It did not need the slight emphasis with which Hanaud stressed the words to make clear to anyone at that table exactly what he meant. Joyce Whipple shivered and her face contracted with a spasm of pain.
“Yes, not pretty, mademoiselle, but what will you? There was the smear upon that poor woman’s palm. Already the palms of Robin Webster and Tidon were tingling and burning. Already the flesh was raw. That good magistrate was taking no risks except those which he needs must take. He had seen crimes brought to light because the last necessary little precaution had been forgotten or despised. Suppose that in spite of all, that body was discovered with a little wound on the palm which matched the wounds on the palms of Robin Webster and Monsieur Tidon—there might be some awkward talk, eh? So”—and Hanaud chopped the side of his hand sharply down upon the table, so that even the men jumped, and Joyce uttered a little cry. “Not pretty, eh? What became of that hand? Who shall say? The furnace or the earth. But it is curious about that bracelet, eh? It was disturbing to discover it—Miss Whipple’s gold bracelet in that basket. Very odd, very disturbing. But it is plain now, eh? The hand was chopped on the edge of the basket. Very likely no one noticed the wound until a moment before. Then—” he raised his hand again edgewise to cut the air, and Joyce Whipple leaned swiftly across her lover and arrested it.
“Please! Please!” she pleaded.
“Well, I omit the chops,” Hanaud conceded rather reluctantly, “but there was a chop and the gold bracelet—he slips into the basket. Why should they bother about it, with all that necessity to hurry, hurry? They did not know that it was the bracelet of Miss Whipple borrowed by a superstitious woman as a charm. So there is one T dotted.”
“Crossed,” Mr. Ricardo protested in an undertone.
“Dotted,” said Bryce Carter quite loudly. “And mind you, I was in the Foreign Office, where we know almost as much about the English language as Monsieur Hanaud himself. Go on, Monsieur Hanaud! I beg you to dot a T for me.”
Hanaud was magnanimity in person. He refused to trample upon a prostrate foe. Perhaps one little look of triumph, and he turned to Bryce Carter.
“Perfectly. Your T, I dot him.”
“How was it that Joyce survived during those two days at Mirandol? They ran such risks, those three. You had but to search the house.”
“Oh, but I have no right yet to search the house,” Hanaud interrupted. “I must have authorities, permissions, and who to grant them but the excellent Tidon? He make me some annoyances, I can tell you, if I ask him. Also some annoyances, perhaps, for mademoiselle there. No, I take another way. Oh, I ensure that mademoiselle shall keep her life in the house of Mirandol, never fear!”
Mr. Ricardo sniggered.
“I do that. Yes, I! No one else! Just I!”
Mr. Ricardo smiled across the table at Joyce.
“Monsieur Hanaud is not at his best on these occasions. As he would say, modesty is not his summer suiting. And how do you do it?”
“I warn them. You hear me warn them, my friend,” Hanaud replied with a gravity which quite disconcerted Mr. Ricardo. “I tell them that they cannot rid themselves of the dead. Oh, Tidon knows it, but I remind him. I have a cordon round the house. What can they do? There are just two ways—the earth or the stove. For the earth, they are sure I mean to go through that house like a repairer of the roads. For the stove? All that black evil smoke from the chimney—no, no—” and suddenly he caught himself up. “But, mademoiselle, I beg the pardon. On both the knees. It was not nice what I said. No, we blame Mr. Ricardo, who drives me on with snickerings.”
He was speaking very remorsefully to Joyce, who was watching him with a strained white face and such a look of horror in her eyes as put them all to shame for their eager questions.
“You forgive? Yes. We are rough people, without the suitable delicacies. But we love you—even the indescribable Mr. Ricardo. So you forgive?”
But Joyce seemed for the moment not to hear nor to be aware of the real tenderness which underlay the absurdity of his words. With a shudder which shook her from her head to her feet, she buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, oh!” she moaned in a low voice. “The black evil smoke! Me!” and she swayed forwards so that but for Bryce Carter’s clasp she would have fallen across the table. Consternation seized upon the little group. Hanaud filled a glass with Evian water.
“She drink this quick.” He gave it into Bryce Carter’s disengaged hand. “You make her drink it, or I say you are not her man and forbid the bands.”
“Banns,” came feebly from the lips of Mr. Ricardo. Bryce Carter gently drew the girl’s hands from her face and held the glass to her lips.
“You are very kind—all of you,” she said, smiling wanly. She drank from the glass, and reaching out a small white hand, laid it very prettily upon Hanaud’s big paw.
“That is better, eh? I come to the rescue once more. So! Now, mademoiselle, listen to me! I dot the last T with a big, neat, pleasant dot, and we all go home to bed.”
He gazed round the table, gathering attention, beaming with satisfaction.
“Listen! I have had it in my mind that all this fine courage of mademoiselle, her devotion to her friend, and her terrible distress, must not miss their fulfilment. It was to save her friend, Diana Tasborough, that she ran these risks. Well, we of the police shall do our part too. That Robin
