Mr. Ricardo, however, did not reply. He sat still and stared at the floor, as though he had not heard.
“You will come?” Hanaud insisted. “It is a thankless office, I know very well.”
Still Ricardo never spoke, never changed his attitude. Robin Webster’s shoulders worked uncomfortably. Then he said reluctantly:
“Of course it is my duty more than anyone’s.”
Before he could say more, Hanaud interrupted.
“No! I thank you, but it is Mr. Ricardo whom I want.”
Then at last Mr. Ricardo found a voice to speak with, though it was a dull one and toneless, and quite unrecognisable as his own.
“Before I go,” he said, still staring at the floor, “I think that someone should hammer at Miss Whipple’s door and make very sure that she answers.”
At once Mr. Ricardo became the cynosure of all that sad company; and for once he took no joy in his unusual position. But then the glances directed at him were without any friendliness. No one had given a thought to Joyce Whipple during the last tense minutes. Hanaud’s story linked itself so closely with Evelyn Devenish’s disappearance that the proposed journey to identify the body became the mere fulfilment of a formality. Yet now suddenly here was a new suggestion, as vague as it was alarming.
“No—no!” Diana cried sharply. She was not so much opposing Mr. Ricardo’s demand, as refusing to allow that yet another mystery should add to the torture of her nerves.
“I think so,” said Mr. Ricardo, never lifting his eyes from the floor, and his odd attitude somehow convinced everyone that he was right. Hanaud turned towards Marianne, who all this while had been standing apart, and nodded his head. Immediately she went out of the room, leaving the door open, and no more words were spoken. Her shoes were heard ringing on a flight of stone steps a short distance away, and then a loud rapping on a door. In a dreadful suspense the assemblage in the drawing-room listened for the opening of the door, for the welcome sound of Joyce Whipple’s clear voice. They heard only the rapping repeated, more insistently; and again there was no answer.
Mr. Ricardo lifted his head now in a sort of listless bewilderment, and broke the silence.
“Miss Whipple sleeps upstairs?”
“Yes,” answered Diana.
In one of the two turret rooms then!
“And Mrs. Devenish?” he asked.
“In the wing opposite to yours.”
“I see.”
What window was it, then, which he had knocked upon at two o’clock that morning, behind which he had seen the light so furtively extinguished? He was very soon to know. Marianne was heard to knock again, to cry out Joyce Whipple’s name; and then she came clattering back to the room, her bosom heaving, her face distorted with fear.
“Mademoiselle’s door is locked, and there is no key in the lock,” she stammered.
Hanaud put a question to Diana:
“Have you another key to that door?”
“Any key will open it. All the locks are upon one pattern.”
“All of you, then, will stay here.”
Hanaud whipped out of the room. They never heard his step upon the stone stairs, but they did distinctly hear the grinding of a key as it shot back a bolt; and again there was silence. But for once silence became intolerable.
“Joyce! Joyce! Oh!”
The name broke from Robin Webster’s lips in a long-drawn little cry of utter misery. It was an appeal to her to answer, to appear in all her radiant youth in the midst of them, and an expression of a belief that she never would. Mr. Ricardo saw Diana slowly lift her eyes to Robin Webster and let them dwell upon his twitching troubled face with a curiously intent look; and in a moment Hanaud was back again in the salon.
“Her room is empty,” he said gravely. “Her bedclothes were tumbled and dragging on the floor. But that had been done deliberately. Madame Devenish, Mademoiselle Whipple—neither of them slept in her bed at the Château Suvlac last night.”
Suddenly his face changed.
“Wait! Wait!” he cried, and sprang forward. He had seen Diana Tasborough sway like a sapling in a wind. Her face took on a sickly pallor. “It’s horrible! Horrible!” she whispered.
Hanaud was only in time to break her fall. For she slipped through his arms and lay quite still upon the floor.
VI
The Picture on the Wall
Hanaud stooped, raised her shoulders, and finally stood erect, holding her in his arms very tenderly, as though she were nothing more than a big baby.
“I was rough—yes, you shall reproach me,” he said remorsefully. “In my profession, alas! one grows hard. One sees so much of the brute in man. However, I make what amends I can for my clumsiness. I carry this young lady to her room.”
Mr. Ricardo was not moved by this remorse. He was never so suspicious of that inspector of the Sûreté, as when he displayed his tenderer moods. He slipped them on like a pair of gloves. He was so kind and so human and so gentle up to the last grim moment when he towered, the avenger of broken laws. Mr. Ricardo, accordingly, felt the prickliest sensations running up and down his spine when he saw his large friend holding the dainty slip of a girl within the prison of his strong arms. Was he a Samaritan or an animal of prey? A friend or a jailer?
Marianne, however, cherished obviously none of
