“You shall tell me,” he said softly, “this thing so curious.”
Hanaud looked out through the open doorway. Thomson and Jules Amadée were busy piling the bags into the smaller car.
“I find it very interesting that from those who have called this afternoon to offer their condolences, there is one remarkable omission.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Ricardo indifferently.
“Yes,” said Hanaud and stopped there.
He undoubtedly was a very annoying man. For now Mr. Ricardo had to ask who it was that had failed to tender his sympathy.
“The Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol,” Hanaud replied.
“Oh!”
The announcement did give Mr. Ricardo a little shock. Good manners should be so vital an element in the equipment of a Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol that he could not leave them at home like a pair of gloves, even if he wanted to. But Ricardo’s feelings towards Hanaud at this moment would not allow him to admit so much.
“Monsieur de Mirandol was up very late last night,” he said.
“So he was, but it’s now very late today,” rejoined Hanaud, looking at his watch.
“He may have caught a cold on his way home,” Mr. Ricardo tried again.
“That need not have prevented him from sending a card.”
“It is in any case a small matter,” Mr. Ricardo remarked loftily. He meant in comparison with the tremendous matter which he was now determined to keep to himself.
“Is it? He is the nearest neighbour of all, and he dined here last night. I find it remarkable.”
“Very well then. It is remarkable,” Mr. Ricardo agreed irritably, and the two men went out from the Château Suvlac. Moreau and Elias Thomson were already seated in Hanaud’s police car, and at a nod from Hanaud Moreau started.
“We shall follow them,” said Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo, with a memory of that morning in his mind, cried out quickly to his chauffeur:
“To Bordeaux.”
“I had already given that excellent driver his instructions,” Hanaud remarked imperturbably as the big car glided from the door; and Mr. Ricardo jumped up and down restively upon the springs of his seat. He was finding his companion’s obtuseness in the finer details of conduct very hard to bear.
“You are annoyed with me, my friend.” Hanaud fetched from his pocket his blue packet of Maryland cigarettes and lit the pungent stick of tobacco with a match which seemed to fizzle for an eternity.
“I like certain things,” Mr. Ricardo declared coldly, “and I dislike certain other things.”
“I too have that extraordinary disposition,” Hanaud replied gravely.
“For instance, I like to give my own orders to my own chauffeur.”
At once Hanaud was all contrition. “Hanaud was wrong! Hanaud was inexcusable. Hanaud will appoint to himself some penances like the Abbé Fauriel,” he cried remorsefully. “But I couldn’t resist it. To give an order to the chauffeur of a Rolls, as if I owned it! No, you cannot expect a poor policeman to resist that temptation.”
Mr. Ricardo was a trifle mollified by the explanation. It had a certain flattery in it. He might not be always so quick in the uptake as the great detective, but on the other hand he had a Rolls. It was therefore in a milder spirit that he expressed what he did not like.
“I do not like to be snubbed.”
“Ah, but that is different! A thousand regrets first! Yes, Hanaud—he, the great one, is on his knees,” and he turned and bowed with his hand upon his heart. “But consider! See in what a difficulty I am! You come running all hot with information into the hall, and Jules Amadée is on your heels with your luggage. If I let you speak, once we are gone, Jules Amadée—he runs too. But to his mistress! And that poor girl with enough distress already upon her young shoulders, believes without reason that we suspect her of complicity in this crime. Without reason—yes!” he asserted stoutly. “For she tells us frankly that she drove here and there amongst her neighbours. What more likely than that she should meet Monsieur Tidon, the examining magistrate, upon his inquiries? And if she meet him, what more likely than that he should say: ‘That Mr. Ricardo did not sleep well last night in the Château Suvlac!’ Ah, the snubbing—I had to do him.”
Mr. Ricardo stared at his companion in a stupefaction.
“You knew then what I wanted to tell you!”
“But of course I knew. It is my business. You wanted to say to me at the top of your voice: ‘To only two people have I said that I slept ill last night—Hanaud and the magistrate. Yet Miss Diana—now she knows too!’ Wasn’t that it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Ricardo, greatly humbled. His fine discovery amounted to just nothing at all. Hanaud had seized upon the point at the same time as himself and given to it its natural explanation. Whereas he had never followed out its implications at all.
“Yes,” he continued with a trifle of bitterness. “The snubbing! You had to do him!”
But even while he spoke, a picture rose before his eyes, the picture of Robin Webster on the terrace gazing at Diana with a murderous fury in his face.
“But a little moment!” he cried. “But if I thought that Diana Tasborough made a slip, so did Robin Webster! That simple, natural explanation—no, it won’t do! Yes, they met the examining magistrate! Yes, he told them—probably all that I told him in the Prefecture of Villeblanche. He is a fool, that magistrate. But it was agreed that she should know nothing of what I told him when we met afterwards—”
“Agreed between whom?” Hanaud asked sharply.
“Between Robin Webster and Diana Tasborough. And she forgot the agreement, and she made her slip, which we shall do well not to forget.”
Mr. Ricardo leaned back with a pleasant sensation that he had turned the tables upon his complacent friend. He rubbed his hands together with a what-do-you-say-to-that? air about him. Hanaud was
