“Will you take a seat? I will tell you, Mr. Frobisher, I have a very soft place in my heart for Mr. Ricardo, and a friend of his—These are words, however. What can I do?”
Jim Frobisher laid down his hat and stick upon a side table and took the chair in front of Hanaud’s table.
“I am partner in a firm of lawyers which looks after the English interests of a family in Dijon,” he said, and he saw all life and expression smoothed out of Hanaud’s face. A moment ago he had been in the company of a genial and friendly companion; now he was looking at a Chinaman.
“Yes?” said Hanaud.
“The family has the name of Harlowe,” Jim continued.
“Oho!” said Hanaud.
The ejaculation had no surprise in it, and hardly any interest. Jim, however, persisted.
“And the surviving member of it, a girl of twenty, Betty Harlowe, has been charged with murder by a Russian who is connected with the family by marriage—Boris Waberski.”
“Aha!” said Hanaud. “And why do you come to me, Mr. Frobisher?”
Jim stared at the detective. The reason of his coming was obvious.
And yet—he was no longer sure of his ground. Hanaud had pulled open a drawer in his table and was beginning to put away in it one of his files.
“Yes?” he said, as who should say, “I am listening.”
“Well, perhaps I am under a mistake,” said Jim. “But my firm has been informed that you, Monsieur Hanaud, are in charge of the case,” he said, and Hanaud’s movements were at once arrested. He sat with the file poised on the palm of his hand as though he was weighing it, extraordinarily still; and Jim had a swift impression that he was more than disconcerted. Then Hanaud put the file into the drawer and closed the drawer softly. As softly he spoke, but in a sleek voice which to Frobisher’s ears had a note in it which was actually alarming.
“So you have been informed of that, Mr. Frobisher! And in London! And—yes—this is only Wednesday! News travels very quickly nowadays, to be sure! Well, your firm has been correctly informed. I congratulate you. The first point is scored by you.”
Jim Frobisher was quick to seize upon that word. He had thought out upon his journey in what spirit he might most usefully approach the detective. Hanaud’s bitter little remark gave him the very opening which he needed.
“But, Monsieur Hanaud, I don’t take that point of view at all,” he argued earnestly. “I am happy to believe that there is going to be no antagonism between us. For, if there were, I should assuredly get the worst of it. No! I am certain that the one wish you have in this matter is to get at the truth. Whilst my wish is that you should just look upon me as a very second-rate colleague who by good fortune can give you a little help.”
A smile flickered across Hanaud’s face and restored it to some of its geniality.
“It has always been a good rule to lay it on with a trowel,” he observed. “Now, what kind of help, Mr. Frobisher?”
“This kind of help, Monsieur Hanaud. Two letters from Boris Waberski demanding money, the second one with threats. Both were received by my firm before he brought this charge, and both of course remain unanswered.”
He took the letters from the long envelope and handed them across the table to Hanaud, who read them through slowly, mentally translating the phrases into French as he read. Frobisher watched his face for some expression of relief or satisfaction. But to his utter disappointment no such change came; and it was with a deprecating and almost regretful air that Hanaud turned to him in the end.
“Yes—no doubt these two letters have a certain importance. But we mustn’t exaggerate it. The case is very difficult.”
“Difficult!” cried Jim in exasperation. He seemed to be hammering and hammering in vain against some thick wall of stupidity. Yet this man in front of him wasn’t stupid.
“I can’t understand it!” he exclaimed. “Here’s the clearest instance of blackmail that I can imagine—”
“Blackmail’s an ugly word, Mr. Frobisher,” Hanaud warned him.
“And blackmail’s an ugly thing,” said Jim. “Come, Monsieur Hanaud, Boris Waberski lives in France. You will know something about him. You will have a dossier.”
Hanaud pounced upon the word with a little whoop of delight, his face broke into smiles, he shook a forefinger gleefully at his visitor.
“Ah, ah, ah, ah! A dossier! Yes, I was waiting for that word! The great legend of the dossiers! You have that charming belief too, Mr. Frobisher. France and her dossiers! Yes. If her coal-mines fail her, she can always keep warm by burning her dossiers! The moment you land for the first time at Calais—boum! your dossier begins, eh? You travel to Paris—so! You dine at the Ritz Hotel—so! Afterwards you go where you ought not to go—so-o-o! And you go back late to the hotel very uncomfortable because you are quite sure that somewhere in the still night six little officials with black beards and green-shaded lamps are writing it all down in your dossier. But—wait!”
He suddenly rose from his chair with his finger to his lips, and his eyes opened wide. Never was a man so mysterious, so important in his mystery. He stole on tiptoe, with a lightness of step amazing in so bulky a man, to the door. Noiselessly and very slowly, with an alert, bright eye cocked at Frobisher like a bird’s, he turned the handle. Then he jerked the door swiftly inwards towards him. It was the classic detection of the eavesdropper, seen in a hundred comedies and farces; and carried out with so excellent a mimicry that Jim, even in this office of the Sûrété, almost expected to see a flustered chambermaid sprawl heavily forward on her
