Nothing could be in more deplorable taste than this exhibition of ribaldry. It was Hanaud at his worst. It was Hanaud pouncing upon the body of his friend, like a gleeful buffalo. It left Mr. Ricardo tongue-tied and spluttering.
“I shall make no rejoinder,” he gasped at length.
“It is better so,” the Commissaire Herbesthal agreed.
Happily Hanaud’s mood changed very quickly. He came round to the side of the bed where the four other men were standing. He looked at the little footsteps and from the footsteps back to the glass door of the turret-room.
“Consider how I am puzzled,” he said. “At some time after two o’clock in the morning, Joyce Whipple runs in great haste across the lawn, blunders into the flowerbed and goes on. I fix the time, because the footprints are so exact and clear. It was certainly after the rain had been falling for some time and had made the mould soft and—is there a word?—cohesive. It was almost certainly after the rain had ceased, otherwise those clear imprints would be spotted and blurred. Well, then! At half-past two, someone flicks past the library window, vanishes into Mademoiselle Tasborough’s room, locks the door, and waits in a panic with fingers ready upon the electric light switch. I ask myself, was Joyce Whipple indeed pursued—and caught by someone”—and he dropped the next words slowly one by one—“who had the right of entry into Miss Tasborough’s room?”
There could be no doubt as to whom Hanaud was suggesting. But Mr. Ricardo could not reconcile the suggestion with the little clamour of grief which broke from Robin Webster when Joyce Whipple’s disappearance was discovered. But for the moment he had had enough of advancing theories and making explanations. Moreover, he saw Hanaud looking at him with a very troubled air.
“After all, were you right, my friend? Did something terrible happen in this garden just before you stole to the library for a book?”
“No cry was heard,” said Ricardo.
“That is true,” Hanaud agreed, “and on a still night a cry would have been heard a long way off. Yes!” He stood with a look of discomfort upon his face for a few moments and then shrugged his big shoulders. “Let us follow the line of these footsteps. They cannot lead us into a worse tangle than we’re in already.”
He left Moreau to pour a liquid plaster into the imprints, and, with Corbie carrying Joyce Whipple’s shoes, went on. Mr. Ricardo noticed that the line he took began at the turret door and led diagonally across the garden to the flowerbed. Beyond the flowerbed it ran towards the river, passing just under the branches of the last trees of the avenue. Hanaud walked along slowly with his eyes upon the ground and his tongue grumbling.
“Women used to be helpful when I was a young man. They wore pins—pins in their hair and pins in their clothes—and they dropped them everywhere the moment they began to run about. Ah!” and he stopped to point to the little hole made by a high heel, and went on again: “They wore skirts, too, which caught in things and left a bit behind. Now they’ve got their clothes made like gloves and—oh!”—he had discovered another stab in the grass from a narrow heel. “We’re on the right line anyway”; and under the boughs of the trees at the end of the avenue he came to a definite halt.
His companions stopped beside him, and without a word he pointed to the ground. Underneath the boughs, the turf was softer than in the open. The sun could not bake it, and the trees dripped upon it long after the rain had ceased. And in this stretch of damp and yielding grass the two small footprints were completely visible again, but side by side and close together, as if something just at this point had brought the fugitive to a stop and held her there stunned.
“Yes, she was startled here and stopped dead, suddenly,” said Hanaud. “Corbie, young man, make it sure for us.”
Corbie knelt down and stood up the glittering slippers in the tracks, and again they fitted exactly; and not one of those who watched but had a clear swift vision which appalled them. The vision of a girl fleeing in terror and arrested in full flight and standing in the dark under the boughs, her feet pressed together, her body tense with fear, her heart fluttering and fainting in her breast and a cry just checked upon her lips.
Hanaud took his stand just behind the footprints and looked forward. He was looking straight towards the little dock which had been constructed at the river side. Mr. Ricardo uttered a cry.
“Of course! Of course! The gabare!”
Hanaud turned upon him in a flash.
“The gabare which serves the château from Bordeaux, La Belle Simone. It was here in its harbour yesterday with stores. It was to start on its return voyage with the change of the tide in the early morning at six—yes, I talked with the captain yesterday afternoon—at six. Joyce Whipple was running for sanctuary to the gabare.”
“Then why did she stop here beneath the trees, at half-past two?” Hanaud asked of him, but now eagerly, without a trace of irony or ridicule in his voice.
Mr. Ricardo was not at a loss for an explanation.
“She saw the pole of the mast against the sky, perhaps a lantern, too, swinging in the rigging. From here to the harbour a few strides. She knew that she was safe.”
Mr. Ricardo’s voice revealed the immensity of his relief. He had a very strong wish that no harm should come to
