“You see! I must go on. We must search in that locked cabinet of Simon Harlowe’s for the poison arrow, if by chance it should be there.”
“The room is sealed,” Frobisher reminded him.
“We must have those seals removed,” he replied, and he took his watch from his pocket and screwed up his face in grimace.
“We need Monsieur the Commissary, and Monsieur the Commissary will not be in a good humour if we disturb him now. For it is twelve o’clock, the sacred hour of luncheon. You will have observed upon the stage that Commissaries of Police are never in a good humour. It is because—” But Hanaud’s audience was never to hear his explanation of this well-known fact. For he stopped with a queer jerk of his voice, his watch still dangling from his fingers upon its chain. Both Jim and Betty looked at once where he was looking. They saw Ann Upcott standing up against the wall with her hand upon the top rail of a chair to prevent herself from falling. Her eyes were closed, her whole face a mask of misery. Hanaud was at her side in a moment.
“Mademoiselle,” he asked with a breathless sort of eagerness, “what is it you have to tell me?”
“It is true, then?” she whispered. “Jean Cladel exists?”
“Yes.”
“And the poison arrow could have been used?” she faltered, and the next words would not be spoken, but were spoken at the last. “And death would have followed in fifteen minutes?”
“Upon my oath it is true,” Hanaud insisted. “What is it you have to tell me?”
“That I could have hindered it all. I shall never forgive myself. I could have hindered the murder.”
Hanaud’s eyes narrowed as he watched the girl. Was he disappointed, Frobisher wondered? Did he expect quite another reply? A swift movement by Betty distracted him from these questions. He saw Betty looking across the room at them with the strangest glittering eyes he had ever seen. And then Ann Upcott drew herself away from Hanaud and stood up against the wall at her full height with her arms outstretched. She seemed to be setting herself apart as a pariah; her whole attitude and posture cried, “Stone me! I am waiting.”
Hanaud put his watch into his pocket.
“Mademoiselle, we will let the Commissary eat his luncheon in peace, and we will hear your story first. But not here. In the garden under the shade of the trees.” He took his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Indeed I too feel the heat. This room is as hot as an oven.”
When Jim Frobisher looked back in after time upon the incidents of that morning, nothing stood out so vividly in his memories, no, not even the book of arrows and its plates, not Hanaud’s statement of his creed, as the picture of him twirling his watch at the end of his chain, whilst it sparkled in the sunlight and he wondered whether he should break in now upon the Commissaire of Police or let him eat his luncheon in quiet. So much that was then unsuspected by them all, hung upon the exact sequence of events.
IX
The Secret
The garden chairs were already set out upon a lawn towards the farther end of the garden in the shadow of the great trees. Hanaud led the way towards them.
“We shall be in the cool here and with no one to overhear us but the birds,” he said, and he patted and arranged the cushions in a deep armchair of basket work for Ann Upcott. Jim Frobisher was reminded again of the solicitude of a doctor with an invalid and again the parallel jarred upon him. But he was getting a clearer insight into the character of this implacable being. The little courtesies and attentions were not assumed. They were natural, but they would not hinder him for a moment in his pursuit. He would arrange the cushions with the swift deft hands of a nurse—yes, but he would slip the handcuffs on the wrists of his invalid, a moment afterwards, no less deftly and swiftly, if thus his duty prompted him.
“There!” he said. “Now, Mademoiselle, you are comfortable. For me, if I am permitted, I shall smoke.”
He turned round to ask for permission of Betty, who with Jim had followed into the garden behind him.
“Of course,” she answered; and coming forward, she sat down in another of the chairs.
Hanaud pulled out of a pocket a bright blue bundle of thin black cigarettes and lit one. Then he sat in a chair close to the two girls. Jim Frobisher stood behind Hanaud. The lawn was dappled with sunlight and cool shadows. The blackbird and the thrush were calling from bough and bush, the garden was riotous with roses and the air sweet with their perfume. It was a strange setting for the eerie story which Ann Upcott had to tell of her adventures in the darkness and silence of a night; but the very contrast seemed to make the story still more vivid.
“I did not go to Monsieur de Pouillac’s Ball on the night of April the 27th,” she began, and Jim started, so that Hanaud raised his hand to prevent him interrupting. He had not given a thought to where Ann Upcott had been upon that night. To Hanaud, however, the statement brought no surprise.
“You were not well?” he asked.
“It wasn’t that,” Ann replied. “But Betty and I had—I won’t say a rule, but a sort of working arrangement which I think had been in practice ever since I came to the Maison Grenelle. We didn’t encroach upon each other’s independence.”
The two girls had recognised from their first coming together that privacy was the very salt of companionship. Each had a sanctuary in her own sitting-room.
“I don’t think Betty has ever been in mine, I only once or twice in hers,” said Ann. “We had each our own friends. We didn’t pester each other with questions as
