“Yes, but we stopped for a minute or two to tighten the strap of the toolbox on the edge of the town. And we started from there at eleven.”
The motorcyclist consulted his wristwatch.
“Yes, it’s twenty minutes to twelve now,” he said. “But forty kilometres! I doubt if I have the essence. I think I must try the nearer road.”
The second motorcycle came out of the dust like a boat out of a sea mist and slowed down in turn at the side of them. The rider jumped out of his saddle, pushed his goggles up on to his forehead and joined in the conversation.
“That little road, Monsieur. It is not one of the national highways. That shows itself at a glance. But it is not so bad. From the stone bridge one can be at the Hôtel de Ville of Dijon in twenty-five minutes.”
“I thank you,” said the young man. “You will pardon me. I have been here for seven minutes, and I am expected.”
He replaced his helmet, mounted his machine, and with a splutter and half a dozen explosions ran down into the bed of the valley.
The second cyclist readjusted his goggles.
“Will you go first, Madame?” he suggested. “Otherwise I give you my dust.”
“Thank you!” said Betty with a smile, and she slipped in the clutch and started.
Beyond the little forest and the curve the ground rose and the valley flattened out. Across their road a broad highway set with kilometre stones ran north and south.
“The road to Paris,” said Betty as she stopped the car in front of a little inn with a tangled garden at the angle. She looked along the road Pariswards. “Air!” she said, and drew a breath of longing, whilst her eyes kindled and her white strong teeth clicked as though she was biting a sweet fruit.
“Soon, Betty,” said Jim. “Very soon!”
Betty drove the car into a little yard at the side of the river.
“We will lunch here, in the garden,” she said, “all amongst the earwigs and the roses.”
An omelet, a cutlet perfectly cooked and piping hot, with a salad and a bottle of Clos du Prince of the 1904 vintage brought the glowing city of Paris immeasurably nearer to them. They sat in the open under the shade of a tall hedge; they had the tangled garden to themselves; they laughed and made merry in the golden May, and visions of wonder trembled and opened before Jim Frobisher’s eyes.
Betty swept them away, however, when he had lit a cigar and she a cigarette; and their coffee steamed from the little cups in front of them.
“Let us be practical, Jim,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
The sparkle of gaiety had left her face.
“Yes!” he asked.
“About Ann.” Her eyes swept round and rested on Jim’s face. “She ought to go.”
“Run away!” cried Jim with a start.
“Yes, at once and as secretly as possible.”
Jim turned the proposal over in his mind whilst Betty waited in suspense.
“It couldn’t be managed,” he objected.
“It could.”
“Even if it could, would she consent?”
“She does.”
“Of course it’s pleading guilty,” he said slowly.
“Oh, it isn’t, Jim. She wants time, that’s all. Time for my necklace to be traced, time for the murderer of Jean Cladel to be discovered. You remember what I told you about Hanaud? He must have his victim. You wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true. He has got to go back to Paris and say, ‘You see, they sent from Dijon for me, and five minutes! That’s all I needed! Five little minutes and there’s your murderess, all tied up and safe!’ He tried to fix it on me first.”
“No.”
“He did, Jim. And now that has failed he has turned on Ann. She’ll have to go. Since he can’t get me he’ll take my friend—yes, and manufacture the evidence into the bargain.”
“Betty! Hanaud wouldn’t do that!” Frobisher protested.
“But, Jim, he has done it,” she said.
“When?”
“When he put that Edinburgh man’s book about the arrow poison back upon the bookshelf in the library.”
Jim was utterly taken back.
“Did you know that he had done that?”
“I couldn’t help knowing,” she answered. “The moment he took the book down it was clear to me. He knew it from end to end, as if it was a primer. He could put his finger on the plates, on the history of my uncle’s arrow, on the effect of the poison, on the solution that could be made of it in an instant. He pretended that he had learnt all that in the half-hour he waited for us. It wasn’t possible. He had found that book the afternoon before somewhere and had taken it away with him secretly and sat up half the night over it. That’s what he had done.”
Jim Frobisher was sunk in confusion. He had been guessing first this person, then that, and in the end had had to be told the truth; whereas Betty had reached it in a flash by using her wits. He felt that he had been just one minute and a half in the bullring.
Betty added in a hot scorn:
“Then when he had learnt it all up by heart he puts it back secretly in the bookshelf and accuses us.”
“But he admits he put it back,” said Jim slowly.
Betty was startled.
“When did he admit it?”
“Last night. To me,” replied Jim, and Betty laughed bitterly. She would hear no good of Hanaud.
“Yes, now that he has something better to go upon.”
“Something better?”
“The disappearance of my necklace. Oh, Jim, Ann has got to go. If she could get to England they couldn’t bring her back, could they? They haven’t evidence enough. It’s only suspicion and suspicion and suspicion. But here in France it’s different, isn’t it? They can hold people on suspicion, keep them shut up by themselves and question them again and again. Oh, yesterday afternoon in the hall—don’t you remember, Jim?—I thought Hanaud was going to arrest her there and then.”
Jim Frobisher nodded.
“I thought so, too.”
He had been a little shocked by Betty’s
