 1. Letters of Mark Measures Frobisher and Haslett, the solicitors on the east side of Russell Square, countered amongst their clients a great many who had undertakings established in France, and the firm was very proud of this branch of its business. 2. It gives us a place in history, Mr. Jeremy Haslett used to say, for it dates from the year 1806, when Mr. James Frobisher, then our very energetic senior partner, organized the escape of hundreds of British subjects who were detained in France by the edict of the First Napoleon. The firm received the thanks of his Majesty's government and has been fortunate enough to retain the connection thus made. I look after that side of our affairs myself. Mr. Haslett's daily batch of letters, therefore, contained as a rule a fair number bearing the dark blue stamp of France upon their envelopes. On this morning of early April, however, there was only one. It was addressed in a spidery uncontrolled hand with which Mr. Haslett was unfamiliar, but aboard the postmark of Dijon, and Mr. Haslett tore it open rather quickly. He had a client in Dijon, a widow, Mrs. Arlo, of whose health he had had bad reports. The letter was certainly written from her house, La Maison-Granelle, but not by her. He turned to the signature. Wabersky, he said with a frown, Boris Wabersky, and then as he identified his correspondent, oh, oh, yes, yes. He sat down in his chair and read, the first part of the letter was merely flowers and compliments, but halfway down the second page its object was made clear as glass. It was five hundred pounds. Old Mr. Haslett smiled and read on, keeping up, whilst he read, a one-sided conversation with the writer. I have a great necessity of that money, wrote Boris, and, oh, I'm quite sure of that, said Mr. Haslett. My beloved sister Jean-Maurie, the letter continued, Sister-in-law, Mr. Haslett corrected, cannot live for long in spite of all the care and attention I give to her, Boris Wabersky went on. She has left me as, no doubt you know, a large share of her fortune. Already then it is mine, yes? One may say so and be favourably understood. We must look at the facts with the eyes. Expedite me, then, by the recommended post so little of what is mine, and agree my distinguished salutations. Haslett's smile became a broad grin. He had in one of his ten boxes a copy of the will of Jean-Maurie Harlow, drawn up in due form by her French notary at Dijon, by which every farthing she possessed was bequeathed without condition to her husband's niece and adopted daughter, Betty Harlow. Jeremy Haslett almost destroyed that letter. He folded it, his fingers twitched at it. There was already actually a tear at the edges of the sheets when he changed his mind. No, he said to himself, no, with the Boris Wabersky's one never knows, and he locked the letter away on a ledge of his private safe. It was very glad that he had, when three weeks later he read in the obituary column of the Times, the announcement of Mrs. Harlow's death, and received a big card with a very deep black border in the French style from Betty Harlow inviting him to the funeral at Dijon. The invitation was merely formal. He could hardly have reached Dijon in time for the ceremony had he started off at that instant. He contented himself with writing a few lines of sincere condolence to the girl, and a letter to the French notary in which he placed the services of the firm at Betty's disposal, and then he waited. I shall hear again from little Boris, he said, and he heard within the week. The handwriting was more spidery and uncontrolled than ever. Hysteria and indignation had played havoc with Wabersky's English. Also he had doubled his demand. It is outside belief, he wrote. Nothing has she left to her so attentive, brother. There is something here I do not much like. It must be one thousand pounds now by the recommended post. You have always had the world against you, my poor Boris. She say with the tears all big in her dear eyes. But I make all right for you in my will. And now in nothing. I speak, of course, to my knees. Ah, that hard one. She snap her fingers at me. Is that a behaviour? One thousand pounds, Mr. Otherwise there will be awkwardnesses. Yes, people do not snap them the fingers at Boris Wabersky without the payment. So one thousand pounds by the recommended post or awkwardnesses. And this time Boris Wabersky did not invite Mr. Haslitt to agree any salutations, distinguished or otherwise, but simply signed his name with a straggling pen, which shot all over the sheet. Mr. Haslitt did not smile over this letter. He rubbed the palms of his hands softly together. Then we shall have to make some awkwardnesses, too, he said, hastily, and he locked the second letter away with the first. But Mr. Haslitt found it a little difficult to settle to his work. There was that girl out there in the big house at Dijon, and no one of her race near her. He got up from his chair abruptly and crossed the corridor to the offices of his junior partner. Jim, you were at Monte Carlo this winter, he said. For a week, answered Jim Frobisher. I think I ask you to call on a client of ours who has a villa there, Mrs. Harlow. Jim Frobisher nodded. I did, but Mrs. Harlow was ill. There was a niece, but she was out. You saw no one then, Jeremy Haslitt asked. No, that's wrong, Jim corrected. I saw a strange creature who came to the door to make Mrs. Harlow's excuses. Oh, Russian. Boris Wabersky, said Mr. Haslitt. Oh, that's the name. Mr. Haslitt sat down in a chair. Tell me about him, Jim. Jim Frobisher stared at nothing for a few moments. He was a young man of twenty-six who had only, during this last year, succeeded to his partnership. Though quick enough, when action was imperative, he was naturally deliberate in his estimates of other people's characters, and a certain awe he had of old Jeremy Haslitt doubled that natural deliberation in any matters of the firm's business. He answered at length. He is a tall, shambling fellow with a shock of gray hair, standing up like wires above a narrow forehead and a pair of wild eyes. He made me think of a marionette whose limbs have not been properly strong. I should imagine that he was rather extravagant and emotional. He kept twitching at his mustache with very long tobacco-stained fingers, the sort of man who might go off at the deep end at any moment. Mr. Haslitt smiled. That's just what I thought. Is he giving you any trouble? asked Jim. Not yet, said Mr. Haslitt. But Mrs. Harlow is dead, and I think it very likely that he will. Did he play at the tables? Oh, yes, rather I, said Jim. I suppose that he lived on Mrs. Harlow. I suppose so, said Mr. Haslitt, and he sat for a while, while in silence. Then it's a pity you didn't see Betty Harlow. I stopped at Dijon once on my way to the South of France five years ago when Simon Harlow, the husband, was alive. Betty was then a long-legged slip of a girl and black silk stockings with a pale, clear face and dark hair and big eyes. Rather beautiful. Mr. Haslitt moved in his chair uncomfortably, that old house with its great garden of chestnuts and sycamores, and that girl alone in it with an aggrieved and half-crazed man thinking out awkwardnesses for her. Mr. Haslitt did not like the picture. Jim, he said suddenly, would you arrange your work so that you could get away a short notice if it becomes advisable? Jim looked up in surprise. Excursions and alarms, as the old-stage directions have it, were not recognized as a rule by the firm of Frobisher and Haslitt. If its furniture was dingy, its methods were stately. Clients might be urgent, but haste and hurry were words for which the firm had no use. No doubt, somewhere around the corner, there would be an attorney who understood them. Yet here was Mr. Haslitt himself, with his white hair and his curious round face, half-babyish, half-supremely intelligent, actually advocating that his junior partner should be prepared to skip to the continent at a word. No doubt I could, said Jim, and Mr. Haslitt looked him over with approbation. Jim Frobisher had an unusual quality of which his acquaintances, even his friends, knew only the outward signs. He was a solitary person. Very few people up till now had mattered to him at all, and even those he could do without. It was his passion to feel that his life and the means of his life did not depend upon the purchased skill of other people, and he had spent the spare months of his life in the fulfillment of his passion. A half-decked sailing boat which one man could handle, an ice axe, a rifle, an inexhaustible volume or two like the ring in the book, these, with the stars and his own thoughts, had been his companions on many lonely expeditions, and in consequence he had acquired a queer little look of aloofness which made him at once noticeable amongst his fellows. A misleading look, since it encouraged a confidence for which there might not be sufficient justification. It was just this look which persuaded Mr. Haslet now. This is the very man to deal with creatures like Boris Wabersky, he thought, but he did not say so aloud. What he did say was, it may not be necessary after all. Betty Harlow has a French lawyer. No doubt he is adequate. Besides, and he smiled as he recollected a phrase in Wabersky's second letter, Betty seems very capable of looking after herself. We shall see. He went back to his own office and, for a week, he heard no more from Dijon. His anxiety indeed was almost forgotten, when suddenly startling news arrived and by the most unexpected channel. Jim Frobisher brought it. He broke into Mr. Haslet's office at the sacred moment when the senior partner was dictating to a clerk the answers to his morning letters. Sir! cried Jim and stopped short at the side of the clerk. Mr. Haslet took a quick look at his young partner's face and said, We will resume these answers, Godfrey, later on. The clerk took his shorthand notebook out of the room and Mr. Haslet turned to Jim Frobisher. Now, what's your bad news, Jim? Jim blurted out, Wabersky accuses Betty Harlow of murder. What? Mr. Haslet sprang to his feet. Jim Frobisher could not have said whether incredulity or anger had the upper hand with the old man, the one so creased his forehead, the other so blazed in his eyes. Little Betty Harlow, he said in a wondering voice. Yes, Wabersky has laid a formal charge with the prefect of police at Dijon. He accuses Betty of poisoning Mrs. Harlow on the night of April the 27th. But Betty's not arrested, Mr. Haslet exclaimed. No, but she's under surveillance. Mr. Haslet sat heavily down in his armchair at his table, extravagant, uncontrolled. These were very mild epithets for Boris Wabersky. Here was a devilish malignity at work in the rogue, a passion for revenge just as mean as could be imagined. How do you know all this, Jim? Yes, suddenly. I have had a letter this morning from Dijon. You exclaimed to Mr. Haslet and the question caught hold of Jim Frobischer and plunged him to among perplexities. In the first shock of the news, the monstrous fact of the accusation had driven everything else out of his head. And now he asks himself why, after all, had the news come to him and not to the partner who had the Harlow estate in his charge. Yes, it is strange, he replied. And here's another queer thing. The letter doesn't come from Betty Harlow, but from a friend, a companion of hers, an up-got. Mr. Haslet was a little relieved. Betty had a friend with her then. That's a good thing. He reached out his hand across the table. Let me read the letter, Jim. Frobischer had been carrying it in his hand, and he gave it now to Jeremy Haslet. It was a letter of many sheets, and Jeremy let the edges slip and nicker under the ball of his thumb. Have I got to read all this, he said ruefully, and he set himself to his task. Boris Wabersky had first of all