“I can’t imagine why you had us followed this morning, Monsieur Hanaud,” he exclaimed with some heat. “But I can tell you this. The chase was not very efficiently contrived. We didn’t come home that way at all.”
“I haven’t an idea how you came home,” Hanaud answered imperturbably. “The line on that side of the circle has nothing to do with you at all, as you can see for yourself by looking at the time marked where the line begins.”
The red hoop at the bottom was not complete; there was a space where the spliced handle of the racket would fit in, the space filled by the town of Dijon, and at the point on the right hand side where the line started Frobisher read in small but quite clear figures:
“Ten twenty-five a.m.”
Jim was more bewildered than ever.
“I don’t understand one word of it,” he cried.
Hanaud reached over and touched the point with the tip of his pen.
“This is where the motorcyclist started, the cyclist who met you at the branch road at eleven-forty.”
“The tourist?” asked Jim. A second ago it had seemed to him impossible that the fog could thicken about his wits any more. And yet it had.
“Let us say the man with the portmanteau on his trailer,” Hanaud corrected. “You see that he left his starting point in Dijon thirty-five minutes before you left yours. The whole manoeuvre seems to have been admirably planned. For you met precisely at the arranged spot at eleven-forty. Neither the car nor the cycle had to wait one moment.”
“Manoeuvre! Arranged spot!” Frobisher exclaimed, looking about him in a sort of despair. “Has everyone gone crazy? Why in the world should a man start out with a portmanteau in a sidecar from Dijon at ten twenty-five, run thirty or forty miles into the country by a roundabout road and then return by a bad straight track? There’s no sense in it!”
“No doubt it’s perplexing,” Hanaud agreed. He nodded to Moreau who went out of the room by a communicating door towards the front of the house. “But I can help you,” Hanaud continued. “At the point where you started after tightening the strap of the toolbox, on the edge of the town, a big country house stands back in a park?”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“That is the house of Madame Le Vay where this fancy dress ball takes place tonight.”
“Madame Le Vay’s château!” Frobisher repeated. “Where—” he began a question and caught it back. But Hanaud completed it for him.
“Yes, where Ann Upcott now is. You started from it at precisely eleven in the morning.” He looked at his watch. “It is not yet quite eleven at night. So she is still there.”
Frobisher started back in his chair. Hanaud’s words were like the blade of silver light cutting through the darkness of the cinema hall and breaking into a sheet of radiance upon the screen. The meaning of the red diagram upon Hanaud’s map, the unsuspected motive of Betty’s expedition this morning were revealed to him.
“It was a rehearsal,” he cried.
Hanaud nodded.
“A time-rehearsal.”
“Yes, the sort of thing which takes place in theatres, without the principal members of the company,” thought Frobisher. But a moment later he was dissatisfied with that explanation.
“Wait a moment!” he said. “That won’t do, I fancy.”
The motorcyclist with the sidecar had brought his arguments to a standstill. His times were marked upon the map; they were therefore of importance. What had he to do with Ann Upcott’s escape? But he visualised the motorcyclist and his sidecar and his connection with the affair became evident. The big portmanteau gave Frobisher the clue. Ann Upcott would be leaving Madame Le Vay’s house in her ball-dress, just as if she was returning to the Maison Grenelle—and without any luggage at all. She could not arrive in Paris in the morning like that if she were to avoid probable suspicion and certainly remark. The motorcyclist was to meet her in the Val Terzon, transfer her luggage rapidly to her car, and then return to Dijon by the straight quick road whilst Ann turned off at the end of the valley to Paris. He remembered now that seven minutes had elapsed between the meeting of the cycle and the motorcar and their separation. Seven minutes then were allowed for the transference of the luggage. Another argument flashed into his thoughts. Betty had told him nothing of this plan. It had been presented to him as a mere excursion on a summer day, her first hours of liberty naturally employed. Her silence was all of a piece with the determination of Betty and Ann Upcott to keep him altogether out of the conspiracy. Every detail fitted like the blocks in a picture puzzle. Yes, there had been a time-rehearsal. And Hanaud knew all about it!
That was the disturbing certainty which first overwhelmed Frobisher when he had got the better of his surprise at the scheme itself. Hanaud knew! and Betty had so set her heart on Ann’s escape.
“Let her go!” he pleaded earnestly. “Let Ann Upcott get away to Paris and to England!” and Hanaud leaned back in his chair with a little gasp. The queerest smile broke over his face.
“I see,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” Frobisher exclaimed, hotly appealing. “You are of the Sûrété and I am a lawyer, an officer of the High Court in my country and I have no right to make such a petition. But I do without a scruple. You can’t get a conviction against Ann Upcott. You haven’t a chance of it. But you can throw such a net of suspicion about her that she’ll never get out of it. You can ruin her—yes—but that’s all you can do.”
“You speak very eagerly, my friend,” Hanaud interposed.
Jim could not explain that it was Betty’s anxiety to save her friend which inspired
