“Ann,” Jim Frobisher whispered and he put his hand within her arm. Ann Upcott had come to the end of her strength. She clung to his hand spasmodically.
“Jim!” she answered under her breath. “Oh, but you were cruel to me!”
Hanaud’s voice called to them from within the room.
“Come!”
Ann stepped forward, felt for and found the handle. She threw open the door with a nervous violence. The treasure-room was pitch dark like the hall. Ann stepped through the doorway and her fingers reached for the switch.
“Now,” she warned them in a voice which shook.
Suddenly the treasure-room blazed with light; as suddenly it was black again; and in the darkness rose a clamour of voices.
“Half-past ten! I saw the hour!” cried Jim.
“And again the clock was higher!” exclaimed Ann.
“That is true,” Moreau agreed.
Hanaud’s voice, from the far corner of the room, joined in.
“Is that exactly what you saw, Mademoiselle, on the night of the twenty-seventh?”
“Exactly, Monsieur.”
“Then turn on the lights again and know the truth!”
The injunction was uttered in tones so grave that it sounded like a knell. For a second or two Ann’s fingers refused their service. Once more the conviction forced itself into her mind. Some irretrievable calamity waited upon the movement of her hand.
“Courage, Mademoiselle!”
Again the lights shone, and this time they remained burning. The three witnesses advanced into the room, and as they looked again, from close at hand and with a longer gaze, a cry of surprise broke from all of them.
There was no clock upon the marquetry cabinet at all.
But high above it in the long mirror before which it stood there was the reflection of a clock, its white face so clear and bright that even now it was difficult to disbelieve that this was the clock itself. And the position of the hands gave the hour as precisely half-past ten.
“Now turn about and see!” said Hanaud.
The clock itself stood upon the shelf of the Adam mantelpiece and there staring at them, the true hour was marked. It was exactly half-past one; the long minute hand pointing to six, the shorter hour hand on the right-hand side of the figure twelve, halfway between the one and the two. With a simultaneous movement they all turned again to the mirror; and the mystery was explained. The shorter hour-hand seen in the mirror was on the left-hand side of the figure twelve, and just where it would have been if the hour had been half-past ten and the clock actually where its reflection was. The figures on the dial were reversed and difficult at a first glance to read.
“You see,” Hanaud explained, “it is the law of nature to save itself from effort even in the smallest things. We live with clocks and watches. They are as customary as our daily bread. And with the instinct to save ourselves from effort, we take our time from the position of the hands. We take the actual figures of the hours for granted. Mademoiselle comes out of the dark. In the one swift flash of light she sees the hands upon the clock’s face. Half-past ten! She herself, you will remember, Monsieur Frobisher, was surprised that the hour was so early. She was cold, as though she had slept long in her armchair. She had the impression that she had slept long. And Mademoiselle was right. For the time was half-past one, and Betty Harlowe had been twenty minutes home from Monsieur de Pouillac’s ball.”
Hanaud ended with a note of triumph in his voice which exasperated Frobisher.
“Aren’t you going a little too fast?” he asked. “When the seals were removed and we entered this room for the first time, the clock was not upon the mantelshelf but upon the marquetry cabinet.”
Hanaud nodded.
“Mademoiselle Upcott told us her story before luncheon. We entered this room after luncheon. During the luncheon hours the position of the clock was changed.” He pointed to the Sedan chair. “You know now with what ease that could be done.”
“ ‘Could, could!’ ” Frobisher repeated impatiently. “It doesn’t follow that it was done.”
“That is true,” Hanaud replied. “So I will answer now one of the questions in your memorandum. What was it that I saw from the top of the Terrace Tower? I saw the smoke rising from this chimney into the air. Oh, Monsieur, I had paid attention to this house, its windows, and its doors, and its chimney-stacks. And there at midday, in all the warmth of late May, the smoke was rising from the chimney of the sealed room. There was an entrance then of which we knew nothing! And somebody had just made use of it. Who? Ask yourself that! Who went straight out from the Maison Grenelle the moment I had gone, and went alone? That clock had to be changed. Apparently some letters also had to be burnt.”
Jim hardly heard the last sentence. The clock still occupied his thoughts. His great argument had been riddled; his one dream of establishing Betty’s innocence in despite of every presumption and fact which could be brought against her had been dispelled. He dropped on to a chair.
“You understood it all so quickly,” he said with bitterness.
“Oh, I was not quick!” Hanaud answered. “Ascribe to me no gifts out of the ordinary run, Monsieur. I am trained—that is all. I have been my twenty minutes in the bullring. Listen how it came about!” He looked at Frobisher with a comical smile. “It is a pity our eager young friend, Maurice Thevenet, is not here to profit by the lesson. First of all, then! I knew that Mademoiselle Betty was here doing something of great importance. It may be only burning those letters in the hearth. It may be more. I must wait and see. Good! There, standing before the mirror, Mademoiselle Ann makes her little remark that the clock seemed higher. Do I understand yet? No, no! But I am interested. Then I notice a curious thing, a beautiful specimen of Benvenuto Cellini’s
