“There has been enough publicity already owing to Boris Waberski,” he continued. “Surely Miss Harlowe has had distress enough. Why must she stand in the witness-box and give evidence against her friend in a trial which can have no result? That’s what I want you to realise, Monsieur Hanaud. I have had some experience of criminal trials”—O shade of Mr. Haslitt! Why was that punctilious man not there in the flesh to wipe out with an indignant word the slur upon the firm of Frobisher and Haslitt?—“And I assure you that no jury could convict upon such evidence. Why, even the pearl necklace has not been traced—and it never will be. You can take that from me, Monsieur Hanaud! It never will be!”
Hanaud opened a drawer in the table and took out one of those little cedarwood boxes made to hold a hundred cigarettes, which the better class of manufacturers use in England for their wares. He pushed this across the table towards Jim. Something which was more substantial than cigarettes rattled inside of it. Jim seized upon it in a panic. He had not a doubt that Betty would far sooner lose her necklace altogether than that her friend Ann Upcott should be destroyed by it. He opened the lid of the box. It was filled with cotton-wool. From the cotton-wool he took a string of pearls perfectly graded in size, and gleaming softly with a pink lustre which, even to his untutored eyes, was indescribably lovely.
“It would have been more correct if I had found them in a matchbox,” said Hanaud. “But I shall point out to Monsieur Bex that after all matches and cigarettes are akin.”
Jim was still staring at the necklace in utter disappointment when Moreau knocked upon the other side of the communicating door. Hanaud looked again at his watch.
“Yes, it is eleven o’clock. We must go. The car has started from the house of Madame Le Vay.”
He rose from his chair, buried the necklace again within the layers of cotton-wool, and locked it up once more in the drawer. The room had faded away from Jim Frobisher’s eyes. He was looking at a big, brilliantly illuminated house, and a girl who slipped from a window and, wrapping a dark cloak about her glistening dress, ran down the dark avenue in her dancing slippers to where a car waited hidden under trees.
“The car may not have started,” Jim said with sudden hopefulness. “There may have been an accident to it. The chauffeur may be late. Oh, a hundred things may have happened!”
“With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously rehearsed? No, my friend.”
Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against the wall and placed it in his pocket.
“You are going to leave that necklace just like that in a table drawer?” Jim asked. “We ought to take it first to the Prefecture.”
“This room is not unwatched,” replied Hanaud. “It will be safe.”
Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.
“We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road,” he argued. “It is past eleven, as you say—well past eleven. And thirty-five minutes on a motorcycle in the daytime means fifty minutes in a car at night, especially with a bad road to travel.”
“We don’t intend to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road,” Hanaud returned. He folded up the map and put it aside upon the mantelshelf.
“I take a big risk, you know,” he said softly. “But I must take it! And—no! I can’t be wrong!” But he turned from the mantelshelf with a very anxious and troubled face. Then, as he looked at Jim, a fresh idea came into his mind.
“By the way,” he said. “The façade of Notre Dame?”
Jim nodded.
“The bas-relief of The Last Judgment. We went to see it. We thought your way of saying what you believed a little brutal.”
Hanaud remained silent with his eyes upon the floor for a few seconds. Then he said quietly: “I am sorry.” He tacked on a question. “You say ‘we’?”
“Mademoiselle Harlowe and I,” Jim explained.
“Oh, yes—to be sure. I should have thought of that,” and once more his troubled cry broke from him. “It must be that!—No, I can’t be wrong. … Anyway, it’s too late to change now.”
A second time Moreau rapped upon the communicating door. Hanaud sprang to alertness.
“That’s it,” he said. “Take your hat and stick, Monsieur Frobisher! Good! You are ready?” and the room was at once plunged into darkness.
Hanaud opened the communicating door, and they passed into the front room—a bedroom looking out upon the big station square. This room was in darkness too. But the shutters were not closed, and there were patches of light upon the walls from the lamps in the square and the Grande Taverne at the corner. The three men could see one another, and to Jim in this dusk the faces of his companions appeared of a ghastly pallor.
“Daunay took his position when I first knocked,” said Moreau. “Patinot has just joined him.”
He pointed across the square to the station buildings. Some cabs were waiting for the Paris train, and in front of them two men dressed like artisans were talking. One of them lit a cigarette from the stump of a cigarette held out to him by his companion. The watchers in the room saw the end of the cigarette glow red.
“The way is clear, Monsieur,” said Moreau. “We can go.” And he turned and went out of the inn to the staircase. Jim started to follow him. Whither they were going Jim had not a notion, not even a conjecture. But he was gravely troubled. All his hopes and Betty’s hopes for the swift and complete suppression of the Waberski affair had seemingly fallen to the ground. He was not reassured when Hanaud’s hand was laid on his arm and detained him.
“You understand, Monsieur Frobisher,” said Hanaud with a quiet authority, his eyes shining very