accused Betty to her face. Betty had contemptuously refused to answer the charge, and Wabersky had gone straight off to the prefect of police. He had returned in an hour's time, wildly gesticulating and talking aloud to himself. He had actually asked an up-got to back him up. Then he had packed his bags and retired to an hotel in the town. This story was set out in detail with quotations from Wabersky's violent, crazy talk, and as the old man read, Jim Frobischer became more and more uneasy, more and more troubled. He was sitting by the tall broad window which looked out upon the square, expecting some explosion of wrath and contempt. But he saw anxiety peep out of Mr. Haslet's face and stay there, as he read. More than once, he stopped altogether in his reading like a man seeking to remember, or perhaps to discover. But the whole thing's as clear as daylight, Jim said to himself, impatiently, and yet, and yet. Mr. Haslet had sat in that armchair during the better part of the day, during the better part of thirty years. How many men and women during those years had crossed the roadway below this window and crept into this quiet oblong room with their grievances, their calamities, their confessions, and had passed out again, each one contributing his little to complete the old man's knowledge and sharpened the edge of his wit. Then, if Mr. Haslet was troubled, there was something in that letter, or some mission from it, which he himself in his novitiate had overlooked. He began to read it over again, in his mind, to the best of his recollection. But he had not got far before Mr. Haslet put the letter down. Surely, sir, cried Jim, it's an obvious case of blackmail. Mr. Haslet awoke with a little shake of his shoulders. Blackmail? Oh, that, of course, Jim. Mr. Haslet got up and unlocked his safe. He took from it the two Wabersky letters and brought them across the room to Jim. Here's the evidence, as damning as anyone could wish. Jim read the letters through and uttered a little cry of delight. The rogue has delivered himself over to us. Yes, said Mr. Haslet. But to him, at all events, that was not enough. He was still looking through the lines of the letter for something beyond which he could not find. Then what's troubling you? asked Frobisher. Mr. Haslet took his stand upon the worn hearth rug with his back towards the fire. This, Jim, and he began to expound. In ninety-five of these cases out of a hundred, there is something else, something behind the actual charge, which isn't mentioned, but on which the blackmailer is really banking. As a rule, it's some shameful little secret, some blot on the family honor, which any sort of public trial would bring to light. And there must be something of that kind here. The more preposterous Wabersky's accusation is, the more certain it is that he knows something to the discredit of the Harlow name, which any Harlow would wish to keep dark, only by having an idea what the wretched thing can be. It might be some trifle, Jim suggested, which a crazy person like Wabersky would exaggerate. Yes, Mr. Haslet agreed. That happens, a man abrooding over imagined wrongs and a flighty and extravagant besides. Yes, that might well be, Jim. Jeremy Haslet spoke in a more cheerful voice. Let us see exactly what we do know of the family, he said, and he pulled up a chair to face Jim Frobisher and the window. But he had not yet sat down on it when there came a discrete knock upon the door, and a clerk entered to announce a visitor. Not yet, said Mr. Haslet, before the name of the visitor had been mentioned. Very good, sir, said the clerk, and he retired. The firm of Frobisher and Haslet conducted its business in that way. It was the real thing as a firm of solicitors, and clients who didn't like its methods, were very welcome to take their affairs to the attorney round the corner. Just as people who go to the real thing in the line of tailors must put up with the particular style in which he cuts their clothes, Mr. Haslet turned back to Jim. Let us see what we know, he said, and he sat down in the chair. He had an estate in Norfolk, and this big house, the Maison Carnel, in Dijon, and a villa at Monte Carlo. But he spent most of his time in Dijon, where at the age of forty-five he married a French lady, Jean-Marie Rabiat. There was, I believe, quite a little romance about the affair. Jean-Marie was married and separated from her husband, and Simon Harlow waited, I think, for ten years until the husband Rabiat died. Jim Frobisher moved quickly, and Mr. Haslet, who seemed to be reading of his history in the pattern of the carpet, looked up. Yes, I see what you mean, he said, replying to Jim's movement. Yes, there might have been some sort of affair between those two before they were free to marry. But nowadays, my dear Jim, opinion takes a more human view than it did in my youth. Besides, don't you see, this little secret, to be of any value to Boris Wabersky, must be near enough to Betty Harlow. I don't say to affect her, if published, but to make Wabersky think that she would hate to have it published. Now, Betty Harlow doesn't come into the picture at all until two years after Simon and Jean-Marie were married, when it became clear that they were not likely to have any children. No, the love affairs of Simon Harlow are sufficiently remote for us to leave them aside. Jim Frobisher accepted the demolition of his idea with a flash of shame. I was a fool to think of it, he said. Not a bit, replied Mr. Haslet cheerfully. Let us look at every possibility. That's the only way which will help us to get a glimpse of the truth. I resume then. Simon Harlow was a collector. Yes, he had a passion for collecting and a very Catholic one. His one sitting-room at the Maison-Grenel was a perfect treasure house, not only of beautiful things, but of out-of-the-way things also. He liked to live amongst them and do his work amongst them. His married life did not last long, for he died five years ago, at the age of fifty-one. Mr. Haslet's eyes once more searched for recollections amongst the convolutions of the carpet. That's really about all I know of him. He was a pleasant fellow enough, but not very sociable. No, there's nothing to light a candle for us there, I'm afraid. Mr. Haslet turned his thoughts to the window. Jean-Marie Harlow, he said. It's extraordinary how little I know about her. Now I come to count it up. Natural too, though, for she sold the Norfolk estate and has since passed her whole time between Monte Carlo and Dijon. And, oh yes, a little summer house on the cote-d'or amongst her vineyards. She was left rich, I suppose. Very well off at all events, Mr. Haslet replied. The Claude-au-Prince Burgundy has a fine reputation, but there's not a great deal of it. Did she come to England ever? Never, said Mr. Haslet. She was content, it seems, with Dijon. Though, to my mind, the smaller provincial towns of France are dull enough to make one scream. However, she was used to it. And then her heart began to trouble her, and for the last two years she has been an invalid. There's nothing to help us there. And Mr. Haslet looked across to Jim for confirmation. Nothing, said Jim. Then we are only left the child to Betty Harlow, and, oh yes, your correspondent, your voluminous correspondent and up-caught. Who is she, Jim? Where did she spring from? How does she find herself in the maze on Grinnell? Come, confess, young man. And Mr. Haslet archly looked at his junior partner. Why should Deborah Swabersky expect her support? Jim Frobisher threw his arms wide. I haven't an idea, he said. I have never seen her. I have never heard of her. I never knew of her existence until that letter came this morning with her name signed at the end of it. Mr. Haslet started up. He crossed the room to his table, and, fixing his folding glasses on the bridge of his nose, he bent over the letter. But she writes to you, Jim, he objected. Dear Mr. Frobisher, she writes. She doesn't address the firm at all. And he waited, looking at Jim, expecting him to withdraw his denial. Jim, however, only shook his head. It's the most bewildering thing, he replied. I can't make head or tail of it. And Mr. Haslet could not doubt now that he spoke the truth. So utterly and frankly baffled the young man was, why should Anne upcott write to me? I have been asking myself that question for the last half hour. And why didn't Betty Harlow write to you, who have had her affairs in your care? Ah, that last question helped Mr. Haslet to an explanation. His face took a livelier expression. The answer to that is in Wabersky's second letter. Betty, she snapped her fingers at his awkwardnesses. She doesn't take the charge seriously. She will have left it to the French notary to dispose of it. Yes, I think that makes Anne upgot's letter to you intelligible, too. The ceremonies of the law in a foreign country would frighten a stranger, as this girl is, apparently, more than they would to Betty Harlow, who has lived for four years in the midst of them. So she writes to the first name in the title of the firm, and writes to him as a man. That's it, Jim. And the old man rubbed his hands together in his satisfaction. A girl in terror wouldn't get any comfort out of writing to an abstraction. She wants to know that she's in touch with a real person. So she writes, dear Mr. Frowisher, that's it. You can take my word for it. Mr. Haslott walked back to his chair, but he did not sit down in it. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window over Frowisher's head. But that doesn't bring us any nearer to finding out what is Boris Rubbersky's strong suit, does it? We haven't a clue to it, he said, ruefully. To both of the men indeed, Mr. Haslott's flat, unillumined narrative of facts, without a glimpse into the characters of any of the participants in the little drama, seemed the most unhelpful thing. Yet the whole truth was written there. The truth not only of Rubbersky's move, but of all the strange terrors and mysteries into which the younger of the two men was now to be plunged. Jim Frowisher was to recognize that, when shaken to the soul, he resumed his work in the office, for it was interrupted now. Mr. Haslott, looking out of the window over his partner's head, saw a telegraph boy come swinging across the square and hesitate in the roadway below. I expect that's a telegram for us, he said, with the hopeful anticipation people in trouble have, that something from outside will happen and set them right. Jim turned round quickly. The boy was still upon the pavement, examining the numbers of the houses. We ought to have a brass plate upon the door, said Jim with a touch of impatience, and Mr. Haslott's eyebrows rose half the height of his forehead towards his thick white hair. He was really distressed by the Rubbersky incident, but this suggestion, and from a partner in the firm, shocked him like a sacrilege. My dear boy, what are you thinking of? He expostulated. I hope I am not one of those obstinate old phobies who refuse to march with the times. We have had, as you know, a telephone instrument recently installed in the Junior Clark's office. I believe that I myself proposed it. Pah! A brass plate upon the door? My dear Jim, let us leave that to Harley Street and Southampton Row. But I see that telegram is for us. The tiny mercury with the shackle and red cord to his uniform made up his mind and disappeared into the hall below. The telegram was brought upstairs, and Mr. Haslott tore it open. He stared at it, blankly, for a few seconds. Then, without a word, but with a very anxious look in his eyes, he handed it to Jim Frobischer. Jim Frobischer read, Please, please, send someone to help me at once. The prefect of police has called in Hanneau, a great detective of the Sueté in Paris. They must think me guilty, Betty Harlow. The telegram fluttered