Jim, however, was not satisfied.
“It is a fortnight since Mrs. Harlowe was murdered, if she was murdered,” he cried. “What I don’t understand is why the arrow wasn’t destroyed altogether!”
“But until this morning there was never any question of the arrow,” Hanaud returned. “It was a curiosity, an item in a collection—why should one trouble to destroy it? But this morning the arrow becomes a dangerous thing to possess. So it must be hidden away in a hurry. For there is not much time. An hour whilst you and I admired Mont Blanc from the top of the Terrace Tower.”
“And while Betty was out of the house,” Jim added quickly.
“Yes—that is true,” said Hanaud. “I had not thought of it. You can add that point, Monsieur Frobisher, to the reasons which put Mademoiselle Harlowe out of our considerations. Yes.”
He sat lost in thought for a little while and speaking now and then a phrase rather to himself than to his companion: “To run up here—to cut the arrow deep—to round off the end as well as one can in a hurry—to stain it with some varnish—to mix it with the other pens in the tray. Not so bad!” He nodded his head in appreciation of the trick. “But nevertheless things begin to look black for that exquisite Mademoiselle Ann with her delicate colour and her pretty ways.”
A noise of the shifting of furniture in the bedroom next door attracted his attention. He removed the nib from the arrowhead.
“We will keep this little matter to ourselves just for the moment,” he said quickly, and he wrapped the improvised pen-holder in a sheet of the notepaper. “Just you and I shall know of it. No one else. This is my case, not Girardot’s. We will not inflict a great deal of pain and trouble until we are sure.”
“I agree,” said Jim eagerly. “That’s right, I am sure.”
Hanaud tucked the arrowhead carefully away in his pocket.
“This, too,” he said, and he took up Jim Frobisher’s memorandum. “It is not a good thing to carry about, and perhaps lose. I will put it away at the Prefecture with the other little things I have collected.”
He put the memorandum into his letter-case and got up from his chair.
“The rest of the arrow-shaft will be somewhere in this room, no doubt, and quite easy to see. But we shall not have time to look for it, and, after all, we have the important part of it.”
He turned towards the mantelshelf, where some cards of invitation were stuck in the frame of the mirror, just as the door was opened and the Commissary with his secretary came out from the bedroom.
“The necklace is not in that room,” said Monsieur Girardot in a voice of finality.
“Nor is it here,” Hanaud replied with an unblushing assurance. “Let us go downstairs.”
Jim was utterly staggered. This room had not been searched for the necklace at all. First the Sedan chair, then this sitting-room was neglected. Hanaud actually led the way out to the stairs without so much as a glance behind him. No wonder that in Paris he had styled himself and his brethren the Servants of Chance.
XVI
Hanaud Laughs
At the bottom of the stairs Hanaud thanked the Commissary of Police for his assistance.
“As for the necklace, we shall of course search the baggage of everyone in the house,” he said. “But we shall find nothing. Of that we may be sure. For if the necklace has been stolen, too much time has passed since it was stolen for us to hope to find it here.”
He bowed Girardot with much respect out of the house, whilst Monsieur Bex took Jim Frobisher a little aside.
“I have been thinking that Mademoiselle Ann should have some legal help,” he said. “Now both you and I are attached to the affairs of Mademoiselle Harlowe. And—it is a little difficult to put it delicately—it may be that the interests of those two young ladies are not identical. It would not therefore be at all correct for me, at all events, to offer her my services. But I can recommend a very good lawyer in Dijon, a friend of mine. You see, it may be important.”
Frobisher agreed.
“It may be, indeed. Will you give me your friend’s address?” he said.
Whilst he was writing the address down Hanaud startled him by breaking unexpectedly into a loud laugh. The curious thing was that there was nothing whatever to account for it. Hanaud was standing by himself between them and the front door. In the courtyard outside there was no one within view. Within the hall Jim and Monsieur Bex were talking very seriously in a low voice. Hanaud was laughing at the empty air and his laughter betokened a very strong sense of relief.
“That I should have lived all these years and never noticed that before,” he cried aloud in a sort of amazement that there could be anything capable of notice which he, Hanaud, had not noticed.
“What is it?” asked Jim.
But Hanaud did not answer at all. He dashed back through the hall past Frobisher and his companion, vanished into the treasure-room, closed the door behind him and actually locked it.
Monsieur Bex jerked his chin high in the air.
“He is an eccentric, that one. He would not do for Dijon.”
Jim was for defending Hanaud.
“He must act. That is true,” he replied. “Whatever he does and however keenly he does it, he sees a row of
