The Prisoner in the Opal

line with the window. He ran his eyes over the articles upon it⁠—a book, a fountain pen, a case for notepaper and envelopes, a blotter, a bottle of ink, a pencil⁠—but he was looking for something, and the thing he looked for was not there. Some cupboards were let into a wall side by side. Hanaud opened them in their order. In one, clothes dangled upon hangers; in the second, Robin Webster’s linen was arranged upon shelves. In the third, which was fitted with shelves too, his ties and collars and socks and handkerchiefs were grouped. But they only took up two shelves and there were three. The third was given over to odds and ends⁠—a leather collar-box, a few bottles, a Thermos flask, and a saucer. Hanaud closed the door and swung round, he clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together while a smile slowly overspread his face. Oh, he had found what he was looking for⁠—not a doubt of it. But Mr. Ricardo was not paying any great attention to him. He had found something too. Yes, he had⁠—an idea.

“Hanaud, I have an idea,” he cried as he stood by the window. In a moment Hanaud was shaking him by the elbow with every sign of admiration and excitement.

“An idea! Actually! That thing so rare! Speak it! Don’t keep me on the tenterhook! Put the idea so priceless into priceless words!”

“You will not laugh at me?”

“My friend!”

The two words breathed a whole world of reproach.

“Very well, then. I measure the length of the wing of the château with my eyes.”

“I had not thought of it! Now I do,” said Hanaud.

“On the left at the end of the wing, obliquely from us, is my window.”

Hanaud curled his hands into a mimicry of opera glasses and held them to his eyes.

“I do see that,” he said earnestly. “It is very extraordinary.”

“There, just opposite to us, is the window of Evelyn Devenish.”

Hanaud collapsed into a chair.

“Oh!” he cried. “To be sure it is! Well, then! Oh, speak!”

“Well, then! I told you of the murderous look which Evelyn Devenish shot at Joyce Whipple when Robin Webster was leaning over her chair.”

“You did! You did!”

“Don’t you see, then? It was to this chalet that Evelyn Devenish fled of her own accord when she left her room last night. It was to her lover Robin Webster.”

All the enthusiasm faded out of Hanaud’s big face. Discouragement became visible in the limpness of his attitude. He shook his head at Mr. Ricardo with the tenderest of reproach, and pressed a large hand upon his bosom to still the disappointment at his heart.

“My friend,” he said in a voice of pathos, “you work me up to a pitch of excitement most dangerous to the aged, and then you fling me down with the thud of Lucifer falling from the skies! How could you! How could you!”

Even the Commissaire Herbesthal, who could make neither head nor tail of Hanaud’s varied moods, glared at Mr. Ricardo indignantly. Mr. Ricardo, however, stood his ground.

“Evelyn Devenish fled to this chalet and to Robin Webster,” said he hotly.

“But Robin Webster wasn’t here,” said Hanaud.

“Not here!”

Mr. Ricardo stared sympathetically at the inspector of the Sûreté. Yes, the great detective’s day was done. This case with its subtleties and confusions had been too much for his once great bright mind. Mr. Ricardo could not, however, have him put to shame before his colleague. He must let him down easily and smoothly.

“You forget, Monsieur Hanaud. I saw Webster’s light in this window. I saw him turn it out.”

And at once Hanaud leaped to his feet.

“No, no, no! I recall your words. You saw the light flicker and go out. Yes, at the time when you used them, I thought the words were strange. Let us see now. If I turn out an electric light, it is out and at once I am in the dark. If a wire fuses, it is the same. But when an electric lamp flickers and goes out, it is because the bulb is exhausted. Let us see now!”

He switched on all the lights of the room one after another, and all of them burned brightly. He switched them off again, and in each case the light disappeared cleanly and sharply and instantaneously.

“You see!” he said.

He went back to the third cupboard and from the third shelf he took the saucer and brought it back to the table.

“This is what you saw flicker and go out.”

Herbesthal and Mr. Ricardo jostled each other in their haste to examine the saucer. At the bottom of it they saw a fragment of black wick and a little patch of wax which had melted and congealed again.

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Ricardo stammered.

“Yet it is clear. My young friend Webster lights this candle and leaves it burning in the room, so that Mr. Ricardo, or anyone who looks this way, may say to himself: ‘Oh, that industrious young man! What a treasure!’ But the candle is of a certain length, so that at a moment which experience has fixed, it will go out, and Mr. Ricardo, if he is still awake, will say: ‘It is high time he went to sleep. Treasures must not ruin their health. We do not pick them up in every hedge.’ ”

Now Mr. Ricardo had, indeed, argued in just that way, and he grew very red as he listened to this exposition.

“But, meanwhile, he is away. Yes, all very fine, but he forgets the flicker when the flame fades and leaps up, and so goes out. Aha! This Monsieur Webster is an interesting person. Where does he go when he leaves his candle burning? What does he do?”

Hanaud carefully replaced the saucer in its old position upon the shelf of the cupboard and closed the door. In a small recess in the wall at the head of the bed some books were standing. Hanaud walked across to them and read the titles aloud. It was the queerest collection of books for