from Jim's fingers to the floor. It was like a cry for help at night, coming from a great distance. I must go, sir, by the nightboat, he said. To be sure, said Mr. Haslott a little absently. Jim, however, had enthusiasm enough for both. His chivalry was fired, as is the way with lonely men, by the picture his imagination drew. The little girl, Betty Harlow, what age was she? 21? Not a day more. She had been wandering with all the proud indifference of her sex and youth, until suddenly she found her feet caught in some trap, set by a traitor, and looked about her. And terror came, and with it, a wild cry for help. Girls never noticed danger signals, he said. No, they walked blindly into the very heart of catastrophe. Who could tell what lengths of false and cunning evidence Boris Womberski had been hammering a wayad in the dark, to slip swiftly at the right moment over her wrist and ankle. And with that question, he was seized with a great discouragement. We know very little of criminal procedure, even in our own country, in this office, he said regretfully. Happily, said Mr. Haslott, with some tartness. With him it was the firm first and last. Mezher's Robesher and Haslott never went into the criminal courts, litigation indeed, even of the purest kind, was frowned upon. It is true, there was a small special staff, under the leadership of an old managing clerk, tucked away upon an upper floor, like an unpresentable relation in a great house, which did a little of that kind of work, but it only did it for hereditary clients, and then as a favor. However, said Mr. Haslott, as he noticed Jim's discomfort, I haven't a doubt, my boy, that you will be equal to whatever is wanted. But remember, there's something at the back of this, which we here don't know. Jim shifted his position rather abruptly. This cry of the old man was becoming parrot-like, a phrase, a formula. Jim was thinking of the girl in Dijon, and hearing her piteous cry for help. She was not snapping her the fingers now. It's a matter of common sense, Mr. Haslott insisted. Take a comparison. Both, for instance, would never call in Scotland Yard over a case of this kind. There would have to be the certainty of a crime first, and then graved out as to who was the criminal. This is a case for an autopsy and the doctors. If they call in this man Hanoe, and he stopped. He picked the telegram up from the floor and read it through again. Yes, Hanoe. He repeated, his face clouding, and growing bright and clouding again, like a man catching at, and just missing a very elusive recollection. He gave up the pursuit in the end. Well, Jim, you had better take the two letters of Wabersky and Anne Upcott's three-volume novel, Anne Betty's Telegram. He gathered the papers together and enclosed them in a long envelope. And I shall expect you back again with a smiling face in a very few days. I should like to see our little Boris when he is asked to explain those letters. Mr. Haslott gave the envelope to Jim and rang his bell. There is someone waiting to see me, I think, he said to the clerk who answered it. The clerk named a great landowner who had been kicking his heels during the last half hour in an undusted waiting room with a few moldy old law books in a battered glass case to keep him company. You can join in now, said Mr. Haslott, as Jim retired to his own office, and when the great landowner entered, a merely welcomed him with a reproach. You didn't make an appointment, did you? he said. But all through that interview, though his advice was just the precise, clear advice for which the firm was quietly famous, Mr. Haslott's mind was still playing hide and seek with the memory, catching glimpses of the fringes of its skirt as it gleamed and banished. Memory is a woman, he said to himself. If I don't run after her, she will come of her own accord. But he was in the common case of men with women. He could not but run after her. Towards the end of the interview, however, his shoulders and head moved with a little jerk, and he wrote a word down on a slip of paper. As soon as his client had gone, he wrote a note and sent it off by a messenger who had orders to wait for an answer. The messenger returned within the hour, and Mr. Haslott hurried to Jim Frobisher's office. Jim had just finished handing over his affairs to various clerks, and was locking up the drawers of his desk. Jim, I have remembered where I have heard the name of this man, Hanneau, before. You have met Julius Ricardo? He's one of our clients. Yes, said Frobisher, I remember him, a rather finnicking person in Grobner Square. That's the man. He's a friend of Hanneau, and absurdly proud of the friendship. He and Hanneau were somehow mixed up in a rather scandalous crime some time ago, at Eslabah, I think. Well, Ricardo will give you a letter of introduction to him, and tell you something about him if you will go round to Grobner Square at five this afternoon. Capital, said Jim Frobisher. He kept the appointment and was told how he must expect to be odd at one moment, leaped upon unpleasantly at the next, ridiculed at a third, and treated with a great courtesy and friendship at the fourth. Jim discounted Mr. Ricardo's enthusiasm, but he got the letter and crossed the channel that night. On the journey it occurred to him that if Hanneau was a man of such high mark, he would not be free, even at an urgent call, to pack his bags and leave for the provinces in an instant. Jim broke his journey, therefore, at Paris, and in the course of the morning found his way to the direction of the suité en diquée de l'auge, just behind the Palais de Jusice. Mr. Hanneau, he asked eagerly, and the porter took his card and his letter of introduction. The great man was still in Paris then, he thought, with relief. He was taken to a long dark corridor, lit with electric globes, even on that bright morning of early summer. There he rubbed elbows with malefactors and j'entends for half an hour, whilst his confidence in himself ebbed away. Then a bell rang, and a policeman in plain clothes went up to him. One side of the corridor was lined with a row of doors. It is for you, sir, said the policeman, and he led Frobisher to one of the doors, and opened it, and stood aside. Frobisher straightened his shoulders and marched in. END OF CHAPTER II Frobisher found himself at one end of an oblong room. Opposite to him a couple of windows looked across the shining river to the big théâtre du Châtelet. On his left hand was a great table, with a few neatly arranged piles of paper, at which a big, rather heavily built man was sitting. Frobisher looked at that man as a novice in a dueling might look at the master swordsman, whom he was committed to fight, with a little shock of surprise that, after all, he appeared to be just like other men. And no, on his side, could not have been said to have looked at Frobisher at all. Yet when he spoke it was obvious that somehow he had looked and to very good purpose. He rose with a little bow and apologized. I have kept you waiting, Mr. Frobisher. My dear friend, Mr. Ricardo, did not mention your object in his letter. I had the idea that you came with the usual wish to see something of our underworld. Now that I see you, I recognize your wish is more serious. An O was a man of middle age, with a head of thick, dark hair, and the round face and shaven chin of a comedian. A pair of remarkably light eyes under rather heavy lids alone gave a significance to him at all events when seen for the first time in a mood of good will. He pointed to a chair. Will you take a seat? I will tell you, Mr. Frobisher, I have a very soft place in my heart for Mr. Ricardo and a friend of his. These are words, however. What can I do? Jim Frobisher laid down his hat and stick upon a side table and took the chair in front of Hanoe's table. I am partner in a firm of lawyers, which looks after the English interests of a family in Dijon, he said, and he saw all life and expression smoothed out of Hanoe's face. A moment ago he had been in the company of a genial and friendly companion. Now he was looking at a Chinaman. Yes, said Hanoe. The family has the name of Harlow. Jim continued. Ho-ho, said Hanoe. The ejaculation had no surprise in it and hardly any interest. Jim, however, persisted. And the surviving member of it, a girl of twenty, Betty Harlow, has been charged with murder by a Russian who is connected with the family by marriage, Boris Wabersky. Aha, said Hanoe. And why do you come to see me, Mr. Frobisher? Jim stared at the detective. The reason of his coming was obvious. And yet he was no longer sure of his ground. Hanoe had pulled open a drawer in his table and was beginning to put away in it one of his files. Yes, he said, as who should say, I am listening. Well, perhaps I am under a mistake, said Jim, but my firm has been informed that you, Mr. Hanoe, are in charge of the case, he said, and Hanoe's movements were at once arrested. He sat with the file poised on the palm of his hand, as though he was weighing it extraordinarily still. And Jim had a swift impression that he was more than disconcerted. Then Hanoe put the file into the drawer and closed the drawer softly. As softly he spoke, but in a sleek voice which to Frobisher's ear had a note in it which was actually alarming. So you have been informed of that, Mr. Frobisher? And in London? And yes, this is only Wednesday. News travels very quickly nowadays, to be sure. Well, your firm is correctly informed. I congratulate you. A point is scored by you. Jim Frobisher was quick to seize upon that word. He had thought out upon his journey and what spirit he might most usefully approach the detective. Hanoe's bitter little remark gave him the very opening which he needed. But, Mr. Hanoe, I don't take that point of view at all, he argued earnestly. I am happy to believe that there is going to be no antagonism between us. For if there were, I should assuredly get the worst of it. No, I am certain that the one wish you have in this matter is to get at the truth, whilst my wish is that you should just look upon me as a very second-rate colleague who by good fortune can give you a little help. A smile nickered across Hanoe's face and restored it to some of its geniality. It has always been a good rule to lay it on with a trowel, he observed. Now, what kind of help, Mr. Frobisher? This kind of help, Mr. Hanoe? Two letters from Boris Wabursky demanding money, the second one with threats. Both were received by my firm before he brought this charge, and both, of course, remain unanswered. He took the letters from the long envelope and handed them across the table to Hanoe, who read them through slowly, mentally translating the phrases into French, as he read. Frobisher watched his face for some expression of relief or satisfaction, but to his utter disappointment no such change came, and it was with a deprecating and almost regretful air that Hanoe turned to him in the end. Yes, no doubt these two letters have a certain significance, but we mustn't exaggerate it. The case is very difficult. Difficult, cried Jim, in exasperation. He seemed to be hammering and hammering in vain against some thick wall of stupidity, yet this man in front of him wasn't stupid. I can't understand it, he exclaimed. Here's the clearest instance of blackmail that I can imagine. Blackmail's an ugly word, Mr. Frobisher, Hanoe warned him. And blackmail's an ugly thing, said Jim. Come, Mr. Hanoe, Boris Wabursky lives in France. You will know something about him. You will have a dossier. Hanoe pounced upon the word with a little hoop of delight. His face broke into smiles. He shook a forefinger gleefully at his visitor. Ah! a dossier! Yes, I was waiting for that word. The great legend of the dossiers. You have that charming belief, too, Mr. Frobisher. France and her dossiers. Yes, if her coal