“Mademoiselle, I am always in the wrong with you,” he said with an accent of remorse. “For I am always forcing you to statements which make me ashamed and do you honour.”
Jim acknowledged that Hanaud, when he wished, could do the handsome thing with a very good grace. Unfortunately grace seemed never to be an enduring quality in him; as, for instance, now. He was still upon his knees in front of the hearth. Whilst making his apology he had been raking amongst the ashes with the shovel without giving, to all appearance, any thought to what he was doing. But his attention was now arrested. The shovel had disclosed an unburnt fragment of bluish-white paper. Hanaud’s body stiffened. He bent forward and picked the scrap of paper out from the grate, whilst Betty, too, stooped with a little movement of curiosity.
Hanaud sat back again upon his heels.
“So! You burnt more than letters last Sunday morning,” he said.
Betty was puzzled and Hanaud held out to her the fragment of paper.
“Bills too, Mademoiselle.”
Betty took the fragment in her hand and shook her head over it. It was obviously the right-hand top corner of a bill. For an intriguing scrap of a printed address was visible and below a figure or two in a column.
“There must have been a bill or two mixed up with the letters,” said Betty. “I don’t remember it.”
She handed the fragment of paper back to Hanaud, who sat and looked at it. Jim Frobisher standing just behind him read the printed ends of names and words and the figures beneath and happened to remember the very look of them. Hanaud held them so long in his hand; the top bit of name in large capital letters, the words below echelonned in smaller capitals, then the figures in the columns and all enclosed in a rough sort of triangle with the diagonal line browned and made ragged by the fire—thus—
eron
struction
lles
is
375.05
“Well, it is of no importance luckily,” said Hanaud and he tossed the scrap of paper back into the grate. “Did you notice these ashes, Monsieur Girardot, on Sunday morning?” He turned any slur the question might seem to cast upon Betty’s truthfulness with an explanation.
“It is always good when it is possible to get a corroboration, Mademoiselle.”
Betty nodded, but Girardot was at a loss. He managed to look extremely important, but importance was not required.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
However, corroboration of a kind at all events did come though from another source.
“If I might speak, Monsieur Hanaud?” said Maurice Thevenet eagerly.
“But by all means,” Hanaud replied.
“I came into this room just behind Monsieur Girardot on the Sunday morning. I did not see any ashes in the hearth, that is true. But Mademoiselle Harlowe was in the act of arranging that screen of blue lacquer in front of the fireplace, just as we saw it today. She arranged it, and when she saw who her visitors were she stood up with a start of surprise.”
“Aha!” said Hanaud cordially. He smiled at Betty. “This evidence is just as valuable as if he had told us that he had seen the ashes themselves.”
He rose to his feet and went close to her.
“But there is another letter which you were good enough to promise to me,” he said.
“The an—” she began and Hanaud stopped her hurriedly.
“It is better that we hold our tongues,” he said with a nod and a grin which recognised that in this matter they were accomplices. “This is to be our exclusive little secret, which, if he is very good, we will share with Monsieur le Commissaire.”
He laughed hugely at his joke, whilst Betty unlocked a drawer in the Chippendale secretary. Girardot the Commissaire tittered, not quite sure that he thought very highly of it. Monsieur Bex, on the other hand, by a certain extra primness of his face, made it perfectly clear that in his opinion such a jape was very, very far from correct.
Betty produced a folded sheet of common paper and handed it to Hanaud, who took it aside to the window and read it carefully. Then with a look he beckoned Girardot to his side.
“Monsieur Frobisher can come too. For he is in the secret,” he added; and the three men stood apart at the window looking at the sheet of paper. It was dated the 7th of May, signed “The Scourge,” like the others of this hideous brood, and it began without any preface. There were only a few words typed upon it, and some of them were epithets not to be reproduced which made Jim’s blood boil that a girl like Betty should ever have had to read them.
“Your time is coming now, you—” and here followed the string of abominable obscenities. “You are for it, Betty Harlowe. Hanaud the detective from Paris is coming to look after you with his handcuffs in his pocket. You’ll look pretty in handcuffs, won’t you, Betty? It’s your white neck we want! Three cheers for Waberski? The Scourge.”
Girardot stared at the brutal words and settled his glasses on his nose and stared again.
“But—but—” he stammered and he pointed to the date. A warning gesture made by Hanaud brought him to a sudden stop, but Frobisher had little doubt as to the purport of that unfinished exclamation. Girardot was astonished, as Hanaud himself had been, that this item of news had so quickly leaked abroad.
Hanaud folded the letter and turned back into the room.
“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said to Betty, and Thevenet the secretary took his notebook from his pocket.
“Shall I make you a copy of the letter, Monsieur Hanaud?” he said, sitting down and holding out his hand.
“I wasn’t going to give it back,” Hanaud answered, “and a copy at the present stage isn’t necessary. A little later on I may ask for your assistance.”
He put the letter away in his letter-case, and his letter-case
