He fell to silence again for a little while and then, with a grim chuckle:
“The hands—what traitors they are! A voice, the expression of a face, one can control them. Yes, even an amateur who spends his life in his library. But the hands? Not even the most astute.”
“You noticed that his hands trembled?” cried Mr. Ricardo. “But you were out upon the road.”
Hanaud smiled with a modesty detestably false.
“Yes, I noticed. It is my business, dear friend.”
“Perhaps it is also your business to drop remarkable masks about the highways of France,” Mr. Ricardo retorted with a good deal of spirit. But the shame upon Hanaud’s face disarmed him the moment he had spoken. If this was not the Hanaud of the old days, it was kinder to hide his decline from him as long as he could.
“The very best of us must blunder at times,” he said with magnanimity.
“Just like the criminals,” Hanaud agreed.
“The Vicomte did a very subtle thing in the end. He showed us his hands,” Ricardo continued, and Hanaud looked at him swiftly with an odd, appraising glance.
“Yes, he showed me both his hands,” he said.
“To prove to you that they did not shake. He was anxious that you should see how steady they were!” Mr. Ricardo exclaimed, and Hanaud took his eyes from his friend’s face and leaned back at his ease.
“Oh, it was for that reason, was it?” he said slowly. “But here we are!”; and the car stopped with a jerk opposite a stately building in a tiny street.
“In Bordeaux! Impossible!” said Mr. Ricardo, grasping the speaking-tube in his hand.
“In Bordeaux, no!” Hanaud answered imperturbably. “But at the post office of Pauillac. Let us go in!”
They descended from the car and entered the great hall. Hanaud presented a card at a guichet and was ushered with his companion into a private room. A little consequential, bearded man came in and offered his services.
“I shall be obliged, postmaster, if you will tell me whether early in this week, a Mademoiselle Joyce Whipple received a registered package from England.”
The postmaster fetched a long book and ran his finger down the entries on one of its yellow sheets.
“Yes. On Tuesday morning.”
“She fetched it?”
The postmaster went out, made an inquiry, and returned.
“No, Monsieur Hanaud. The little parcel was delivered to her at the Château Suvlac.”
“She signed for it, of course?”
“Of course.”
“May I see the signature?” Hanaud asked; and when the receipt book was laid before him, he laid it before Mr. Ricardo.
“That is her signature?”
“Yes.”
“You are quite sure!” Hanaud insisted. “It is very important.”
“She wrote to me once to remind me of the conversation we had in London. I have seen her signature too in a visitors’ book,” Mr. Ricardo replied with a little less of assurance.
“We can make certain,” said Hanaud. He felt in his breast-pocket and drew out the yellow paper cover of a French novel. Upon it, underneath the title, was written the name “Joyce Whipple.”
“The book was lying upon the table in her bedroom. It was published a few weeks ago. It is on all the bookstalls. It is allowed to assume that mademoiselle bought it at the Quai d’Orsay for her journey to Bordeaux.”
He laid the leaf against the signature in the receipt book, and the names tallied exactly in the formation of their letters.
“They were both written by the same hand, then,” said Hanaud. “It is certain then that Miss Whipple received the registered packet in her own hands.” He looked up again at the postmaster. “Can you tell me its weight?”
The postmaster once more consulted his book.
“Two hectograms.”
“Seven of your ounces then,” Hanaud explained to Mr. Ricardo. He remained, his face clouding and clearing and clouding again, as he guessed the contents of the packet, and then rejected the guess. “But I waste time,” he said abruptly. “I will send a telegram.”
The postmaster put a form in front of him, and Hanaud took from his pocket the letter from Sir Henry Brewer of the laboratory at Leeds, and wrote the name and address in the body of a long telegram.
“I shall send it to your Scotland Yard,” he said. “They will get me what I want to know most quickly. The telegram will go at once? I thank you. And we shall go too.”
He shook hands with the postmaster. “This time it is really to Bordeaux,” he said, and he said no more until the car stopped at Mr. Ricardo’s fine hotel in the Cours de l’Intendance.
“Probably I shan’t see you tomorrow. But if anything of interest happens, I will let you know,” he remarked. “Meanwhile there is a question for both of us to consider. Why must the Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol paint that particular little gate with his own hands? The other one by which we passed on our way to the house—that wanted its fresh coat of paint too! Why did that one opening on to the road above the Château Suvlac alone receive his attention? The blisters of the sun? Blague, my friend! Why wasn’t it painted before the vintage? Why couldn’t it wait to be painted until after the vintage?” And with a nod and a smile he walked away.
XVI
Dennis Blackett Adds to Diana’s Story
Mr. Ricardo tried to push the crime of Suvlac altogether from his mind. Thus he would come fresh to its perplexities when once more his assistance was needed. He began his day to himself, accordingly, with a stroll through the Botanical Gardens, and without any intention came to the ornamental water where Le Petit Mousse, with its hand-driven paddle-wheels, was moored awaiting the holiday