mines fail her, she can always keep warm by burning her dossiers. The moment you land for the first time at Calais, boom, your dossier begins. You travel to Paris. So you dine at the Ritz Hotel. So afterwards you go where you ought not to go. So. And you go back to the hotel, very uncomfortable, because you're quite sure that somewhere in the still night six little officials with black beards and green shaded lamps are writing it all down in your dossier. But wait! He suddenly rose from his chair with his finger to his lips and his eyes opened wide. Never was a man so mysterious, so important in his mystery. He stole on tiptoe with a lightness of step, amazing and so bulky a man, to the door. Noiselessly and very slowly, with an alert, bright eye, cocked at Frobisher like a bird, he turned the handle. Then he jerked the door swiftly and words towards him. It was the classic detection of the eavesdropper, seen in a hundred comedies and farces, and carried out with so excellent a mimicry that Jim, even in this office of the Suite, almost expected to see a flustered chambermaid sprawl heavily forward on her knees. He saw nothing, however, but a grimy corridor lit with artificial light in which men were patiently waiting, and, oh, closed the door again with an air of intense relief. The Prime Minister has not overheard us. We are safe! He hissed, and he crept back to Frobisher's side. He stooped and whispered in the ear of that bewildered man, I can tell you about those dossiers. They are for nine-tenths the gossip of the concierge translated into the language of a policeman who thinks that everybody had better be imprisoned. Thus the concierge says, This, Mr. Frobisher, on Tuesday he came home at one in the morning, and on Thursday at three in fancy dress. And in the policeman's report it becomes, Mr. Frobisher is of a loose and excessive life. And that goes into your dossier. Yes, my friend, just so, but here in the Suite, never breathe a word of it, or you ruin me. Here we are like you, Miss Betty Harlow. We snap us the fingers at those dossiers. Jim Frobisher's mind was of the deliberate order to change from one mood to another required a progression of ideas. He hardly knew for the moment whether he was upon his head or his heels. A minute ago Hano had been the grave agent of justice. Without a hint he had leaped to buffoonery and with a huge enjoyment. He had become half urchin, half clown. Jim could almost hear the bells of his cap still tinkling. He simply stared. And Hano, with a rueful smile, resumed his seat. If we work together at Dijon, Mr. Frobisher, he said with whimsical regret, I shall not enjoy myself as I did with my dear little friend, Mr. Ricardo Adé. No, indeed, had I made this little pantomime for him, he would have sat with the eyes popping out of his head. He would have whispered, Prime Minister comes in the morning to spy outside your door. Oh, and he would have been thrilled to the marrow of his bones. But you, you look at me all cold and stony, and you say to yourself, this Hano, he is a comic. No, said Jim earnestly, and Hano interrupted the protest with a laugh. Does not matter. I am glad, said Jim, for you just now said something which I am very anxious you should not withdraw. You held me out of hope that we should work together. Hano leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. Listen, he said genially, you have been frank and loyal with me, so I relieve your mind. This Wabersky affair, the prefect that Dijon does not take it very seriously, neither do I hear. It is, of course, a charge of murder, and that has to be examined with care. Of course, and equally, of course, there is some little thing behind it, Hano continued, surprising Frobisher with the very words which Mr. Haslett had used the day before, though the one spoke in English and the other in French. As a lawyer, you will know that, some little unpleasant fact which is best kept to ourselves. But it is a simple affair, and with these two letters you have brought me, simpler than ever. We shall ask Wabersky to explain these letters, and some other things too, if he can. He is a type, that Boris Wabersky. The body of Madame Harlow will be exhumed today, and the evidence of the doctor's taken, and afterwards, no doubt, the case will be dismissed, and you can deal with Wabersky as you wish. And that little secret, asked Jim. Hano shrugged his shoulders. No doubt it will come to light, but what does that matter, if it only comes to light in the office of the examining magistrate, and it does not pass beyond the door? Nothing at all, Jim agreed. You will see, we are not so alarming after all, and your little client can put her pretty head upon the pillow without any fear that an injustice will be done to her. Thank you, Mr. Hano. Jim Frobisher cried warmly. He was conscious of so great a relief, that he himself was surprised by it. He had been quite captured by his pity for that unknown girl in the big house, set upon by a crazy rascal, and with no champion but another girl of her own years. Yes, this is good news to me. But he had hardly finished speaking, before a doubt crept into his mind, as through the sincerity of the man sitting opposite to him. Jim did not mean to be played and landed like a silly fish. However inexperienced he might be. He looked at a no one wondered, was this present geniality of his any less assumed than his other moods? Jim was unsettled in his estimate of the detective. One moment a judge, and rather implacable, now an urchin, now a friend. Which was travesty, and which truth? Luckily, there was a test question, which Mr. Haslett had put only yesterday, as he looked out from the window across Russell Square. Jim now repeated it. The affair is simple, you say? Of the simplest. Then how comes it, Mr. Hanot, that the examining judge at Dijon still finds it necessary to call into his assistant one of the chiefs of the Sûreté in Paris? The question was obviously expected, and no less obviously difficult to answer. Hanot nodded his head once or twice. Yes, he said, and again, yes, like a man in doubt. He looked at Jim with appraising eyes. Then with a rush, I shall tell you everything, and when I have told you, you will give me your word that you will not betray my competence to anyone in this world. For this is serious. Jim could not doubt Hanot's sincerity at this moment, nor his friendliness. They shone in the man like a strong flame. I give you my word now, he said, and he reached out his hand across the table. Hanot shook it. I can talk to you freely then, he answered, and he produced a little blue bundle of very black cigarettes. You shall smoke. The two men lit their cigarettes, and through the blue cloud Hanot explained. I go really to Dijon on quite another matter. This Wabersky affair, it is a pretense. The examining judge who calls me in, see now you have a phrase for him, and Hanot probably dropped into English more or less. He excused his face. Yes, that is your expressive idiom. He excused his face, and you will see my friend that it needs a lot of excusing that face of his. Yes. Now listen, I get hot when I think of that examining judge. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and at setting his sentence in order, resumed in French. The little towns, my friend, where life is not very gay, and people have the time to be interested in the affairs of their neighbors, have their own crimes, and perhaps the most premonitious of them is the crime of anonymous letters. Suddenly, out of a clear sky, they will come like a pestilence, full of vile charges, difficult to refute, and, who knows, sometimes perhaps true. For a while these abominations flow into the letter boxes, and not a word is said. If money is demanded, money is paid. If it is only sheer wickedness which drives that unknown pen, those who are lashed by it, nonetheless, hold their tongues. But each one begins to suspect his neighbor. The social life of the town is poisoned. A great canopy of terror hangs over it until the postman's knock, thing so welcome in the sane life of every day, becomes a thing to shiver at, and in the end dreadful things happen. So grave and quiet was the tone which Enno used that Jim himself shivered even in this room whence he could see the sunlight sparkling on the river and hear the pleasant murmur of the Paris streets. Above that murmur he heard the sharp knock of the postman upon the door. He saw a white face grow whiter still and eyes grow haggard with despair. Such a plague has descended upon Dijon. Enno continued, for more than a year it has raged. The police would not apply to Paris for help. No, they did not eat help. They would solve this pretty problem for themselves. Yes, but the letters go on, and the citizens complain. The police say ahush, the examining magistrate, he has a clue, give him time. But the letters still go on. Then after a year comes this godsend of the Wabersky affair. At once the prefect of police and the magistrate put their heads together. We will send for Enno over this simple affair, and he will find for us the author of the anonymous letters. We will send for him very privately, and if anyone recognizes him in the street and cries, there is a no, we can say, he is investigating the Wabersky affair. Thus the writer of the letters will not be alarmed, and we excuse our faces. Yes, concluded Enno heatedly, but they should have sent for me a year ago. They have lost a year. And during that year the dreadful things have happened, asked Jim. Enno nodded angrily. An old lonely man, who lunches at the hotel, takes his coffee at the Grand Taverna, and does no harm to any one. He flings himself in front of the Mediterranean Express and is cut to pieces. A pair of lovers shoot themselves in the full fee de Messonnieres. A young girl comes home from a ball. She says good night to her friends, gaily on the doorstep of her house, and in the morning she is found hanging in her ball-dress from a rivet in the wall of her bedroom. Whilst in the hearth there are the burnt fragments of one of these letters. How many had she received that poor girl before this last one drove her to this madness? The magistrate, did I not tell you? He has need to excuse his face. Enno opened a drawer in his desk and took from it a green cover. See, here are two of those precious letters, and removing two type-written sheets from the cover he handed them to Frobisher. Yes, he added, as he saw the disgust in the reader's face, those do not make a nice sauce for your breakfast, do they? They are abominable, said Jim. I wouldn't have believed. He broke off with a little cry. One moment, Monsieur Enno, he bent his head again over the sheets of paper, comparing them, scrutinizing each sentence. No, there were only the two errors which he had noticed at once. But what errors they were. To any one, at all events, with eyes to see, and some luck in the matter of experience. Why, they limited the area of search at once. Monsieur Enno, I can give you some more help, he cried enthusiastically. He did not notice the broad grin of delight, which suddenly transfigured the detective's face. Help which may lead you very quickly to the writer of these letters. You can, Enno exclaimed, give it to me, my young friend, do not keep me shaking in excitement, and do not, oh, do not tell me that you have discovered that the letters were typed upon a corona machine. For that, we already know. Jim Frobisher flushed Scarlett, that is just what he had noticed with so much pride in his perfiscuity, where the text of a sentence required a capital D. There were instead the two knots with the diagonal lines separating them, thus, which are the symbol of percent, and where there should have been a capital S, lower down the page, there was the capital S with the transverse lines, which stands for dollars. Jim