Then a year passed without presents. There was no day of ceremonial visit. Consternation reigned in the family Corisot. Was Jeanne turning her back upon her poor relations? No, Jeanne was a good girl. A letter with much heavy breathing and much labour of gnarled fingers was written to her. It returned in due course through the Dead Letter office. Her princeling had sailed back to the East. Jeanne Corisot had disappeared—and with her her money and her jewels.
“Now I come to the one circumstance,” Hanaud continued. “Jeanne Corisot had made a will sharing out her possessions amongst her family, and that will was safe in the walnut bureau in the room of the antimacassars. All that treasure mustn’t be lost, you see. No! Steps must be taken. So a deputation from the family Corisot, consisting of the old man and one son, knocked at the door of the Sûreté Générale. The case came to me, and I thought it would be easy. Jeanne, you see, was a careful wench, and to prevent mistakes and trouble, what particular pieces of her jewellery were to go to each member of the family was set out in that will very clearly. Domenique Pouchette gave you an idea of the sort of steps we take, but we never heard a word. If any rogue had got hold of those jewels, he was lying very quietly on the top of them. But after a time we got a line upon Jeanne herself. She had come to Bordeaux in the winter. So far we traced her, and then she disappeared again. I told you yesterday that I was at Bordeaux on quite other business than the Château Suvlac affair. Jeanne Corisot was my business, and the first news I have had of her was given to me tonight by Domenique Pouchette. But I have learnt other things. For instance, three women of the town, as the phrase has it, besides Jeanne Corisot, have disappeared in Bordeaux during the last year.”
He lowered his voice as he spoke and leaned forward out of the window to make sure that no one could overhear him.
“Three?” Mr. Ricardo exclaimed.
“Yes,” Hanaud answered with a nod. “Three of the kind I have described. Women no one would give a thought to, if they did disappear. And I am wondering whether the widow Chicholle has come at night to the apartment of Monsieur Pouchette to sell him cheap any of their little trinkets.”
Mr. Ricardo leaned back in his chair, all the exhilaration of his dinner quite sobered out of him. The disappearance of the three women—the furtive visits paid after dark to a dealer in precious stones by a woman with an evil name—the certainty that one, at all events, of Jeanne Corisot’s jewels was offered by her for sale—these facts gave a very sinister significance to her possession of Evelyn Devenish’s necklace.
“That necklace was not stolen,” said Mr. Ricardo. “For it was bought by Pouchette eleven days before Evelyn Devenish’s death. She must have missed it, had it been stolen. She parted with it of her own accord, that afternoon when we met in the Cave of the Mummies. For a price, then—yes, for a price”; and again he saw the drawing-room of Suvlac and the flare of hatred in Evelyn Devenish’s eyes as Robin Webster leaned over Joyce Whipple’s chair. But then—and he was swept back into the old circle. It was Evelyn Devenish who had paid the price!
Mr. Ricardo looked across the table towards Hanaud, who was smoking a cigar as black as one of his cigarettes.
“You think Joyce Whipple is in the Château Mirandol?”
Hanaud would not answer.
“You suspected it yesterday when you were so careful to tell everyone that the neighbourhood was surrounded by police.”
Hanaud would not admit as much.
“I was taking my precautions. I had no right then to do more. You will remember that I uttered another warning.”
“Against a second murder—yes. But desperate people don’t heed warnings.”
Hanaud replied with a deliberation which suggested that he was seeking rather to convince himself than his companion.
“Mirandol knows that I suspect his house. I visited him to show him that I did. I spoke of the wheel marks in the road to show him that I did. I dropped the mask in the road to show him that I did. And his trembling hands acknowledged that he knew it. They dare not commit another crime in that house now. If that young lady is there, they will try to get her away. They will try tonight.”
“They will take her to the river,” cried Ricardo, and Hanaud shot the queerest glance at him, and shivered.
The movement of fear, so intense, so utterly strange in just that one man, threw Ricardo into a panic.
“We ought to go at once,” he exclaimed, starting up. “We waste invaluable minutes over the delicacies of the table,” and in disgust he pushed away his empty glass of fine champagne.
“You are wrong, my friend,” said Hanaud gravely. He seemed to cast about for excuses. “It is not yet eight o’clock. If we start in your car now, we shall reach the Château Mirandol before half-past nine. Too early! The neighbourhood will be awake. We should simply give them warning that we are at their heels.”
They spoke of “they” and “them,” Ricardo not daring to assign names, Hanaud with all the spirit of his profession in his blood, maligning no one of whose guilt he was not sure. Ricardo recognised that the true reason for their delay had not been given to him, and lit another cigarette. But the dusk was changing swiftly into darkness. Beneath the great lime trees across the road the chauffeur switched on the lights of the car; and marvelling at his companion’s patience, Mr. Ricardo twitched in every limb.
Then an obstacle occurred to him which would surely spoil all their plans. Yesterday Hanaud had made clear to the Vicomte de Mirandol that he suspected
