“And this other young lady, Miss Whipple”—he pronounced it Vipple—“did you know her, too, before yesterday?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Ricardo felt at a greater ease. There was after all nothing more important than that the mystery of her disappearance should be cleared up at once. Whatever account he could give of her was at the magistrate’s disposal. He gave her history so far as he knew it, and added: “But I did not expect to see her at the Château Suvlac. No! Two months ago in London she told me that it was unlikely she could come, that she must return to America, and she used a strange phrase. ‘Cinderellas must be off the premises before midnight.’ That is a curious remark for a young lady with a pipe-well in California. I didn’t understand it.”
“Nor do I,” said Tidon. “She has relations?”
“A sister who is married.”
“In America?”
“Yes.”
“A fiancé, too, perhaps?”
“I think not.”
The magistrate was growing more and more discouraged.
“We shall make our inquiries of course in England,” he said gloomily, “but they pass through many channels. It will take time before we get our answers, and when we do”—he stood up, flinging out his gloved hands—“shall we be better off? Was there ever, Monsieur Hanaud, a case more difficult?”
Hanaud did not reassure him. Indeed, he added yet another to the complexities of the affair.
“It is made more difficult still by the matter of the bracelet.”
“Bracelet?” cried the magistrate sharply. “What bracelet?”
“The bracelet of Joyce Whipple which I found in the basket, half an hour ago.” Hanaud related how he had discovered it, and how Mr. Ricardo had identified it, and ended with a couple of questions which no one in the room could answer.
“Did it slip from that severed wrist unnoticed? Was it put deliberately into the basket so that it might be found after a search, and suspicion directed upon Joyce Whipple? Who shall say?”
The magistrate shrugged his shoulders despondently.
“Now—no one.” He looked towards Hanaud, however, and his face cleared and a hopeful smile made it pleasant. “But let us not forget that we have Monsieur Hanaud with us. In a few days he shall say.”
Once more the two men set to work bowing at each other with ceremonious affabilities, which at a moment when all was bewilderment and muddle, Mr. Ricardo thought supremely ridiculous. When the performance was at an end the magistrate began to move away round the end of the table.
“Since for the moment, then, this is all you have to tell me—” he started thus to dismiss his guests, when Mr. Ricardo caught him up.
“But, sir, this is not all,” he cried timidly, clinging to his chair although both Hanaud and Tidon were on their feet.
At once the magistrate stopped.
“This is not all?”
“No. I have not told you that I woke up at two o’clock this morning.”
Immediately so sharp a change occurred in that room that its very atmosphere was different, its occupants men of another stamp. A second ago baffled and despondent, they were now watchful and alert. The air was electrical. They were held stone-quiet by suspense, Mr. Ricardo no less than his companions, for the magic of the storyteller was upon him and to these fine trained minds his narrative might be the wanted open sesame. He used none but simple words and spoke them in an even, sober voice; and inspired by the breathless attention of his audience, he enjoyed for one brief memorable space the artist’s sense of triumph. He told them of his sleeplessness, his glance at his watch, the raising of his blinds. They saw with him Robin Webster’s first-floor light flicker and go out, and the windows ablaze in the white house upon the hill. They went out with him on to the dark terrace and rapped upon the glass door of the turret-room. They saw the light behind the curtains there vanish in a trice; and, returning to his bedroom with him, watched one by one the windows on the hill recede into the night. Even after he had finished, Mr. Ricardo’s two auditors stood for a while, neither moving nor speaking, like men dumbfounded.
It was Hanaud who broke the silence.
“And that turret-room you speak of—Oh, I understand very well your delicacy, but, alas! there is no room for delicacy or reticence—it is the room into which I carried Miss Diana Tasborough this morning.”
Mr. Ricardo could not but admit it.
“Yes. It is her room,” he said, and the magistrate, as though exasperated by the difficulty of his problem, struck the palm of his right hand down upon the table and turned abruptly away to the window at his back. He stood there facing the street. He lifted up his hand to the bolt and played with it, swaying his body backwards and forwards, a man at the end of his wits.
“I can tell you one thing, Monsieur Hanaud, which may help you,” he said in a faint, low voice. “The house upon the hill is the house of Monsieur de Mirandol, whom you, Mr. Ricardo, met last night. He is a great student, a member of many learned societies, and it is no rare thing for his windows to burn until the dawn. Meanwhile,” and he swung round again to face the room, “our first duty is clear, isn’t it? It is to find this girl Joyce Whipple—if we can. I entrust that task to you, Monsieur Hanaud, with every confidence. Find her for me, whether she be alive or dead.”
“Alive!”
The word broke from Hanaud in a bellow loud and violent, so that the room rang with it. He stood erect, his eyes blazing, his big body from head to foot one challenge, one denial. Even Mr. Ricardo, who had seen him in so many moods, was startled by his passion. His cry was