was familiar with the corona machine himself, and he had remembered that if one used by error the stop for figures, and instead of the stop for capital letters, those two mistakes would result. He realized now, with Hanoe's delighted face in front of him, Hanoe was the urchin now, that the surité was certain not to have overlooked those two indications, even if the magistrate had Dijon had, and in a moment he began to laugh too. Well, I fairly asked for it, didn't I? He said, as he handed the letter back, I said a wise thing to you, Mishir, when I held it fortunate that we were not to be on opposite sides. Hanoe's face lost its urchin look. Don't make too much of me, my friend, lest you be disappointed, he said, in all seriousness. We are the servants of chance, the very best of us. Our skill is to seize quickly the hem of her skirt when it flashes for the fraction of a second before our eyes. He replaced the two anonymous letters in the green cover, and laid it again in the drawer. Then he gathered together the two letters, which Boris Robersky had written, and gave them back to Jim Frobisher. You will want these to produce at Dijon. You will go there today, this afternoon. Good, said Hanoe, I shall take the night express. I can wait for that, said Jim. But Hanoe shook his head. It is better that we should not go together, nor stay at the same hotel. It will be very quickly known in Dijon that you are the English lawyer of Miss Harlow, and those in your company will be marked men too. By the way, how were you informed in London that I, Hanoe, had been put in charge of this case? We had a telegram, replied Jim. Yes, and from whom I am curious, from Miss Harlow. For a moment Hanoe was for the second time in that interview quite disconcerted. Of that Jim Frobisher could have no doubt. He sat for a long time, his cigarette halfway to his lips, a man turned into stone. Then he laughed rather bitterly with his eyes alertly turned on Jim. Do you know what I am doing, Miss Frobisher? Yes, I am putting to myself a riddle. Answer it if you can. What is the strongest passion in the world? Averus, love, hatred. None of these things. It is the passion of one public official to take a great big club and hit his brother official on the back of the head. It is arranged that I shall go secretly to Dijon so that I may have some little chance of success. Good. On Saturday it is so arranged, and already on Monday my colleagues have so spread the news that Miss Harlow can telegraph it to you on Tuesday morning. But that is kind, eh? May I please see the telegram? Frobisher took it from the long envelope and handed it to Hanoe, who received it with a curious eagerness and opened it out on the table in front of them. He read it very slowly, so slowly that Jim wondered whether he too heard through the lines of the telegram as through the receiver of a telephone the same piteous cry for help which he himself had heard. Indeed, when Hanoe raised his face, all the bitterness had gone from it. The poor little girl, she is afraid now, eh? The slender fingers they do not snap themselves any longer, eh? Well, in a few days we make all right for her. Yes, said Jim Stoutly. Meanwhile I tear this. Do I not, and Hanoe held up the telegram form? It mentions my name. It will be safe with you, no doubt, but it serves no purpose. Everything which is torn up here is burnt in the evening. It is for you to say, and he dangled the telegram, before Jim frobished his eyes. By all means, said Jim and Hanoe, tore the telegram across. Then he placed the torn pieces together and tore them through once again and dropped them into his waste-paper basket. So, that is done, he said. Now, tell me, there is another young English girl at the Maison Grinnell? Anne Upcock said to Jim with a nod. Yes, tell me about her. Jim made the same reply to Hanoe, which he had made to Mr. Haslett. I've never seen her in my life. I never heard of her until yesterday. But whereas Mr. Haslett had received the answer with amazement, Hanoe accepted it without comment. Then we shall both make the acquaintance of that young girl at Dijon, he said with a smile, and he rose from his chair. Jim Frobisher had a feeling that the interview, which had begun badly and moved on to cordiality, was turning back upon itself and ending not too well. He was conscious of a subtle difference in Hanoe's manner, not a diminution in his friendliness, but Jim could find nothing but Hanoe's own phrase to define the change. He seemed to have caught the hymn of the skirt of chance as it flickered for a second within his range of vision. But when it had flickered, Jim could not even conjecture. He picked up his hat and stick. Hanoe was already at the door with his hand upon the knob. Good-bye, Mr. Frobisher, and I thank you sincerely for your visit. I shall see you in Dijon, said Jim. Surely, Hanoe agreed with a smile on many occasions, in the office perhaps of the examining magistrate, and no doubt in the Maison-Gonelle. But Jim was not satisfied. It was a real collaboration, which Hanoe had appeared a few minutes ago, not merely to accept, but even to look forward to. Now, on the contrary, he was evading it. But if we are to work together, Jim suggested. You might want to reach me quickly, Hanoe continued. Yes, and I might want to reach you, if not so quickly, still very secretly. Yes. He turned the question over in his mind. You will stay at the Maison-Gonelle, I suppose? No, said Jim, and he drew a little comfort from Hanoe's little start of disappointment. There will be no need for that, he explained. Boris Waburski can attempt nothing more. Those two girls will be safe enough. That's true, Hanoe agreed. You will go, then, to the big hotel in the Place d'Arcy. For me, I shall stay in one that is more obscure, and not under my own name. Whatever chance of secrecy is still left for me, that I shall cling to. He did not volunteer the name of the obscure hotel, or the name under which he proposed to masquerade, and Jim was careful not to inquire. Hanoe stood with his hand upon the knob of the door, and his eyes thoughtfully resting upon Frobischer's face. I will trust you with a little trick of mine, he said, and a smile warmed and lit his face to good humor. Do you like the pictures? No? Yes. For me, I adore them. Wherever I go, I snatch an hour for the cinema. I behold wonderful things, and I behold them in the dark, so that while I watch, I can talk quietly with a friend, and when the lights go up, we are both gone, and only our empty box are left to show where we were sitting. The cinemas, yes, with their audiences, which constantly change, and new people coming in who sit plump down upon your lap, because they cannot see an inch beyond their noses. The cinemas are useful, I tell you, but you will not betray my little secret. He ended with a laugh. Jim Frobischer's spirits were quite revived by this renewal of Hanoe's competence. He felt with a curious elation that he had traveled a long way from the sedate dignities of Russell Square. He could not project in his mind any picture of Messers Frobischer and Haslott meeting a client in a dark corner of a cinema theater off the Marlebone Road. Such maneuvers were not amongst the firm's methods, and Jim began to find the change exhilarating. Perhaps, after all, Messers Frobischer and Haslott were a little musty, he reflected. They missed, and he coined a phrase, he, Jim Frobischer, they missed the ozone of police work. Of course I'll keep your secret, he said, with a thrill in his voice. I should never have thought of so capital a meeting place. Good, said Hanoe, then at nine o'clock each night, unless there is something serious to prevent me, I shall be sitting in the big hall of the Grand Taverna. The Grand Taverna is at the corner across the square from the railway station. You can't mistake it. I shall be on the left-hand side of the hall and close up to the screen and at the edge near the billiard room. Don't look for me when the lights are raised, and if I am talking to anyone else, you will avoid me like poison. Is that understood? Quite, Jim returned, and you have now two secrets of mine to keep, Hanoe's face lost its smile. In some strange way it seemed to sharpen. The light-colored eyes became very still and grave. That also is understood, Messers Frobischer, he said, for I began to think that we may both of us see strange things before we leave Dijon again for Paris. The moment of gravity passed. With a bow he held open the door, but Jim Frobischer, as he passed out into the corridor, was once again convinced that at some definite point in the interview, Hanoe had at all events caught a glimpse of the flickering skirts of chance, even if he had not grasped them in his hands. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 The House of the Arrow by A. E. W. Mason This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 Betty Harlow Jim Frobischer reached Dijon that night at an hour too late for any visit, but at half-past nine on the next morning he turned with a thrill of excitement into the little street of Charles Robert. This street was bordered upon one side throughout its length, by a high garden-demol above which great sycamores and chestnut trees rustled friendily in the stir of wind. Towards the farther mouth of the street the wall was broken, first by the end of a house with a florid observation window of the Renaissance period, which overhung the footway, and again a little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall iron gates. Before these gates Jim came to a standstill. He gazed into the courtyard of the Mason Grinnell and, as he gazed, his excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of it. There seemed so little cause for excitement. It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning. On the left-hand side of the court women's servants were busy in front of a row of offices. At the end Jim caught glimpses of a chauffeur moving between a couple of cars in a garage and heard him whistling gaily as he moved. On the right stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out gaily with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow taking in the sunlight through all its open windows. The hall door under the horizontal glass fan stood open. One of the iron gates, too, was a jar. Even the sojourn de Villa in his white trousers out in the small street here seemed to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high wall, rather than exercising any real vigilance. It was impossible to believe, with all this pleasant evidence of normal life, that any threat was on that house or upon any of its inhabitants. And, indeed, there is no threat, Jim reflected. I have, I know, a word for it. He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door. An old serving man informed him that Madam Ezel Harlow did not receive, but he took Jim's card nevertheless and knocked upon a door on the right of the big square hall. As he knocked, he opened the door and from his position in the hall, Jim looked right through a library to a window at the end and saw two figures silhouetted against the window, a man and a girl. The man was protesting, rather extravagantly, both in word and gesture, to Jim's Britannic mind, the girl laughing a clear ringing laugh with just a touch of cruelty at the man's protestations. Jim even caught a word or two of the protest spoken in French, but with a curiously metallic accent. I have been your slave too long, the man cried, and the girl became aware that the door was open and that the old man stood inside of it with a card upon a silver salver. She came quickly forward and took the card. Jim heard a cry of pleasure and the girl came running out into the hall. You, she exclaimed, her eyes shining. I had no right to expect you so soon. Oh, thank you, and she