The Prisoner in the Opal

folk on the Sunday afternoon. At once he remembered the gabare and its patron, and his sly hints that the sloop would very soon belong to him without the necessity of paying for it. He stood stock-still, suddenly realising that he had told Hanaud nothing about that conversation. Hanaud was aware of the gabare, to be sure; Hanaud could have no doubt that it had left its harbour hours before the tide had turned, in order to sink the basket with the murdered victim in the middle of the broad river whilst the darkness still enveloped it. Hanaud could be trusted to look after the patron and his two sons. Yes; but his own unrelated conversation was vital. It had taken place in the afternoon, and the crime had been committed during the night which followed the afternoon. It proved, or if it didn’t prove, it distinctly suggested, that the murder of Evelyn Devenish was premeditated. Mr. Ricardo turned abruptly away. This was certainly not putting the affair out of his thoughts. He walked out of the gardens and setting off any whither at a good round pace, found himself in a fine square and opposite to a magnificent old house, set back in a courtyard behind a long wall, such as nobles once inhabited and municipal officers use now.

“And what building is that, if you please?” he asked of a passerby.

“That is the Archbishop’s Palace,” the man returned. “It is of the sixteenth century, and has some fine pictures and carving which strangers are welcome to visit.”

This was the very place for Ricardo this morning. He would enter by that great door in the long wall. He would recreate the ancient splendours of the Archbishops of Bordeaux, and contrast them with the twilight of today. He would people the corridors with courtiers in doublets and great ruffs. He would reenact historic scenes if he could think of any⁠—he would solace his soul with⁠—in a word, he would shake off the obsession of the Suvlac mystery.

He was approaching the great door when to his amazement Hanaud came out from the courtyard. Once more Mr. Ricardo was brought to a stop. What in the world was Hanaud doing in the Archiepiscopal Palace? Asking for a special benediction upon his work? Common sense and propriety alike rejected this explanation. An idea of a more pedestrian nature commended itself to Ricardo. Hanaud had had a word or two to say about the Abbé Fauriel. He was seeing to it that that close-lipped man should have his ears properly pulled by the Archbishop for his contumacy. And quite right, too, Mr. Ricardo reflected. Anyway, it was obvious that he was not to rid himself of the crime at the Château Suvlac. So he turned upon his heel and marched back to his hotel. There he added question to question upon his tables, and conjecture to conjecture, whilst Elias Thomson crept about the room soft-footed, ministering in admiration to the needs of his master who was such a “oner for crimes.”

By five o’clock in the afternoon, after reading all that the newspapers, through the mouths of their special criminologists, had to say, and exhausting the faculties of his mind in deductions, à priori reasonings, comparisons and flights of fancy, he came to a conclusion. In all other affairs of the kind that he had ever heard of, there were innocent people. There were indeed more innocent people than criminals, and up to the last moment before the police pounced, the chief instigator had often an outward appearance of propriety and lawful behaviour as complete as a churchwarden’s. Mr. Charles Peace was the historic example. But the affair of Suvlac was unique in that there didn’t seem to be one innocent person about the place. The nearer you approached anyone, the more obvious it became that the one you approached was deeply involved. Diana’s room held a secret, although it was not hidden in the copy of a Tintoretto. The Abbé Fauriel’s conduct was of a most suspicious kind. Robin Webster was clearly the warmest material ever known. Evelyn Devenish had certainly not a nice nature; whilst Joyce, of the tumbled bed, trim and charming as she was, had a great deal to explain before faith in her could be said to be firmly established. Mr. Ricardo had clung to the belief that the scion of the Crusades would be found true to the traditions of his nobility. But even that prop had been knocked away. The Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol of the trembling hands was no better than the rest of them. Mr. Ricardo had now very little doubt that five minutes of intimate conversation with old Mrs. Tasborough would even prove her to be sunk in a profligacy as profound.

“Everyone at the Château Suvlac is tainted,” he cried aloud with a despairing sweep of his arm; and at that moment Hanaud opened the door and walked into the room with that default in ceremony which Mr. Ricardo so gravely deplored.

“One knocks upon a door,” he said, the tips of his fingers playing with a matchbox. “One asks permission to enter⁠—”

“And one presents a gentleman of the highest importance,” Hanaud said serenely.

A smallish, wiry man in the fifties, with a clean-shaven, rather narrow face, and a pair of eyes of an extraordinarily piercing blue, entered the room. He was dressed in a dark suit of tweed with a double-breasted jacket, and from the dust and disorder of his dress and a grimy look he had, it was clear that he had only this minute come to the end of a long journey. He came in reluctantly and regarded Mr. Ricardo with no particular favour. Hanaud closed the door and Ricardo invited his unknown guest to an armchair. But the man shook his head.

“I’ll sit there,” he said in a hard, grating voice, and pointed to a chair at the table. He laid down his hat.

“This is Monsieur Dennis Blackett,” said Hanaud.