“Why was that a mistake?” Frobisher asked quickly.
“Because I begin to ask myself at once: ‘How does Betty Harlowe know that Hanaud has been called in?’ Oh, to be sure, I made a great fluster in my office about the treachery of my colleagues in Dijon. But I did not believe a word of that. No! I am at once curious about Betty Harlowe. That is all. Still, I am curious. Well, we come to Dijon and you tell her that you have shown me that telegram.”
“Yes,” Jim admitted. “I did. I remember, too,” he added slowly, “that she put out her hand on the window sill—yes, as if to steady herself.”
“But she was quick to recover,” returned Hanaud with a nod of appreciation. “She must account for that telegram. She cannot tell me that Maurice Thevenet sent a hurried word to her. No! So when I ask her if she has ever received one of these anonymous letters—which, remember, were my real business in Dijon—she says at once ‘Yes, I received one on the Sunday morning which told me that Monsieur Hanaud was coming from Paris to make an end of me.’ That was quick, eh? Yes, but I know it is a lie. For it was not until the Sunday evening that any question of my being sent for arose at all. You see Mademoiselle Betty was in a corner. I had asked her for the letter. She does not say that she has destroyed it, lest I should at once believe that she never received any such letter at all. On the contrary she says that it is in the treasure-room which is sealed up, knowing quite well that she can write it and place it there by way of the Hôtel de Brebizart before the seals are removed. But for the letter to be in the treasure-room she must have received it on the Sunday morning, since it was on the Sunday morning that the seals were affixed. She did not know when it was first proposed to call me in. She draws a bow at a venture, and I know that she is lying; and I am more curious than ever about Betty Harlowe.”
He stopped. For Jim Frobisher was staring at him with a look of horror in his eyes.
“It was I then who put you on her track?—I who came out to defend her!” he cried. “For it was I who showed you the telegram.”
“Monsieur Frobisher, that would not have mattered if Betty Harlowe had been, as you believed her, innocent,” Hanaud replied gravely; and Frobisher was silent.
“Well, then, after my first interview with Betty Harlowe, I went over the house whilst you and Betty talked together in the library!”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“And in Mademoiselle Ann’s sitting-room I found something which interested me at the first glance. Now tell me what it was!” and he cocked his head at Jim with the hope that his riddle would divert him from his self-reproaches. And in that to some extent he succeeded.
“That I can guess,” Frobisher answered with the ghost of a smile. “It was the treatise on Strophanthus.”
“Yes! The arrow-poison! The poison which leaves no trace! Monsieur, that poison has been my nightmare. Who would be the first poisoner to use it? How should I cope with him and prove that it brought no more security than arsenic or prussic-acid? These are questions which have terrified me. And suddenly, unexpectedly, in a house where a death from heart failure has just occurred, I find a dry-as-dust treatise upon the poison tucked away under a pile of magazines in a young lady’s sitting-room. I tell you I was staggered. What was it doing there? How did it come there? I see a note upon the cover, indicating a page. I turn to the page and there, staring at me, is an account of Simon Harlowe’s perfect specimen of a poison-arrow. The anonymous letters? They are at once forgotten. What if that animal Waberski, without knowing it, were right, and Madame Harlowe was murdered in the Maison Grenelle? I must find that out. I tuck the treatise up my back beneath my waistcoat and I go downstairs again, asking myself some questions. Is Mademoiselle Ann interested in such matters as Strophanthus Hispidus? Or had she anything to hope for from Madame Harlowe’s death? Or did she perhaps not know at all that the treatise was under that pile of magazines upon the table at the side? I do not know, and my head is rather in a whirl. Then I catch that wicked look of Betty Harlowe at her friend—Monsieur, a revealing look! I have not the demure and simple young lady of convention to deal with at all. No. I go away from the Maison Grenelle, still more curious about Betty Harlowe.”
Jim Frobisher sat quickly down at Hanaud’s side.
“Are you sure of that?” he asked suspiciously.
“Quite,” Hanaud replied in wonder.
“You have forgotten, haven’t you, that immediately after you left the Maison Grenelle that day you had the sergent-de-ville removed from its gates?”
“No, I don’t forget that at