gave him both her hands. Jim did not need her words to recognize in her the little girl of Mr. Hazliss description. Little in actual height, Betty Harlow certainly was not, but she was such a slender trifle of a girl that the epithet seemed in place. Her hair was dark brown in color, with a hint of copper, where the light caught it, parted on one side, and very neatly dressed about her small head. The broad forehead and oval face were of a clear pallor, and made vivid the fresh scarlet of her lips, and the large pupils of her gray eyes gave to her a look which was at once haunting and wistful. As she held out her hands in a warm gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of delicate flame and fragile as fair china. She looked him over with one swift comprehensive glance, and breathed a little sigh of relief. I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now on, she said with a smile. To be sure that's what I am here for, he answered, but don't take me for anything, a very choice in particular. Betty laughed again, and holding him by the sleeve drew him into the library. Monsieur Spinoza, she said, presenting the stranger to Gem, he is from Cataluna, but he spends so much of his life in Dijon that we claim him as a citizen. The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong white teeth. Yes, I have the honor to represent a great Spanish firm of wine growers. We buy the wines here to mix with our better brands, and we sell wine here to mix with their cheaper ones. You mustn't give your trade secrets away to me, Jim replied shortly. He disliked Spinoza on site, as they say, and he was at no very great pains to conceal his dislike. Spinoza was altogether too brilliant a personage. He was a big broad-children man with black shining hair and black shining eyes, a floored complexion, a curled moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers. Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on quite different business. Betty interposed. Yes, said the Catalan, a little defiantly, as though he meant to hold his ground. Yes, replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him. Spinoza raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it. I shall see you when you return, said Betty, and she walked to the door. If I go away, Spinoza replied stubbornly, it is not certain, mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go. And with a ceremonious bow to Jim, he walked out of the room. But not so quickly, but that Betty glanced swiftly from one man to the other, with keen comparing eyes, and Jim detected the glance. She closed the door and turned back to Jim with a friendly little grimace, which somehow put him in a good humour. He was being compared to another man, to his advantage, and, however modest one may be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant warmth. More trouble, Miss Harlow, he said with a smile, but this time the sort of trouble which you must expect for a good many years to come. He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two side windows, which looked out upon the courtyard. Betty sat down in the window seat. I really ought to be grateful to him, she said, for he made me laugh, and it seems to me ages since I laughed. She looked out of the window, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Oh, don't, please! cried Jim in a voice of trouble. The smile trembled once more on Betty's lips, deliciously. I won't, she replied. I was so glad to hear you laugh, he continued, after your unhappy telegram to my partner, and before I told you my good news. Betty looked at him eagerly. Good news! Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope the two letters which Wielburski had sent to his firm, and handed them to Betty. Read them, he said, and notice the dates. Betty glanced at the handwriting. Promise you, bodies! she cried, and she settled down in the window seat to study them. In her short black frock with her slim legs and their black silk stockings extended, and her feet crossed, and her head and white neck bent over the sheets of Wielburski's letters, she looked to Jim like a girl fresh from school. She was quick enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters. Of course, I always knew that it was money that Mr. Boris wanted, she said, and when my aunt's will was read, and I found that everything had been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you, and make some arrangement for him. There was no obligation upon you, Jim protested. He wasn't really a relation at all. He married Mrs. Harlow's sister. That's all. Oh, I know, replied Betty, and she laughed. He always objected to me, because I would call him a Mr. Boris instead of Uncle, but I meant to do something, nevertheless. Only he gave me no time. He bullied me, first of all, and I do hate being bullied. Don't you, Mr. Frobisher? I do. Betty looked at the letters again. That's when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose she continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the phrase. Afterwards he brought this horrible charge against me, and to have suggested any arrangement would have been to plead guilty. You were quite right. It would indeed, Jim, agreed cordially. Up to this moment a suspicion had been lurking at the back of Jim Frobisher's mind that this girl had been a trifle hard in her treatment of Boris Wabursky. He was a sponger, a wastrel, with no real claim upon her, it was true. On the other hand he had no means of livelihood, and Mrs. Harlow, from whom Betty drew her fortune, had been content to endure and support him. Now, however, the suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the girl removed, and by her own frankness. Then it is all over, Betty said, handling back the letters to Jim, with a sigh of relief. Then she smiled ruefully, but just for a little while I was really frightened, she confessed. You see, I was sent for and questioned by the examining magistrate. Oh, I wasn't frightened by the questions, but by him, the man. I've no doubt it's his business to look severe, but I couldn't help thinking that if anyone looked as terrifically severe as he did, it must be because he hadn't any brains and wanted you not to know, and people without brains are always dangerous, aren't they? Yes, that wasn't encouraging, Jim agreed. Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he expected me to run away. And to crown everything, when I came away from the Palais des Jussies, I met some friends outside who gave me a long list of people who had been condemned and only found to be innocent when it was too late. Jim stared at her. The Brutes, he cried. Well, we have all got friends like that. Betty returned philosophically. Mine, however, were particularly odious, for they actually discussed, as a reason, of course, why I should engage the very best advocate, whether, since Mrs. Harlow had adopted me, the charge couldn't be made one of matricide. In which case there could be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with a black veil over my head and naked feet. She saw horror and indignation in Jim Frobischer's face, and she reached out a hand to him. Yes, malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt. Though, and she lifted a slim foot and a shining slipper and contemplated it whimsically, I don't imagine that, given the circumstances, I should be bothering my head much as to whether I was wearing my best shoes and stockings, or none at all. I never heard of so abominable a suggestion, cried Jim. You can imagine at all events that I came home a little rattled, continued Betty, and why I sent off that silly panicky telegram. I would have recalled it when I rose to the surface again, but it was then too late. The telegram had, she broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflection and a sharp indraw of her breath. Who is that? she asked in a changed voice. She had been speaking quietly and slowly with an almost humorous appreciation of the causes of her fear. Now her question was uttered quickly and anxiety was prominent in her voice. Yes, who is that? she repeated. A big, heavily built man, sauntering past the great iron gates, had suddenly whipped into the courtyard. A fraction of a second before, he was an idler strolling along the path. Now he was already disappearing under the big glass fan of the porch. It's Hano, Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet as though a spring in her head had been released and stood swaying. You have nothing to fear from Hano, Jim Frobisher reassured her. I have shown him those two letters of Wabersky. From first to last he is your friend. Listen, this is what he said to me only yesterday in Paris. Yesterday in Paris? Betty asked suddenly. Yes, I called upon him at the surre-té. These were his words. I remembered them particularly so that I could repeat them to you just as they were spoken. Your little client can lay her pretty head upon her pillow, confident that no injustice will be done to her. The bell of the front door shrilled through the house as Jim finished. Then why is he in Dijon? Why is he here at the door now? Betty asked stubbornly. But that was the one question which Jim must not answer. He had received a confidence from Hano. He had pledged his word and not to betray it. For a little while longer Betty must believe that Wabersky's accusation against her was the true reason of Hano's presence in Dijon and not merely an excuse for it. Hano acts under orders. Jim returned. He is here because he was bitten to come. And to his relief the answer sufficed. In truth Betty's thoughts were diverted to some problem to which he had not the key. So you called upon Mr. Hano in Paris, she said with a warm smile. You have forgotten nothing which could help me. She laid a hand upon the sill of the open window. I hope that he felt all the flattery of my panic-stricken telegram to London. He was simply regretful that you should have been so distressed. So you showed him the telegram. And he destroyed it. It was my excuse for calling upon him with the letters. Betty sat down again on the window-seed and lifted a finger for silence. Outside the door voices were speaking. Then the door was open and the old man served and entered. He carried this time no card upon a salver, but he was obviously impressed and trifle flustered. Mademoiselle he began and Betty interrupted him. All trace of anxiety had gone from her manner. She was once more mistress of herself. I know Gaston, show Mr. Hano in at once. But Mr. Hano was already in. He bowed with a pleasant ceremony to Betty Harlow and shook hands cordially with Jim Frobischer. I was delighted as I came through the court Mademoiselle to see that my friend here was already with you, for he will have told you that I am not, after all, the ogre of the fairy books. But you never looked up at the window once, cried to Betty in perplexity. Hano smiled gaily. Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade, never to look up at windows, and yet to know what is going on behind them, with your permission, any latest hat and cane upon a big writing-table in the middle of the room. But we cannot see even through the widest of windows, Hano continued, what happened behind them a fortnight ago. In those cases, Mademoiselle, we have to make ourselves the nuisance and ask the questions. Well, I'm ready to answer you, returned to Betty quietly. Oh, of that, not a doubt, Hano cried geneal-y. Is it permitted for me to seat myself? Yes? Betty jumped up, the pallor of her face flushed to pink. Oh, I beg your pardon, of course, Mr. Hano. That little omission in her manners alone showed Jim Fraubisher that she was nervous, but for it he would have credited her with his self-command almost unnatural in her years. It is nothing, said Hano, with a smile. After all, we are the gentlest of us, disturbing guests. He took a chair from the side of the table and drew it up close so that he faced Betty. But whatever advantage was to be gained from the position, he yielded to her. For the light from the window fell and all its morning strength upon his face, whilst hers was turned to the interior of the room. So, he said, as he sat down, Mademoiselle, I will first give you a plan of our simple procedure, as at present I see it. The body of Madame Harlow was exhumed the night before last in the presence of your notary. Betty moved suddenly with a little shiver of revolt. I know, he continued quickly, these necessities are distressing. But we do Madame Harlow no hurt, and we have to think of the living one. You, Miss Betty Harlow, and make sure that no suspicion shall rest upon you. No, not even amongst your most loyal friends. Isn't that so? Well, next I put my questions to you here. Then we wait for the analyst's report. Then the examining magistrate will, no doubt, make you his compliments, and I, Hanot, will, if I am lucky, carry back with me to that dough, Paris, a signed portrait of the beautiful Miss Harlow against my heart. And that will be all, right, Betty, clasping her hands together in her gratitude. For you, Mademoiselle, yes, but for our little Boris, no. Hanot grinned with a mischievous anticipation. I look forward to half an hour with that broken need one. I shall talk to him, and I shall not be dignified. No, not at all. I shall take care, too, that my good friend, Monsieur Frobisher, is not present. He would take from me all my enjoyment. He would look at me all prim, like my maiden aunt, and he would say to himself, Shocking, oh, that comic, what a fellow he is not proper. No, and I shall not be proper, but on the other hand I will laugh all the way from Dijon to Paris. Monsieur Hanot had indeed begun to laugh already, and Betty suddenly joined in with him. Hers was a clear ringing laugh of enjoyment, and Jim fancied himself once more in the hall, hearing that laughter come appealing through the open door. Ah, that is good, exclaimed Hanot. You can laugh, mademoiselle, even at my foolishnesses. You must keep Monsieur Frobisher here in Dijon, and not let him return to London, until he, too, has learnt that divinest of the arts. Hanot hitched his chair a little nearer, and the most uncomfortable image sprang at once into Jim Frobisher's mind. Just so, with light words and little jokes squeezed out to tenuity, did doctors hitch up their chairs to the bedsides of patients in a dangerous case. It took quite a few minutes of Hanot's questions before that image entirely vanished from his thoughts. Good, said Hanot, now let us to business and get the facts all clear and ordered. Yes, Jim agreed, and he, too, hitched his chair a little closer. It was curious, he reflected, how little he did know of the actual facts of the case. Now tell me, mademoiselle, Madame Harlow died so far as we know, quite peacefully in her bed during the night. Yes, replied Betty, during the night of April the 27th. Yes, she slept alone in her room that night. Yes, Monsieur, that was her rule. Yes, I understand Madame Harlow's heart had given her trouble for some time. She had been an invalid for three years, and there was a train to nurse always in the house. Yes, Hanot nodded. Now tell me, mademoiselle, where did this nurse sleep, next door to Madame? No, a bedroom had been fitted up for her on the same floor, but at the end of the passage. And how far away was this bedroom? There were two rooms separating it from my aunts. Large rooms? Yes, Betty explained. These rooms are on the ground floor, and are what you would call reception rooms. But since Madame's heart made the stairs dangerous for her, some of them were fitted up especially for her use. Yes, I see, said Hanot, two big reception rooms between her. And the walls of the house are thick. It is not difficult to see that it was not built in these days. I ask you this, mademoiselle. Would a cry for Madame Harlow at night, when all the house was silent, be heard in the nurse's room? I am very sure it would not, Betty returned. But there was a bell by Madame's bed, which rang in the nurse's room. She had hardly to lift her arm to press the button. Ah, said Hanot, a bell especially fitted up? Yes, and the button within reach of the fingers? Yes, that is all very well, if one does not faint, mademoiselle. But suppose one does, then the bell is not very useful. Was the no-room nearer, which could have been set aside for the nurse? There was one next to my aunt's room, Monsieur Hanot, with a communicating door. Hanot was puzzled and sat back in his chair. Jim Frobisher thought the time had come for him to interpose. He had been growing more and more restless as the catechism progressed. He could not see any reason why Betty, however readily and easily she answered, should be needlessly pestered. Surely, Monsieur Hanot, he said, it would save a great deal of time if we paid a visit to those rooms and saw them for ourselves. Hanot swung around like a thing on a swivel. Admiration beamed in his eyes. He gazed at his junior colleague in wonder. Ah, but what an idea! he cried enthusiastically. What a fine idea! How ingenious! How difficult to conceive! And it is you, Monsieur Frobisher, who have thought of it. I make you my distinguished compliments. Then all his enthusiasm declined into lassitude, and he sighed, ah, pity! Hanot waited intently for Jim to ask for an explanation of that sigh, but Jim simply got red in the face and refused to oblige. He had obviously made an asinine suggestion and was being rallied for it in front of the beautiful Betty Arlo who looked to him for her salvation. And on the whole he thought Hanot to be a rather insufferable person as he sat there brightly watching for some second inanity. Hanot, in the end, had to explain, we should have visited those rooms before now, Monsieur Frobisher, but the commissaire of police has sealed them up, and without his presence we must not break the seals. An almost imperceptible movement was made by Betty Arlo in the window. An almost imperceptible smile flickered for the space of a lightning flash upon her lips. And Jim saw Hanot stiffened like a watchdog when he hears a sound at night. You are amused, mademoiselle? He asked sharply. On the contrary, Monsieur, and the smile reappeared upon her face and was seen to be what it was, pure wistfulness. I had a hope those great seals with their linen bands across the doors were all now to be removed. It is fanciful, no doubt, but I have a horror of them. They seem to me like an interdict upon the house. Hanot's manner changed in an instant. That I can very well understand, mademoiselle, he said, and I will make it my business to see that those seals are broken. Indeed, there was no great use in affixing them since they were only affixed when the charge was brought and ten days after Madame Harlow died. He turned to Jim, but we in France are all tied up in red tape too. However, the question at which I am driving does not depend upon any aspect of the rooms. It is this mademoiselle, and he turned back to Betty. Madame Harlow was an invalid with a nurse in constant attendance. How is it that the nurse did not sleep in that suitable room with the communicating door? Why must she be where she could hear no cry, no sudden call? Betty nodded her head. Here was a question which demanded an answer. She leaned forward, choosing her words with care. Yes, but for that, miss sure, you must understand something of mademois aunt and to put yourself for a moment in her place. She would have it so. She was, as you say, an invalid. For three years she had not gone beyond the garden, except in a private saloon once a year to Monte Carlo. But she would not admit her malady. No, she was in her mind strong and a fighter. She was going to get well. It was always a question of a few weeks with her, and a nurse in her uniform always near with the door open, as though she were in the last stages of illness, that distressed her. Betty paused and went on again. Of course, when she had some critical attack, the nurse was moved. I myself gave the order, but as soon as the attack subsided, the nurse must go. Madame would not endure it. Jim understood that speech. Its very sincerity gave him a glimpse of the dead woman, made him appreciate her tough vitality. She would not give in. She did not want the paraphernalia of malady always about her. No, she would sleep in her own room and by herself, like other women of her age. Yes, Jim understood that and believed every word that Betty spoke. Only, only she was keeping something back. It was that which troubled him. What she said was true, but there was more to be said. There had been hesitation in Betty's speech, too nice a choice of words, and then suddenly a little rush of phrases to cover up the hesitations. He looked at Hano, who was sitting without a movement, and with his eyes fixed upon Betty's face, demanding more from her by his very impassivity. They were both, Jim felt sure, upon the edge of that little secret, which, according to Haslod, as to Hano, was always at the back of some wild charges as Wabursky brought. The little shameful family secret, which must be buried deep from the world's eyes. And while Jim was pondering upon this explanation of Betty's manner, he was suddenly startled out of his wits by a passionate cry, which broke from her lips. Why do you look at me like that? She cried to Hano. Her eyes suddenly ablaze in her white face, and her lips shaking. Her voice rose to a challenge. Do you disbelieve me, Mr. Hano? Hano raised his hands in protest. He leaned back in his chair. The vigilance of his eye, of his whole attitude, was relaxed. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. He said, with a good deal of self-reproach, I do not disbelieve you. I was listening with both my ears to what you said, so that I might never again have to trouble you with my questions. But I should have remembered what I forgot, that for a number of days you have been living under a heavy strain. My manner was at fault. The small tornado of passion passed. Betty sank back in the corner of the window-seat, her head resting against the side of the sash, and her face a little upturned. You are really very considerate, Mr. Hano. She returned. It is I who should beg your pardon, for I was behaving like a hysterical schoolgirl. Will you go on with your questions? Yes, Hano replied gently. It is better that we finish with him now. Let us come back to the night of the twenty-seven. Yes, Mr. Hano. Madame was in her usual health that night, neither better nor worse. If anything, a little better, returned Betty, so that you did not hesitate to go on that evening to a dance given by some friends of yours. Gem started. So Betty was actually out of the house on that fatal night. Here was a new point in her favor. A dance, he cried, and Hano lifted his hand. If you please, Mr. Frobisher, he said, let Madame Estelle speak. I did not hesitate, Betty explained. The life of the household had to go on normally. It would never have done for me to do unusual things. Madame was quick to notice. I think that although she would not admit that she was dangerously ill, at the bottom of her mind, she suspected that she was, and one had to be careful not to alarm her. By such acts, for instance, as staying away from a dance to which she knew that you had meant to go, said Hano. Yes, Madame Estelle, I quite understand that. He cocked his head at Jim Frobisher and added with a smile. You did not know that, Mr. Frobisher? No, nor our friend, Boris Wabersky, I think, or he would hardly have rushed to the prefect of police in such a hurry. Yes, Madame Estelle was dancing with her friends on this night, when she was supposed to be