“Yes, now for me,” said Mr. Ricardo, leaning forward with enjoyment, all his dignity and indignation quite forgotten. He was to hear what a fine part he had played in this investigation. He was not very sure about it himself. But he was going to be told now.
“We were on the terrace of Suvlac, you and I. You look through the window and you see in the shadow of that room a man with his back to you.”
“Yes.”
“And you cry out in a voice of great certainty: ‘The Examining Judge.’ ”
“Yes.”
“But it was not the examining judge at all. No, it was Robin Webster. Now those two men they are not so unlike one another. No! On the other hand, they are not so like one another, either. So I ask myself, indeed I ask you, if you remember, why you make this mistake with so much conviction. You cannot tell me. Nevertheless, I wonder. There must be some reason. And then I see. That poor man supports his right hand between the buttons of his jacket, just as Robin Webster supports his right hand in a sling. That little fact opens a world to me of conjectures and possibilities. The injury done to Webster by the winepress—it may be—yes, no doubt. But I think it more likely that both the examining judge and Webster receive their hurt at the same place and in the same way. You see, I begin to ask myself, have I an enemy in that excellent examining judge? Oh, you help me—all through this case you help me very much.”
“How? How?” Mr. Ricardo asked greedily as he helped himself to a filet mignon. “For instance?”
“In the little things and the big things,” Hanaud replied. “For the little things you tell me of the great change in Mademoiselle Tasborough—how she, who had queened it in her small set, was now the submissive poor companion and did not seem to notice the alteration in her position. To me that was very interesting. The old lady of no account for years, suddenly finding herself in authority, seizing upon it, presuming upon it, becoming captious and petulant—that I understand easily. But the young queen with her fine clothes and her money and her houses, submitting to orders and reprimands—in these days—and untroubled by them—no, that puzzled me. The little pinpricks, the continual finding fault—they get on the nerves. One resents them more and more instead of ceasing to notice them at all. It was significant, that curious detail—much more significant than the fact that she had given up London in the season for Biarritz out of it. You suggested to me some very strange revolution in that Miss Tasborough’s character, the coming of a great obsession. Yes.”
Hanaud sat for a little while with a smile upon his face. Morning and evening he was in the habit of warning himself: “You have to deal with people, not with marionettes,” and it was a very definite pleasure to him, when he was led to the truth out of a very jungle of mystery by some curiously illuminating little sidelight thrown by a variation in conduct and character, which at first sight might seem of no more importance whatever. Mr. Ricardo, however, was not content to leave him long in this contented muse.
“And in the big way I helped you too?”
“To be sure. This Brie is excellent, isn’t it? At the Chapon Fin, whether it be an aquarium or a rock-garden, one eats well. So! Some coffee and some fine de la maison? Yes? And one of those big fat cigars which spoil the fit of your fine tourist suit. Good. I light him, and I tell you quick what you want to know. Else the next time you give me a cigar, I find a ninety percent dose of prussic acid waiting for me within it. Yes, my friend, in the big things you help me. For if you had not seen the lights blazing in the conference room of the Château Mirandol at two o’clock in the morning, we should all still be adrift in the mist you speak of, and the adorable Joyce Whipple would be lying still and silent under the clay of the Rue Grégoire instead of sauntering in with the pretty nonchalance of her kind in her smart blue frock, her taupe silk stockings and her shining little decorative shoes, to take luncheon with her lover at the Chapon Fin.”
A very pleasant and friendly look lit up his face as he spoke, and Mr. Ricardo turned about in his chair. Joyce Whipple was standing just within the doorway of the restaurant, heeding no one except Bryce Carter, who was asking the head waiter for a table. The newspapers had not as yet any further developments of the crime of Suvlac to offer to their readers. No one in the restaurant, except Hanaud and Ricardo, had a suspicion that the very trim and pretty girl standing by the door was the one whose disappearance was supposed to be utterly baffling the police. Though there were signs to Mr. Ricardo’s eyes of the ordeal she had been through in the pallor of her cheeks and the shadows about her big eyes, and in a certain gesture and look of wonder when she took her seat at her table, as though she could not believe that she was alive and free. But
