“There are men like that,” Monsieur Bex agreed. Like all Frenchmen, he was easy in his mind if he could place a man in a category.
“But he is doing something which is quite important,” Jim continued, swelling a little with pride. He felt that he had been quite fifteen minutes in the bullring. “He is searching for something somewhere. I told him about it. He had overlooked it altogether. I reproached him this morning with his reluctance to take suggestions from people only too anxious to help him. But I did him obviously some injustice. He is quite willing.”
Monsieur Bex was impressed and a little envious.
“I must think of some suggestions to make to Hanaud,” he said. “Yes, yes! Was there not once a pearl necklace in England which was dropped in a matchbox into the gutter when the pursuit became too hot? I have read of it, I am sure. I must tell Hanaud that he should spend a day or two picking up the matchboxes in the gutters. He may be very likely to come across that necklace of Madame Harlowe’s. Yes, certainly.”
Monsieur Bex was considerably elated by the bright idea which had come to him. He felt that he was again upon a level with his English colleague. He saw Hanaud pouncing his way along the streets of Dijon and explaining to all who questioned him: “This is the idea of Monsieur Bex, the notary. You know, Monsieur Bex, of the Place Etienne Dolet.” Until somewhere near—but Monsieur Bex had not actually located the particular gutter in which Hanaud should discover the matchbox with the priceless beads, when the library door opened and Betty came out into the hall.
She looked at the two men in surprise.
“And Monsieur Hanaud?” she asked. “I didn’t see him go.”
“He is in your treasure-room,” said Jim.
“Oh!” Betty exclaimed in a voice which showed her interest. “He has gone back there!”
She walked quickly to the door and tried the handle.
“Locked!” she cried with a little start of surprise. She spoke without turning round. “He has locked himself in! Why?”
“Because of the footlights,” Monsieur Bex answered, and Betty turned about and stared at him. “Yes, we came to that conclusion, Monsieur Frobisher and I. Everything he does must ring a curtain down;” and once more the key turned in the lock.
Betty swung round again as the sound reached her ears and came face to face with Hanaud. Hanaud looked over her shoulder at Frobisher and shook his head ruefully.
“You did not find it, then?” Jim asked.
“No.”
Hanaud looked away from Jim to Betty Harlowe.
“Monsieur Frobisher put an idea into my head, Mademoiselle. I had not looked into that exquisite Sedan chair. It might well be that the necklace had been hidden behind the cushions. But it is not there.”
“And you locked the door, Monsieur,” said Betty stiffly. “The door of my room, I ask you to notice.”
Hanaud drew himself erect.
“I did, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “And then?”
Betty hesitated with some sharp rejoinder on the tip of her tongue. But she did not speak it. She shrugged her shoulders and said coldly as she turned from him:
“You are within your rights, no doubt, Monsieur.”
Hanaud smiled at her good-humouredly. He had offended her again. She was showing him once more the petulant, mutinous child in her which he had seen the morning before. But the smile did remain upon his face. In the doorway of the library Ann Upcott was standing, her face still very pale, and fires smouldering in her eyes.
“You searched my rooms, I hope, Monsieur,” she said in a challenging voice.
“Thoroughly, Mademoiselle.”
“And you did not find the necklace?”
“No!” and he walked straight across the hall to her with a look suddenly grown stern.
“Mademoiselle, I should like you to answer me a question. But you need not. I wish you to understand that. You have a right to reserve your answers for the Office of the Examining Magistrate and then give them only in the presence of and with the consent of your legal adviser. Monsieur Bex will assure you that is so.”
The girl’s defiance weakened.
“What do you wish to ask me?” she asked.
“Exactly how you came to the Maison Grenelle.”
The fire died out of her eyes; Ann’s eyelids fluttered down. She stretched out a hand against the jamb of the door to steady herself. Jim wondered whether she guessed that the head of Simon Harlowe’s arrow was now hidden in Hanaud’s pocket.
“I was at Monte Carlo,” she began and stopped.
“And quite alone?” Hanaud continued relentlessly.
“Yes.”
“And without money?”
“With a little money,” Ann corrected.
“Which you lost,” Hanaud rejoined.
“Yes.”
“And at Monte Carlo you made the acquaintance of Boris Waberski?”
“Yes.”
“And so you came to the Maison Grenelle?”
“Yes.”
“It is all very curious, Mademoiselle,” said Hanaud gravely, and “If it were only curious!” Jim Frobisher wished with all his heart. For Ann Upcott quailed before the detective’s glance. It seemed to him that with another question from him, an actual confession would falter and stumble from her lips. A confession of complicity with Boris Waberski! And then? Jim caught a dreadful glimpse of the future which awaited her. The guillotine? Probably a fate much worse. For that would be over soon and she at rest. A few poignant weeks, an agony of waiting, now in an intoxication of hope, now in the lowest hell of terror; some dreadful minutes at the breaking of a dawn—and an end! That would be better after all than the endless years of sordid heartbreaking labour, coarse food and clothes, amongst the criminals of a convict prison in France.
Jim turned his eyes away from her with a shiver of discomfort and saw with a queer little shock that Betty was watching him with a singular intentness; as if what interested her was not so much Ann’s peril as his feeling about it.
Meanwhile Ann had made up her mind.
“I shall tell you at once the little there is to tell,” she declared. The words were brave enough, but the bravery ended with the
