He had begun upon a satirical note, but it did not carry him beyond the first of the volumes. For the other two he had only scorn and anger, knowing the deed which they had been ranged upon that table to set off.
“And the youth painted on the altar-screen?” Mr. Ricardo asked.
“The lord of all evil,” Hanaud replied. “Lucifer, Satan—another name too, Adonis”—and, as Mr. Ricardo started—“yes, Adonis.”
He seated himself by the side of Ricardo in the recess of the window. “My friend, it is not always as a goat that the devil is worshipped. Even in the old days he was supposed to appear in silken habiliments, the young man, beautiful and cold as ice, who gave nothing in return for worship but disappointment. Adonis is one of his names.”
Mr. Ricardo, however, was not thinking of that queer identification of the Devil with the shepherd of the legends. He was recalling the scene at the dinner-table on the night of his arrival at the Château Suvlac, when Joyce broke out in a little crescendo of hysteria to Evelyn Devenish: “You needn’t look at me. It’s not I who dispense the cold.” Mr. Ricardo turned himself about now and faced the picture of the marvellous youth, his sandals laced about his legs, his leopard skin girdled about his waist and his long spear in his hand. Wherever he turned the blue eyes seemed to follow him, unutterably sad, commanding his allegiance.
“So Joyce knew,” he said, forcing himself from the contemplation of the appealing figure upon the wall. “Already on that night she knew of this room!”
“Something of this room,” Hanaud corrected.
“And understood its rites.”
“Again, something of its rites.”
“As you did—at once. Yes,” and Mr. Ricardo marvelled as he recollected here a detail, there another which had been, which still was, a mystery to him, and yet from the beginning had been lucid as glass to his companion.
But Hanaud was quicker to read Mr. Ricardo’s mind than he had been any of those mysteries.
“No, my friend,” he urged. “You may turn Adonis into the devil if you like, but you mustn’t turn me into a god. I understood not the first little least thing about that saying of Joyce Whipple’s. I was as puzzled as you—yes, until that hour when you saw me coming out of the Archiepiscopal Palace at Bordeaux.”
“But I never told you that I saw you,” Mr. Ricardo exclaimed.
“No, but you did see me. I saw that you saw me. There were you in the centre of the square standing with the mouth open and the eyes all poppy, saying to yourself ‘Gorblimey!’ ”
“Never!” Mr. Ricardo interrupted energetically. “Nor are my eyes poppy. On the contrary. In moments of agitation they recede.”
“Gorblimey, or the words to that effect,” Hanaud continued calmly. “I had spent an hour, then, with His Grace’s librarian and I had learnt some things, I can tell you. Oh! Oh! Oh! Very disappointing, the devil. Even the meat at those old Sabbaths was offal, and he himself spreading the cold of the glaciers about him.”
Suddenly he stretched out a hand towards the left-hand panel of the ingenious altar screen. “No wonder they danced furiously, those poor people in their forest glades. No wonder the first in favour was the one who danced faster than the others. They had to keep warm,” and again the note of satire died away. “Yet let us not forget. All these ludicrous mad fancies led to a great crime—committed here—in this sunlit room in which we sit—as in other places they have often done before.”
He looked about the room, reconstructing in his thoughts the succession of events, and resumed:
“I have brought you here not to tell you what happened. That Joyce Whipple can do far better than I, for with her own eyes she saw. But I prepare you for it. I made nothing of her cry, ‘It is not I who dispense the cold.’ No, but certain other things perplexed me. The fact that the Abbé Fauriel secretly crossed himself. Eh? I was interested. Then his vestments had been stolen—curious?—and the next morning, or the same night, returned. Aha! I begin to smell a skunk. Yes! Then in the room of Mademoiselle Tasborough I come across a remarkable thing.”
“Yes,” said Ricardo. “I am there. A picture of the Doge’s Palace on the Grand Canal, though for the life of me I could not see anything remarkable in it at all.”
“There was nothing remarkable in it,” Hanaud observed. “No. What I did see was that,” and again his hand darted out towards the altar. “A crucifix with an ivory figure of the Christ hung above her writing table against the wall with its head down, the feet up. I didn’t move it.”
“I agree,” said Ricardo. “You touched nothing.”
“You and I went on to Villeblanche, and whilst we were away the Abbé Fauriel called.”
Again Mr. Ricardo agreed, but he was able to add a trifle to their common store of recollections.
“We found when we got back that he was with old Mrs. Tasborough.”
“True. But before visiting madame he had paid a visit to mademoiselle, who was still resting in her room. And he, too, saw that crucifix. She had not changed its position. She probably never thought of it.”
“He came back to change it!” cried Mr. Ricardo. “He meant to change it secretly, to avoid the scandal. That was why he crept so furtively along the terrace. That was why you said the readjustment had been made!”
“Yes. The second time we entered that room I slipped the crucifix off its nail and set it to stand upon the table and against the wall, as a crucifix should stand, whilst you, my friend, were probing the mysteries of the Grand Canal.”
At another time Mr. Ricardo might well have taken offence at Hanaud’s irony and repelled it with stinging words such as “Oh, indeed!” and “To be sure.” But he was by now wrought to a pitch of amazement and
