“Good,” he cried with a smile. “That is the spirit we want. Alive, then! I count on you. Yes, indeed, alive. For, after all, what do we know? Justice may have need of this young lady.”
A note of steel had crept into Tidon’s voice. He stood up as erect as Hanaud and quietly confronting him. Were the two men ranged in opposite camps, Ricardo wondered. Certainly there was a suggestion of menace in the magistrate’s attitude, a suggestion of championship in the detective. The magistrate wanted his “good conviction”—that was not to be forgotten. On the other hand, Hanaud’s outburst might have been no more than the expression of his passion for a complete trim rounded finish to a case, with every malefactor held to atonement. He bent his head now in an unquestioning deference.
“I shall do my best.”
Tidon rang the bell and a gendarme conducted his visitors to the door of the Prefecture. Hanaud glanced up to the windows of the magistrate’s office, which were just above his head.
“That is a very clever man,” he said, with a respect which quite surprised his friend. “Yes, mark me well! A very clever man! Remember that I have said it.”
Again, was it deference, or was it opposition which dictated those words? Mr. Ricardo could not decide, was not in truth given the time to decide. For Hanaud proceeded to commit one of those offences about which the particular finical gentleman was most touchy. He gave an order to Mr. Ricardo’s chauffeur, without the merest by-your-leave.
“To the Château Suvlac,” he cried as he stepped into the car.
“It is, after all, my Rolls-Royce,” Mr. Ricardo protested indignantly.
“It might be a Ford,” Hanaud answered graciously. “You should still carry me back to the Château Suvlac.”
Mr. Ricardo jumped upon his seat.
“You don’t follow me, I am afraid,” he said coldly.
“Ah, but I do!” Hanaud chuckled. He pushed a big fat finger into Ricardo’s ribs. “Yes, yes, I follow you. It is that excellent judge who does not. Ah! Ah! Ah!” and he shook his finger now at Ricardo, as though he playfully rebuked a naughty child. “We keep our little secrets—yes, yes. We pick and choose what we tell—yes, yes. But I, Hanaud, I say, No, No! We were asked a question and at once we are the startled chamois on the hill.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Ricardo interrupted rather guiltily. “I present no resemblance to a chamois. I never did.”
“The question was,” Hanaud continued, “ ‘Did you notice last night any change in the charming Miss Tasborough?’—and you would not answer it. Therefore you did notice a change, my friend—and you shall tell that inquisitive old elephant of a Hanaud what that change was.”
“I have no objection to telling you,” said Mr. Ricardo, “though the change I noticed has nothing whatever to do with the case.”
“Let me be the judge. One never knows.”
“Very well, then. In London, Diana Tasborough was the mistress always. Mrs. Tasborough the shadow, the chaperon without authority. At Suvlac the positions were reversed. Mrs. Tasborough was the châtelaine, more than a little petulant, more than a little exacting; Diana the submissive, docile ward. I was astonished.”
“Oho!”
Hanaud sat up in the car.
“But that is a big change, my friend, a very—big—change. Let us understand it. Something had given the older woman the mastery over her niece. She had learnt something which gave her the control, eh? Some nice quiet piece of family blackmail, eh?”
“No,” Mr. Ricardo replied. He was quite sure that that explanation wouldn’t do. He took a moment or two to put into clear words the impression which he had. “I think that Diana was occupied by some overmastering idea. You see, there never was any rivalry between Diana and Mrs. Tasborough—never any struggle for control. Diana exercised it without question and without question, too, Mrs. Tasborough acquiesced. It seemed to me that Diana had dropped that control as not worth bothering about, as too troublesome, as somehow interfering with whatever preoccupation possesses her. And that Mrs. Tasborough picked that control up and is making the most of it. Diana was always a little aloof; and last night it didn’t seem to me that she even noticed that she was no longer the queen, but the lady-in-waiting.”
“Ah!”
Hanaud’s exclamation was one of comprehension rather than of surprise. “To me that is very interesting,” he added softly, and leaning back again in the car he sat mum until they drew up at the pink archway of the Château Suvlac. Then he woke to life again. As he sprang out he said:
“I shall be grateful if you will go into the house before me and say that we have returned. It may be that Miss Tasborough will be the first person you will meet. Already I have caused that young lady great distress. It might be a shock to her if when she does not expect it I come face to face with her again.”
There were moments when Hanaud displayed a quite surprising delicacy. “After all, he has not known me for nothing all these years,” Mr. Ricardo said to himself with pride. He consented to Hanaud’s plan with alacrity, and went forward alone towards the door. But halfway up the drive, he turned about and noticed that Hanaud was engaged in an earnest conversation with his chauffeur. His thoughts took on a different and censorious complexion.
“My car and my chauffeur!” he reflected now. “He behaves as if he owned them! I trust that I am not feudal, but even the liberties of a city have their bounds.”
He was a little consoled by his quip, but at the front door he turned again. The conversation at the archway was still proceeding. It dawned upon Mr. Ricardo that he had been sent forward by Hanaud not from any delicacy of sentiment, but
