“They are there, just as valuable as if they had been made to guide me.”
“And, quite uninvited, you read them across my shoulder.”
“Not as well as I could wish,” Hanaud answered imperturbably, as he reached forward and gathered the sheets in his hand. “You permit? But, of course! What a question!”
Indeed it had been Mr. Ricardo’s intention to present this little summary of his inconclusions to Hanaud at some dramatic moment. For he realised that the inspector of the Sûreté would need all the help he could get from his friends before he cut to the core of his difficult problem. And he was pleased with his notes. The form of them with the dividing line had a literary flavour. There were some pages of Robinson Crusoe, casting up the “fors” and “againsts” in the same judicial spirit. Nevertheless he was a little nervous as he watched Hanaud reading them. He had been jeered at and trampled upon before very unceremoniously. He was delighted, therefore, to see that his friend read them slowly and with a serious face.
When he had done, Hanaud folded the sheets and handed them back with a little smile of appreciation.
“You shall put them in your pocket, and keep them safe, so that no one sees them but you and I. For I tell you, Mr. Ricardo, you almost write down there one most important question.”
Mr. Ricardo, on the other hand, was conscious that he had written down not one but many important questions, and there was no “almost” either, about his way of putting them. They were direct, short and pithy—models of questions. But, of course, Hanaud would never admit any really high merit in another. That was very, very far from the habit of his mind. Ricardo was accustomed to make an allowance for this defect in his friend the inspector, and he smiled indulgently.
“You refer, of course, to the question why Evelyn Devenish’s hand was brutally hacked off after her death.”
To his surprise, Hanaud shook his head vigorously.
“No. That is a question—yes, but it leaps to the eyes that is a question.”
Mr. Ricardo pulled his notes out of his pocket and studied them thoughtfully.
“It is, then, the question of Evelyn Devenish’s antecedents,” he remarked, and was wrong again.
“No. The question you approached was much more subtle than that. As for Madame Devenish’s antecedents—they come under the heading of routine. I think, indeed, we shall learn something definite about them at once—for Mademoiselle Tasborough has recovered from the shock of the bad news which I brought to her, and is good enough to receive us.”
He unlatched the door between the library and the drawing-room and passed in with Ricardo at his heels. The room however was empty, and Hanaud stopped abruptly. The long windows stood open upon the terrace, and Hanaud with his noiseless step approached them and peered cautiously out. He returned to Mr. Ricardo with an odd smile upon his lips.
“It was just as well that I did not read your notes out aloud, my friend,” he said in a low voice. “We spoke of what? The hand cut off—yes—and Evelyn Devenish’s antecedents—that was all.”
He was clearly relieved, and now raised his voice a trifle above his usual compass.
“We shall no doubt find that young lady upon the terrace,” and he stepped out at the window.
Mr. Ricardo understood Hanaud’s anxiety when he followed him. For Diana was sitting upon a garden seat close by the open window of the library, and not a word which they had spoken, but she must have overheard it. She raised her head, however, without the slightest embarrassment. Though her face was still pale, her manner was collected, and she could even summon up the ghost of a smile. Only her eyes had the unmistakable look which comes with grave illness or immeasurable trouble.
“I am sorry that I made such an idiot of myself this morning, Monsieur Hanaud,” she said.
“Oh, mademoiselle, the regrets must come from me. To discover with so harsh a precipitancy that of two great friends one is lying mutilated and dead in a common mortuary, and the other has vanished, would tax anyone of sensibility.”
Hanaud was speaking with the formality which became his position, but to Mr. Ricardo’s thinking he was repeating the fault for which he apologised. Diana replied with a slight hesitation:
“You speak of two great friends, Monsieur Hanaud. But in an affair so serious it is best to be exact. I’ll admit to you that when your assistant told me that the girl who was dead was Evelyn Devenish, I did feel, heartless though it may sound, a considerable relief. For Joyce is one of my very dearest friends.”
“Who shall blame you, mademoiselle?” Hanaud answered gently. “Let us after all admit that we are human.”
“Your assistant, monsieur—”
“Moreau,” Hanaud interposed as she paused.
“Yes. Monsieur Moreau told me at the same time that you wanted to see me. Won’t you sit down? And you too, of course, Mr. Ricardo.” She turned to him for the first time during this interview, but though her lips counterfeited a faint smile, her eyes as they met his were hard as iron.
“If I am not in the way,” said Ricardo in some confusion. There was no doubting her hostility. She was putting him down as a busybody who was clinging to the skirts of his beloved detective and poking his nose into matters much too momentous for so inconsiderable a person.
“It is for Monsieur Hanaud to say who is in the way, and who not,” she answered coldly; and Hanaud came to the unfortunate man’s rescue.
“Mr. Ricardo has already been of service this morning, in more ways than one,” he said with a gentle remonstrance to which Diana Tasborough made no response whatever.
The two men drew up a couple of iron garden chairs to Diana’s bench and sat themselves down.
“Now, mademoiselle,” Hanaud began briskly. “This young Madame Devenish was not, I gather, a great friend of yours, but she was your guest
