“I cannot agree that Monsieur Tidon is a fool,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t say that because he is my official superior. No! I think him, on the contrary, astute. He may have been loquacious, but he will have had a good reason. Yes, I think he will get to Bordeaux, since he wishes to do so. Paris—that is another matter. But Bordeaux—yes,” and he smiled pleasantly, already congratulating the magistrate upon his translation. “As for Webster, that is another matter. Perhaps I give you him, eh? Perhaps he is”—and he dropped into English with his usual success—“warm material.”
“Hot stuff,” Mr. Ricardo promptly amended. He preferred that if vulgar idioms were going to be used, they should be used correctly. He had hardly made his amendment when the car came abruptly to a stop, and a sergeant of police flung open the door.
Hanaud jumped out, presented his certificates of identity and received some obsequious apologies. But he would not listen to them.
“The strictest guard is necessary. I beg you to treat everyone just so.” The car had been stopped at a pair of handsome iron gates, beyond which a broad carriage drive curved out of sight. “To whose house does that lead?” Hanaud asked.
“Monsieur de Mirandol’s,” answered the sergeant.
Hanaud was puzzled. He looked backwards along the road. The Château Suvlac was a good half-mile from where he stood; whilst the slated turrets of the vicomte’s house could be seen behind a clump of trees not a hundred and fifty yards from the iron gates.
“I understood,” he said, “that Monsieur de Mirandol’s house was a long, low white house on the top of a hill opposite to the Château Suvlac.”
“Certainly the magistrate told us so.” Mr. Ricardo agreed. He had descended from the car and stood at the edge of the road with Hanaud.
“That is the old summer house of Mirandol,” the sergeant explained. It could be reached both from the château here or by a road through the open country in front of the house of Suvlac. The vicomte used it for his dwelling. It was quiet and he had his great library of books housed in it. The big château was now a guesthouse and offices.
“I suppose that the young châtelaine of Suvlac paid a visit here this afternoon, eh?” Hanaud asked.
“Yes, monsieur.”
Hanaud smiled at Mr. Ricardo.
The two men left the car under the sergeant’s charge, opened the gates, and passed up the drive to the house. The chäis actually adjoined the main building, so that in the yard and in front of the porch there was a continual movement to and fro of people. Hanaud spoke to a man who was giving orders.
“So, at last, we have the real reason why Monsieur de Mirandol did not call with his condolences. He had tendered them already in his own house.” He looked at his watch. “We will imitate the young châtelaine of Suvlac. Come!”
“Monsieur le Vicomte?”
The man pointed to a continuation of the carriage road and went on with his work. The road now ran slanting upwards through a thicket of small trees, narrowed, and came to an end in front of a small white gate. Beyond the gate a footpath wound through shrubberies, and suddenly Hanaud and Ricardo found themselves upon an open plot of pasture rather than kept grass, and the long, unbroken front of the two-storied house glistened in front of them. A single stone flag was laid before the door. All was as plain as could be in the architecture of the house, and completely satisfying to the mind and eye. Hanaud rang the bell, and the loud jangle gave the suggestion of an empty house. But in a little while the door was opened and a manservant stood upon the threshold. He was fat and rather bald and rather sly in appearance, and his years of service had clothed him with a superficial resemblance to his master. Mr. Ricardo wondered whether his hands were wet, and was thankful that he could go on wondering.
“Monsieur le Vicomte?” Hanaud asked.
“He is along that path, painting the gate,” said the man.
“We will find him.”
The path which the servant designated skirted the rough grass plot and disappeared among bushes of rhododendrons on the side opposite to that by which they had come. It formed the second perpendicular of a triangle of which the base would be a line drawn between the two paths across the grass at the points where they emerged from the shrubs. Hanaud and Mr. Ricardo made their way along this second path, and after a turn or two came in sight of the Vicomte with his coat off, a paint pot in one hand, a big brush in the other, stooping by a narrow wooden gate which led out on to a road. He saw his visitors as soon as they saw him and rose erect.
“Monsieur Ricardo,” he said with a smile. “Alas! I cannot shake you by the hand. I am one big smudge of paint.”
It was green paint. He had laid it thickly on his gate, fairly thickly on his clothes and hands, and not a little on his face. “Your companion, Monsieur Ricardo, I have not the honour to know. But my unhappy young friend of Suvlac brought me her bad news this afternoon and I can guess who he is. Monsieur Hanaud?”
Hanaud bowed.
“At your service, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“An obscure and terrible affair, Monsieur Hanaud. It is very fortunate for this neighbourhood that you chanced to be in Bordeaux.”
“But I am at Bordeaux, Monsieur le Vicomte, on another matter. I return to that city now. Here, I tell you frankly, I have not got very far.”
“But you will come back to Suvlac,” de Mirandol urged anxiously. “A crime so appalling cannot be left unsolved.”
“I shall come back, Monsieur le Vicomte. But in time? That is another question. A day lost, even a few hours, and what scent
