“The Prime Minister has not overheard us. We are safe,” he hissed, and he crept back to Frobisher’s side. He stooped and whispered in the ear of that bewildered man:
“I can tell you about those dossiers. They are for nine-tenths the gossip of the concièrge translated into the language of a policeman who thinks that everybody had better be in prison. Thus, the concièrge says: This Mr. Frobisher—on Tuesday he came home at one in the morning and on Thursday at three in fancy dress; and in the policeman’s report it becomes, ‘Mr. Frobisher is of a loose and excessive life.’ And that goes into your dossier—yes, my friend, just so! But here in the Sûrété—never breathe a word of it, or you ruin me!—here we are like your Miss Betty Harlowe, ‘we snap us the fingers at those dossiers.’ ”
Jim Frobisher’s mind was of the deliberate order. To change from one mood to another required a progression of ideas. He hardly knew for the moment whether he was upon his head or his heels. A minute ago Hanaud had been the grave agent of Justice; without a hint he had leaped to buffoonery, and with a huge enjoyment. He had become half urchin, half clown. Jim could almost hear the bells of his cap still tinkling. He simply stared, and Hanaud with a rueful smile resumed his seat.
“If we work together at Dijon, Monsieur Frobisher,” he said with whimsical regret, “I shall not enjoy myself as I did with my dear little friend Mr. Ricardo at Aix. No, indeed! Had I made this little pantomime for him, he would have sat with the eyes popping out of his head. He would have whispered, ‘The Prime Minister comes in the morning to spy outside your door—oh!’ and he would have been thrilled to the marrow of his bones. But you—you look at me all cold and stony, and you say to yourself, ‘This Hanaud, he is a comic!’ ”
“No,” said Jim earnestly, and Hanaud interrupted the protest with a laugh.
“It does not matter.”
“I am glad,” said Jim. “For you just now said something which I am very anxious you should not withdraw. You held me out a hope that we should work together.” Hanaud leaned forward with his elbows on his desk.
“Listen,” he said genially. “You have been frank and loyal with me. So I relieve your mind. This Waberski affair—the Prefect at Dijon does not take it very seriously; neither do I here. It is, of course, a charge of murder, and that has to be examined with care.”
“Of course.”
“And equally, of course, there is some little thing behind it,” Hanaud continued, surprising Frobisher with the very words which Mr. Haslitt had used the day before, though the one spoke in English and the other in French. “As a lawyer you will know that. Some little unpleasant fact which is best kept to ourselves. But it is a simple affair, and with these two letters you have brought me, simpler than ever. We shall ask Waberski to explain these letters and some other things too, if he can. He is a type, that Boris Waberski! The body of Madame Harlowe will be exhumed today and the evidence of the doctors taken, and afterwards, no doubt, the case will be dismissed and you can deal with Waberski as you please.”
“And that little secret?” asked Jim.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
“No doubt it will come to light. But what does that matter if it only comes to light in the office of the examining magistrate, and does not pass beyond the door?”
“Nothing at all,” Jim agreed.
“You will see. We are not so alarming after all, and your little client can put her pretty head upon the pillow without any fear that an injustice will be done to her.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Hanaud!” Jim Frobisher cried warmly. He was conscious of so great a relief that he himself was surprised by it. He had been quite captured by his pity for that unknown girl in the big house, set upon by a crazy rascal and with no champion but another girl of her own years. “Yes, this is good news to me.”
But he had hardly finished speaking before a doubt crept into his mind as to the sincerity of the man sitting opposite to him. Jim did not mean to be played and landed like a silly fish, however inexperienced he might be. He looked at Hanaud and wondered. Was this present geniality of his any less assumed than his other moods? Jim was unsettled in his estimate of the detective. One moment a judge, and rather implacable, now an urchin, now a friend! Which was travesty and which truth? Luckily there was a test question which Mr. Haslitt had put only yesterday as he looked out from the window across Russell Square. Jim now repeated it.
“The affair is simple, you say?”
“Of the simplest.”
“Then how comes it, Monsieur Hanaud, that the examining judge at Dijon still finds it necessary to call in to his assistance one of the chiefs of the Sûrété of Paris?”
The question was obviously expected, and no less obviously difficult to answer. Hanaud nodded his head once or twice.
“Yes,” he said, and again “Yes,” like a man in doubt. He looked at Jim with appraising eyes. Then with a rush, “I shall tell you everything, and when I have told you, you will give me your word that you will not betray my confidence to anyone in this world. For this is serious.”
Jim could not doubt Hanaud’s sincerity at this moment, nor his friendliness. They shone in the man like a strong flame.
“I give you my word now,” he said, and he reached out his hand across the table. Hanaud shook it. “I can talk to you freely, then,” he answered,
