But Hanaud was not that night in his accustomed place, and Jim sat there alone until half-past ten. Then a man strolled out from one of the billiard-rooms, and standing behind Jim with his eyes upon the screen, said in a whisper:
“Do not look at me, Monsieur! It is Moreau. I go outside. Will you please to follow.”
He strolled away. Jim gave him a couple of minutes’ grace. He had remembered Hanaud’s advice and had paid for his Bock when it had been brought to him. The little saucer was turned upside down to show that he owed nothing. When two minutes had elapsed he sauntered out and, looking neither to the right nor to the left, strolled indolently along the Rue de la Gare. When he reached the Place Darcy, Nicolas Moreau passed him without a sign of recognition and struck off to the right along the Rue de la Liberté. Frobisher followed him with a sinking heart. It was folly of course to imagine that Hanaud could be so easily eluded. No doubt that motorcar had been stopped. No doubt Ann Upcott was already under lock and key! Why, the last words he had heard Hanaud speak were “I must be quick!”
Moreau turned off into the Boulevard Sevigné and, doubling back to the station square, slipped into one of the small hotels which cluster in that quarter. The lobby was empty; a staircase narrow and steep led from it to the upper stories. Moreau now ascended it with Frobisher at his heels, and opened a door. Frobisher looked into a small and dingy sitting-room at the back of the house. The windows were open, but the shutters were closed. A single pendant in the centre of the room gave it light, and at a table under the pendant Hanaud sat poring over a map.
The map was marked with red ink in a curious way. A sort of hoop, very much the shape of a tennis racket without its handle, was described upon it and from the butt to the top of the hoop an irregular line was drawn, separating the hoop roughly into two semicircles. Moreau left Jim Frobisher standing there, and in a moment or two Hanaud looked up.
“Did you know, my friend,” he asked very gravely, “that Ann Upcott has gone tonight to Madame Le Vay’s fancy dress ball?”
Frobisher was taken completely by surprise.
“No, I see that you didn’t,” Hanaud went on. He took up his pen and placed a red spot at the edge of the hoop close by the butt.
Jim recovered from his surprise. Madame Le Vay’s ball was the spot from which the start was to be made. The plan after all was not so ill-devised, if only Ann could have got to the ball unnoticed. Masked and in fancy dress, amongst a throng of people similarly accoutred, in a house with a garden, no doubt thrown open upon this hot night and lit only by lanterns discreetly dim—she had thus her best chance of escape. But the chance was already lost. For Hanaud laid down his pen again and said in ominous tones:
“The water-lily, eh? That pretty water-lily, my friend, will not dance very gaily tonight.”
XX
Map and the Necklace
Hanaud turned his map round and pushed it across the table to Jim Frobisher.
“What do you make of that?” he asked, and Jim drew up a chair and sat down to examine it.
He made first of all a large scale map of Dijon and its environments, the town itself lying at the bottom of the red hoop and constituting the top of the handle of the tennis racket. As to the red circle, it seemed to represent a tour which someone had made out from Dijon, round a good tract of outlying country and back again to the city. But there was more to it than that. The wavy dividing line, for instance, from the top of the circle to the handle, that is to Dijon; and on the left-hand edge of the hoop, as he bent over the map, and just outside Dijon, the red mark, a little red square which Hanaud had just made. Against this square an hour was marked.
“Eleven a.m.,” he read.
He followed the red curve with his eyes and just where this dividing line touched the rim of the hoop, another period was inscribed. Here Frobisher read:
“Eleven forty.”
Frobisher looked up at Hanaud in astonishment.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, and he bent again over the map. The point where the dividing line branched off was in a valley, as he could see by the contours—yes—he had found the name now—the Val Terzon. Just before eleven o’clock Betty had stopped the car just outside Dijon, opposite a park with a big house standing back, and had asked him to tighten the strap of the tool box. They had started again exactly at eleven. Betty had taken note of the exact time—and they had stopped where the secondary road branched off and doubled back to Dijon, at the top of the hoop, at the injunction of the rim and the dividing line, exactly at eleven forty.
“This is a chart of the expedition we made today,” he cried. “We were followed then?”
He remembered suddenly the second motorcyclist who had come up from behind through the screen of their dust and had stopped by the side of their car to join in their conversation with the tourist.
“The motorcyclist?” he asked, and again he got no answer.
But the motorcyclist had not followed them all the way round. On their homeward course they had stopped to lunch in the tangled garden. There had been no sign of the man. Jim looked at the map again. He followed the red line from the junction of the two roads, round the curve of the valley, to the angle where the great National road to Paris cut across and where they had lunched. After luncheon
