Mr. the President, though he did the blackmail, poor fellow, he never meant it. So please to give him five years more,’ ” and with that Hanaud swept across the room like a tornado and flung open the door behind which Frobisher was waiting.
“Come!” he said, and he led Jim into the room. “You produce the two letters he wrote to your firm, Monsieur Frobisher. Good!”
But it was not necessary to produce them. Boris Waberski had dropped into a chair and burst into tears. There was a little movement of discomfort made by everyone in that room except Hanaud; and even his anger dropped. He looked at Waberski in silence.
“You make us all ashamed. You can go back to your hotel,” he said shortly. “But you will not leave Dijon, Monsieur Waberski, until it is decided what steps we shall take with you.”
Waberski rose to his feet and stumbled blindly to the door.
“I make my apologies,” he stammered. “It is all a mistake. I am very poor … I meant no harm,” and without looking at anyone he got himself out of the room.
“That type! He at all events cannot any more think that Dijon is dull,” said Hanaud, and once more he adventured on the dangerous seas of the English language. “Do you know what my friend Mister Ricardo would have said? No? I tell you. He would have said, ‘That fellow! My God! What a sauce!’ ”
Those left in the room, Betty, Ann Upcott, and Jim Frobisher, were in a mood to welcome any excuse for laughter. The interdict upon the house was raised, the charge against Betty proved of no account, the whole bad affair was at an end. Or so it seemed. But Hanaud went quickly to the door and closed it, and when he turned back there was no laughter at all upon his face.
“Now that that man has gone,” he said gravely, “I have something to tell you three which is very serious. I believe that, though Waberski does not know it, Madame Harlowe was murdered by poison in this house on the night of April the twenty-seventh.”
The statement was received in a dreadful silence. Jim Frobisher stood like a man whom some calamity has stunned. Betty leaned forward in her seat with a face of horror and incredulity; and then from the armchair by the door where Ann Upcott was sitting there burst a loud, wild cry.
“There was someone in the house that night,” she cried.
Hanaud swung round to her, his eyes blazing.
“And it is you who tell me that, Mademoiselle?” he asked in a curious, steady voice.
“Yes. It’s the truth,” she cried with a sort of relief in her voice, that at last a secret was out which had grown past endurance. “I am sure now. There was a stranger in the house.” And though her face was white as paper, her eyes met Hanaud’s without fear.
VIII
The Book
The two startling declarations, one treading upon the heels of the other, set Jim Frobisher’s brain whirling. Consternation and bewilderment were all jumbled together. He had no time to ask “how,” for he was already asking “What next?” His first clear thought was for Betty, and as he looked at her, a sharp anger against both Hanaud and Ann Upcott seized and shook him. Why hadn’t they both spoken before? Why must they speak now? Why couldn’t they leave well alone?
For Betty had fallen back in the window-seat, her hands idle at her sides and her face utterly weary and distressed. Jim thought of some stricken patient who wakes in the morning to believe for a few moments that the malady was a bad dream; and then comes the stab and the cloud of pain settles down for another day. A moment ago Betty’s ordeal seemed over. Now it was beginning a new phase.
“I am sorry,” he said to her.
The report of the analysts was lying on the writing-table just beneath his eyes. He took it up idly. It was a trick, of course, with its seals and its signatures, a trick of Hanaud’s to force Waberski to a retraction. He glanced at it, and with an exclamation began carefully to read it through from the beginning to the end. When he had finished, he raised his head and stared at Hanaud.
“But this report is genuine,” he cried. “Here are the details of the tests applied and the result. There was no trace discovered of any poison.”
“No trace at all,” Hanaud replied. He was not in the least disturbed by the question.
“Then I don’t understand why you bring the accusation or whom you accuse,” Frobisher exclaimed.
“I have accused no one,” said Hanaud steadily. “Let us be clear about that! As to your other question—look!”
He took Frobisher by the elbow and led him to that bookshelf by the window before which they had stood together yesterday.
“There was an empty space here yesterday. You yourself drew my attention to it. You see that the space is filled today.”
“Yes,” said Jim.
Hanaud took down the volume which occupied the space. It was
