“That man won’t believe anything unless he has discovered it himself,” Mr. Ricardo reflected, irritated, and at the same time disappointed. For if Hanaud disbelieved, he might have a reason for disbelief.
“Let us see!” said Hanaud. “I invite you all to stand exactly where you are.”
He went on alone, more slowly than ever and searching the ground with even a greater deliberation. At every step he took Ricardo expected an invitation to go forward. None came. Hanaud continued his examination to the dockside, and there he stayed a long time, running backwards and forwards. Then throwing up his hands in a gesture of discouragement, he hurried back.
“She stopped here!” he said, pointing to the shoes, planted side by side. “Beyond not a mark. By the side of the harbour there is muddy gravel where at high tide the water has splashed over. There if anywhere there would be footprints to match those. But there’s not a trace of them. Heavy shoes bound with iron—yes, but those slips of things—no! Mademoiselle Joyce Whipple went no nearer to the dock than this spot on which we stand. Wait!”
He cast about first towards the marshy ground and the river, and then under the trees. A broad gravel path ran down the middle of the avenue and, narrowing to less than half its width at the end, curved off to the right towards the dock. Just where the turf met the gravel path he came across the footprints again. He summoned his companions to him with a gesture. The right foot was pointing towards the path and was on the edge of the turf. The left foot was drawn back behind it and pointed towards the tiny harbour, the two imprints making an obtuse angle.
“We can read the story a little more clearly now,” he said. “That young girl—she runs from the house in a panic across the lawn. Her frightened eyes are glancing back continually over her shoulder, and she blunders into the flowerbed, she crosses it, she continues to run until something startles her, paralyses her. She recovers and turns aside to the cover of the trees, running now, oh, so lightly—on the tips of her toes, her feet skimming the grass. Once under the shelter of the branches, she halts, for the moment secure, and stands firm, but looking back—yes—looking towards the dock.” He put his hypothesis to the best proof he could think of. Taking care not to disturb the marks upon the grass, he acted the movements which he had been describing. And when he halted, his feet fell naturally into precisely the same angle as that made by the footprints of Joyce Whipple.
“Yes,” he repeated with a greater assurance, “she looked again and for some time in the direction of the harbour—to make sure of—what?”
All sorts of grim pictures rose before Mr. Ricardo’s eyes. Perhaps she had seen dimly the basket put aboard the gabare, and had somehow guessed the horror which it hid. Perhaps she had seen Evelyn Devenish murdered and her hand chopped off brutally with an axe. He had a vision of the patron and his two sons obeying the relentless commands of—But before Ricardo could fix upon the identity of the commander, a little cry of triumph broke from Hanaud’s lips. He stood gazing out over the river, he, too, stunned, but by an inspiration not a panic.
“Very sure!” he exclaimed, his voice gusty with excitement, “very sure!”
He ran back to the spot where the shoes gleamed side by side upon the grass, and stood behind them.
“You shall tell me I grow old,” he shouted to Ricardo. “Yes, yes! That poor Hanaud! His brains are all wool and cherry-jam! It must be so! Ohoho!”
It was almost as much to stop the indecency of Hanaud’s ostentation as to gratify his curiosity that Mr. Ricardo felt it necessary to interrupt.
“Shall we take it for granted that all the bouquets are now thrown and get on with our business?” he suggested a trifle acidly, and Hanaud bowed to the ground.
“We shall do just what milor’ wishes. We shall hope to satisfy milor’. We are milor’s servants. Milor’, the carriage waits,” and he scraped and grimaced like a boy in the gutter. Certainly, Mr. Ricardo reflected, Hanaud was insufferable in his moments of elation. Happily they did not on this occasion last long. He slipped out of his motley.
“It was not what Joyce Whipple saw that held her here and set the chains about her feet. No, my friend. It was what she didn’t see. She runs straight as a stretched cord from the house to the gabare. Her chance of sanctuary—yes, no doubt. And suddenly here, at the end of the avenue, the dock’s in view. There is no gabare. It has put out.”
“Before its time?”
“Yes.”
“And against the tide?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Can’t we all make a guess?” Hanaud answered gravely, and had no need to be more explicit. The two boys playing by the river in the early morning, the basket with its tragic load gently rocking upon the ripples of the water and slowly washing nearer and nearer to the bank nine miles nearer to the sea—those particulars returned to the memory of Hanaud’s audience and offered a reason for the precipitate departure of the gabare to which no one could be blind.
“Mr. Ricardo,” Hanaud continued gravely, “it is said in all your treatises and books that there is one great difference between the police of England and the police of France. Where you cautiously
