The Prisoner in the Opal

that long white house of his. But he had no right to do more. He had confessed it.

“You had no authority to enter the house yesterday?” he asked.

“None,” replied Hanaud.

“Do you think that de Mirandol, who did not invite you into it yesterday, will be more likely to do so tonight?”

“Less likely,” Hanaud returned.

“Then you have authority now?”

“Yes. Even if I had not, I should assume that I had.”

“Isn’t that a risk for you?”

“But it is one that I have made up my mind to take.”

“Since when?”

“Since I have learnt why the Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol was painting his gate with his own hands.”

Mr. Ricardo had to be content with an explanation which to him at all events was no explanation at all. Hanaud shut tight like an oyster. Not an answer to any conjecture, not a comment upon any theory. He just sat and smoked and smoked, lighting a fresh cigar from the stump of the old one, placid, unperturbed, a man enjoying the quiet digestion of an excellent dinner. To all appearances? No, to almost all. Mr. Ricardo would have been so tortured by exasperation that he must have flung reproaches, prayers, objurgations and threats in one incoherent spate across the table but for a lesson which he had learned on the day before. For though Hanaud smoked and smoked, and the disc of red waxed and waned at the end of his cigar with the regularity of a machine, his hands trembled from time to time even as de Mirandol’s had trembled when he was stooping at his gate.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and all his agitation was revealed in that spasmodic movement.

“Here is, I think, someone for me.”

A sergent-de-ville was walking at a stiff pace from the direction of the Cours 30th of July. Hanaud leaned out of the window and the sergeant came straight to him.

“Monsieur Hanaud?”

“Yes. Give it to me.”

The sergeant handed in the note through the window. Hanaud tore open the envelope and read, whilst Mr. Ricardo studied the changing expressions of his face. The note was fairly long though hurriedly written, and the expressions, beginning with disappointment, melted into boredom, graduated into perplexity and ended in laughter. Mr. Ricardo was never more startled. Hanaud was laughing aloud⁠—he who ten minutes ago had shuddered. He was laughing pleasantly and happily. He was amused and he was glad. The full-throated roll of the laughter struck upon Mr. Ricardo’s ears as something quite unfamiliar and odd. And he realised with a shock that for two whole days he had heard no one laugh until this moment.

“You have good news at last,” he cried.

Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.

“It is not the sort of news you would write to the house.”

“What house?” asked Ricardo in perplexity.

“But your house, of course, my friend,” Hanaud returned.

Julius Ricardo reflected and saw light.

“I’ve got it,” he announced resignedly. “It’s not news to write home about, you mean.”

“Mean?” Hanaud inquired indignantly. “It was what I said.”

“Oh, very well! You said it! Now may I hear it?”

“Certainly! There has arrived yet another visitor from London. He, too, read the evening paper. He crossed by the night boat and caught the Sud Express from Paris. The Sud Express is late. Very well, he will write to the Times about it. He drives from the station to the Prefecture. Where is the Préfet? The newspaper says that Hanaud is on the case. Very well, then! Where is Hanaud? Goddam, where is everybody? Oh, I tell you again, he will make money in the City⁠—that young man.”

“Bryce Carter,” Julius Ricardo exclaimed. “He is here?”

“Yes; the Knight of the Burning Letters. Oho! I have still to blow on my fingers when I think of them⁠—so! He takes charge of the Prefecture of Bordeaux. They dare not tell him that Hanaud is eating his dinner. No, for he break up everything if they do. No! But, Goddam, Moreau is a clever fellow. He tells him Hanaud is disguised. Hush! That helps a bit. Hanaud is wearing a beard! What a blessing! Hanaud is once more the Tcheka King! So Moreau sends him to your fine hotel on the Cours de l’Intendance and promises him a note from me if only he will not break up the town. Aha, we must write him a little note. Georges,” he called to the proprietor, “some ink! What shall I write, my friend? A little dose of morphia, eh?”; and with that his hilarity ceased and he sat gloomily nodding at his companion.

“Not so easy to concoct⁠—that little dose of morphia.⁠ ⁠…”

He wrote and tore up the sheet on which he had written. “That promises too much.” He wrote a second time and tore that sheet up too. “That does not even hint a promise of anything at all, and he has come so far.” He smiled ruefully and scratched his head, and set to work again. “So! And I underline those words. So! See⁠—I write this:

Some time before morning I come to you. Meanwhile it is wise to put on the clean collar and shave.

—Hanaud.

And I underline the clean collar and the shave. What do you think?” and he leaned back asking for admiration with every crease of his waistcoat.

“It is not so bad,” Ricardo approved indulgently.

“It is very good,” said Hanaud with simplicity. He put the letter in the envelope, and fastening it down, addressed it and handed it to the sergent-de-ville. “It is a pleasant touch. That young man rushing across England and France to bully the Prefecture of Bordeaux. Where is that lazybones Hanaud? Why isn’t he waiting for me on the steps? Goddam! Yes, it is a pleasant touch, and I tell you”⁠—he lit again the cigar which whilst concocting his little dose of morphia he had allowed to go out⁠—“I tell you, we shall need all the pleasant little touches we can find when this dark and ugly story comes to be told from its beginning