“So!” he said as he closed the door. “We keep you one moment. You are no longer afraid?”
“No,” she answered, smiling at him from the window and drawing in a long breath. “But—”
“Yes? Do not hesitate, mademoiselle. Our little world is yours to command tonight.”
“Very well, then! I ask something. I would like to breathe the fresh air, to feel it on my face, my neck. In a word, will you please have the car opened?”
Slowly there dawned upon Hanaud’s face a look of real delight.
“Mademoiselle, the car does not open. It is my friend Ricardo’s car, and it does not open. No. I tell you. Only the better class of cars are made to open. Tomorrow I take you in my Ford and it will all be different.”
He turned back towards the vestibule with an impish grin at Mr. Ricardo. But he atoned for the grin the next moment.
“I have a little remark to make to the widow Chicholle. You shall hear. It will be interesting to see how she takes it.”
Hanaud was spacing out his words, savouring them with a grim smile which only once or twice Mr. Ricardo had seen upon his face. In a fanciful flight, he had called it the coup de grâce. He hurried back on Hanaud’s heels. Hanaud would want him at his side if only to show him how wonderfully well he shot. Already orders were being given, and a key grated in a lock. A gendarme threw open the door of the sitting-room.
“Here you! The widow Chicholle. Out with you here!” and the old woman with her white hair and the black hollows in her face came out into the light and blinked.
“You wanted me, monsieur? Yes? I am at your service. You will remember that no harm was done. A little fear—yes! That was all that we intended. Yes! No doubt it was not right and we must suffer a little—yes.”
“I invite you to be silent,” Hanaud cut in—oh, very softly. “Your excuses—you shall make them to the President of Assize—and no doubt he will listen. For me, I have a little warning to give you—just for what it is worth. You have visited no doubt upon some Sunday or other that very beautiful ornament of this town—the Cave of the Mummies.”
“Yes, m’sieu. I have been there,” said the widow Chicholle, with her eyes fixed in a desperate anxiety upon Hanaud’s face.
“Good! I have in the course of my researches in Bordeaux today come upon a startling fact which cannot but interest you. This house is, Chicholle”—and his voice rang out a trifle louder, a trifle less soft—“this house is built upon that ancient cemetery from which the mummies were removed.”
The widow Chicholle blinked at him, seeking for the meaning of his words. He did not keep her in suspense.
“Is she there?” he cried aloud, pointing downwards to the floor. “Is she there—Jeanne Corisot? And the others who have vanished from the earth? Tomorrow we shall see.” And as he turned and strode towards the door the widow Chicholle screeched and dropped like a stone.
XX
The Face at the Window
At the door of the hotel in the Cours de l’Intendance, Hanaud jumped out.
“Wait!” he said to Joyce Whipple. “I borrow a cloak”; and in a minute he was back again. Joyce wrapped it about her and was led up to Ricardo’s sitting-room. Hanaud had entered the hotel with her and Ricardo had ascended the stairs with them, and yet he had conjured into his hands by some magic, on the way, a plate of biscuits.
“Now, mademoiselle, you will sit here,” he ordered, arranging a chair for her at the table, and setting down the biscuits in front of her, “and you will eat perhaps a couple of biscuits, whilst I make the arrangements.”
He whisked out of the room, and was back again as swiftly as if his energy had annihilated time. Joyce Whipple was still at her second biscuit, and Hanaud calmly lifted the plate from before her.
“That will do,” he said.
“No!” cried Joyce, and she clung with both hands to the plate. “I am hungry.”
“It certainly is not much of a dinner,” Mr. Ricardo observed reproachfully.
“It is not a dinner at all,” said Hanaud. “But it will spoil a dinner. Will you let the plate go, if you please, mademoiselle?”
But Joyce Whipple shook her head with determination and clung still more to her plate. She looked so like a mutinous little boy that Hanaud began to laugh; but still with one great hand he drew the plate of biscuits away, and still with both her small ones she clutched it back again.
“I am starving,” she said with a whimper in her voice, and the tears in her eyes.
“I know, my little friend,” he replied gently. “I know that very well,” and his free arm went round her shoulders. “Now you shall listen to me and say how wise I am. Look! I engage a room for you—so, No. 18—here is the ticket—a room with a bath—ah, ha, you do not know, you are the chimney-sweep’s boy. Also I order a dinner for you with a little bottle of champagne, for all of which Mr. Ricardo shall pay. And I borrow a nightdress from the manageress. The pyjamas of burnt orange—no! She lost them on the Lido. Ah, ha, my friend Mr. Ricardo and I, we talk. We know about burnt-orange pyjamas. So you meet your friend for a minute—here. Then you get all white again in your bath. That will take some time. Then you lose
