“I had better follow her,” he said, reaching for his hat.
Ann smiled and shook her head wisely.
“I shouldn’t. I know Betty. She wants to be alone.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure.”
Jim twiddled his hat in his hands, not half as sure upon the point as she was. Ann watched him with a rather rueful smile for a little while. Then she shrugged her shoulders in a sudden exasperation.
“There is something you ought to do,” she said. “You ought to let Monsieur Bex, Betty’s notary here, know that the seals are to be broken this afternoon. He ought to be here. He was here when they were affixed. Besides, he has all the keys of Mrs. Harlowe’s drawers and cupboards.”
“That’s true,” Jim exclaimed. “I’ll go at once.”
Ann gave him Monsieur Bex’s address in the Place Etienne Dolet, and from the window of the library watched him go upon his errand. She stood at the window for a long while after he had disappeared.
XI
A New Suspect
Monsieur Bex the notary came out into the hall of his house when Frobisher sent his card in to him. He was a small, brisk man with a neat pointed beard, his hair cut en brosse and the corner of his napkin tucked into his neck between the flaps of his collar.
Jim explained that the seals were to be removed from the rooms of the Maison Grenelle, but said nothing at all of the new developments which had begun with the discovery of the book of the arrows.
“I have had communications with Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt,” the little man exclaimed. “Everything has been as correct as it could possibly be. I am happy to meet a partner of so distinguished a firm. Yes. I will certainly present myself at three with my keys and see the end of this miserable scandal. It has been a disgrace. That young lady so delicious and so correct! And that animal of a Waberski! But we can deal with him. We have laws in France.”
He gave Jim the impression that there were in his opinion no laws anywhere else, and he bowed his visitor into the street.
Jim returned by the Rue des Godrans and the main thoroughfare of the town, the street of Liberty. As he crossed the semicircle of the Place d’Armes in front of the Hôtel de Ville, he almost ran into Hanaud smoking a cigar.
“You have lunched already?” he cried.
“An affair of a quarter of an hour,” said Hanaud with a wave of the hand. “And you?”
“Not until two. Miss Harlowe wanted a walk.”
Hanaud smiled.
“How I understand that! The first walk after an ordeal! The first walk of a convalescent after an operation! The first walk of a defendant found innocent of a grave charge! It must be worth taking, that walk. But console yourself, my friend, for the postponement of your luncheon. You have met me!” and he struck something of an attitude.
Now Jim had the gravest objection to anything theatrical, especially when displayed in public places, and he answered stiffly, “That is a pleasure, to be sure.”
Hanaud grinned. To make Jim look “proper” was becoming to him an unfailing entertainment.
“Now I reward you,” he said, though for what Jim could not imagine. “You shall come with me. At this hour, on the top of old Philippe le Bon’s Terrace Tower, we shall have the world to ourselves.”
He led the way into the great courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville. Behind the long wing which faced them, a square, solid tower rose a hundred and fifty feet high above the ground. With Frobisher at his heels, Hanaud climbed the three hundred and sixteen steps and emerged upon the roof into the blue and gold of a cloudless May in France. They looked eastwards, and the beauty of the scene took Frobisher’s breath away. Just in front, the slender apse of Notre Dame, fine as a lady’s ornament, set him wondering how in the world through all these centuries it had endured; and beyond, rich and green and wonderful, stretched the level plain with its shining streams and nestling villages.
Hanaud sat down upon a stone bench and stretched out his arm across the parapet. “Look!” he cried eagerly, proudly. “There is what I brought you here to see. Look!”
Jim looked and saw, and his face lit up. Far away on the horizon’s edge, unearthly in its beauty, hung the great mass of Mont Blanc; white as silver, soft as velvet, and here and there sparkling with gold as though the flame of a fire leaped and sank.
“Oho!” said Hanaud as he watched Jim’s face. “So we have that in common. You perhaps have stood on the top of that mountain?”
“Five times,” Jim answered, with a smile made up of many memories. “I hope to do so again.”
“You are fortunate,” said Hanaud a little enviously. “For me I see him only in the distance. But even so—if I am troubled—it is like sitting silent in the company of a friend.”
Jim Frobisher’s mind strayed back over memories of snow slope and rock ridge. It was a true phrase which Hanaud had used. It expressed one of the many elusive, almost incommunicable emotions which mountains did mean to the people who had “that”—the passion for mountains—in common. Jim glanced curiously at Hanaud.
“You are troubled about this case, then?” he said sympathetically. The distant and exquisite vision of that soaring arc of silver and velvet set in the blue air had brought the two men into at all events a momentary brotherhood.
“Very,” Hanaud returned slowly, without turning his eyes from