committing the most monstrous of crimes. By the way, Madame Estelle, where was Boris Wabersky on the night of the 27th? He was away, returned to Betty. He went away on the 27th to fish for trout at a village on the River Uch, and he did not come back until the morning of the 28th. Exactly, said Hano, what a type that fellow. Let us hope he had a better landing net for his trout than the one he prepared so hastily for Madame Estelle Harlow. Otherwise his three-day sport cannot have amounted too much. His laugh and his words called up a faint smile upon Betty's face, and then he swept back to his questions. So you went to a dance, Madame Estelle. Where? At the house of Monsieur de Puyac on the Boulevard Hier. And at what hour did you go? I left this house at five minutes to nine. You are sure of the hour? Quite, said Betty. Did you see Madame Harlow before you went? Yes, Betty answered. I went to her room just before I left. She took her dinner in bed, as she often did. I was wearing for the dance a new frock, which I had bought this winter at Monte Carlo, and I went to her room to show her how I looked in it. Was Madame alone? No, the nurse was with her. And upon that Hano smiled with a great appearance of cunning. I knew that, Madame Estelle, he declared with a friendly grin. See, I set a little trap for you, for I have here the evidence of the nurse herself, Jean Boutin. He took out from his pocket a sheet of paper, upon which a paragraph was typed. Yes, the examining magistrate sent for her and took her statement. Why didn't know that, said Betty. Jean left us the day of the funeral and went home. I have not seen her since. She nodded at Hano once or twice with a little smile of appreciation. I would not like to be a person with a secret to hide from you, Monsieur Hano. She said admiringly, I do not think that I should be able to hide her for long. Hano expanded under the flattery, like a novice, and to Jim Frobisher's thinking, rather like a very vulgar novice. You are wise, Madame Estelle, he exclaimed, for after all I am Hano. There is only one. And he thumped his chest and beamed delightedly. Heavens, these are politenesses. Let us get on. This is what the nurse declared, and he read aloud from his sheet of paper. Madame Estelle came to the bedroom, so that Madame might admire her in her new frock of silver tissue and her silver slippers. Madame Estelle arranged the pillows and saw that Madame had her favorite books and her drink beside the bed. Then she wished a good night, and with her pretty frock rustling and gleaming, she tripped out of the room. As soon as the door was closed, Madame said to me, and Hano broke off abruptly. But that does not matter, he said in a hurry. Suddenly and sharply Betty leaned forward. Does it not mature, she asked, her eyes fixed upon his face, and the blood mounting slowly into her pale cheeks. No, said Hano, and he began to fold the sheet of paper. What does the nurse report that Madame said to her about me as soon as the door was closed? Betty asked, measuring out her words with a slow insistence, come mature, I have a right to know, and she held out her hand for the paper. You shall judge for yourself that it was of no importance, said Hano, listen, and once more he read. Madame said to me, looking at her clock, it is well that Madame Estelle has gone early, for Dijon is not Paris, and unless you go in time there are no partners for you to dance with. It was then ten minutes to nine. With a smile, Hano gave the paper into Betty's hand, and she bent her head over it swiftly, as though she doubted whether what he had recited was really written on that sheet, as if she rather trembled to think what Mrs. Harlow had said of her after she had gone from the room. She took only a second or two to glance over the page, but when she handed it back to him, her manner was quite changed. Thank you, she said, with a note of bitterness, and her deep eyes gleamed with resentment. Jim understood the change and sympathized with it. Hano had spoken of setting a trap when he had sat none, for there was no conceivable reason why she should hesitate to admit that she had seen Mrs. Harlow in the presence of the nurse, and wished her a good night before she went to the party. But he had set a real trap a minute afterwards, and into that Betty had straightway stumbled. He had tricked her into admitting a dread that Mrs. Harlow might have spoken of her in disparagement or even in horror after she had left the bedroom. You must know, Mr. Hano, she explained very coldly, that women are not always very generous to one another, and sometimes have not the imagination— how shall I put it— to visualize the possible consequences of things they may say, with merely the intention to hurt and do a little harm. Jean Baudin and I were, so far as I ever knew, good friends. But one is never sure, and when you folded up her statement in a hurry, I was naturally very anxious to hear the rest of it. Yes, I agree, Jim intervened. It did look as if the nurse might have added something malevolent, which could neither be proved nor disproved. It was a misunderstanding, mademoiselle, and no reply in the voice of apology. We will take care that there shall not be any other. He looked over the nurse's statement again. It is said here that you saw that Madame had her favorite book-centered drink beside the bed. That is true. Yes, monsieur, what was that drink? A glass of lemonade. It was placed on a table, I suppose, ready for her every night. Every night. And there was no narcotic dissolved in it? None, Betty replied. If Mrs. Harlow was restless, the nurse would give an opium pill, and very occasionally a slight injection of morphia. But that was not done on this night? Not to my knowledge. If it was done, it was done after my departure. Very well, said Heno, and he folded the paper and put it away in his pocket. That is finished with. We have you now, out of the house, at five minutes to nine in the evening, and Madame in her bed, with her health no worse than usual. Yes. Good, Heno changed his attitude. Now, let us go over your evening, mademoiselle. I take it that you stayed at the house of monsieur de Puyac until you returned home? Yes. You remember with whom you danced? If it was necessary, could you give me a list of your partners? She rose and, crossing to the writing table, sat down in front of it. She drew a sheet of paper towards her, and it took up a pencil. Pausing an hour again to jog her memory with the blunt end of the pencil at her lips, she wrote down a list of names. These are all, I think, she said, handing the list to Heno. He put it in his pocket. Thank you! He was all contentment now. Although his questions followed without hesitation, one upon the other, it seemed to Jim that he was receiving just the answers which he expected. He had the air of a man engaged upon an inevitable formality and anxious to get it completely accomplished rather than, of one pressing keenly, a strict investigation. Now, mademoiselle, at what hour did you arrive home? At twenty minutes past one? You are sure of that exact time? You looked at your watch? Or at the clock in the hall? Or what? How are you sure that you reached the Maison-Guinel exactly at twenty minutes past one? Heno hitched his chair a little more forward, but he had not to wait a second for the answer. There is no clock in the hall, and I had no watch with me, Betty replied. I don't like those wristwatches, which some girls wear. I hate things around my wrists, and she shook her arms impatiently, as though she imagined the constriction of a bracelet. And I did not put my watch in my handbag, because I am so liable to leave that behind. So I had nothing to tell me the time when I reached home. I was not sure that I had not kept Georges, the chauffeur, out a little later than he cared for. So I made him my excuse, explaining that I didn't really know how late it was. I see it was Georges who told you the time at the actual moment of your arrival. Yes, and Georges, no doubt the chauffeur whom I saw at work as I crossed the courtyard. Yes, he told me that he was glad to see me have a little gaiety, and he took out his watch and showed it to me with a laugh. This happened at the front door, or at those big iron gates, mademoiselle, Heno asked. At the front door there is no lodgekeeper, and the gates are left open when anyone is out. And how did you get into the house? I used my latchkey. Good, all this is very clear. Betty, however, was not mollified by Heno's satisfaction with her replies. Although she answered him without delay, her answers were given mutinously. Jim began to be a little troubled. She should have met Heno halfway. She was imprudently petulant. She'll make an enemy of this man before she has done, he reflected uneasily. But he glanced at the detective and was relieved. For Heno was watching her with a smile, which would have disarmed any less offended young lady. A smile, half friendliness, and half amusement. Jim took a turn upon himself. After all, he argued that this very imprudence pleads for her better than any calculation. The guilty don't behave like that. And he waited for the next stage in the examination with an easy mind. Now we have got you back home and within the Maison-Glonelle before half past one in the morning resumed Heno. What did you do then? I went straight upstairs to my bedroom, said Betty. Was your maid waiting up for you, mademoiselle? No, I had told her that I should be late and that I could undress myself. You are considerate, mademoiselle. No wonder that your servants were pleased that you should have a little gaiety. Even that advance did not appease the offended girl. Yes, she asked with a sort of silky sweetness, which was more hostile than the acid rejoined her, but it did not stir Heno to any resentment. When then did you first hear of Madame Harlow's death? He asked. The next morning my maid Francine came running into my room at seven o'clock. The nurse Jean had just discovered it. I slipped on my dressing gown and ran downstairs. As soon as I saw that it was true, I rang up the two doctors who were in the habit of attending here. Did you notice the glass of lemonade? Yes, it was empty. Your maid is still with you? Yes, Francine Royard. She is at your disposal. Heno shrugged his shoulders and smiled doubtfully. That, if it is necessary at all, can come later. We have the story of your movements now from you, mademoiselle, and that is what is important. He rose from his chair. I have been. I am afraid a very troublesome person, mademoiselle Harlow, he said, with a bow, but it is very necessary for your own sake that no obscurity should be left for the world's suspicions to play with. And we are very close to the end of this ordeal. Jim had nursed a hope the moment Heno rose that this wearing interview had already ended. Betty, for her part, was indifferent. That is, for you to say, Mishir, she said, implacably. Just two points, then, and I think upon reflection you will understand that I have asked you no question, which is unfair. Betty bowed. Your two points, Mishir. First, then, you inherit, I believe, the whole fortune of Madame? Yes. Did you expect to inherit at all? Did you know of her will? No, I expected that a good deal of the money would be left to Mishir Boris, but I don't remember that she ever told me so. I expected it because Mishir Boris so continually repeated that it was so. No doubt, said Heno lightly, as to yourself, was Madame generous to you during her life? The hard look disappeared from Betty's face. It softened to sorrow and regret. Very, she answered in a low voice, I had one thousand pounds a year as a regular allowance, and a thousand pounds goes a long way in Dijon. Besides, if I wanted more, I had only to ask for it. Betty's voice broken a sob suddenly, and Heno turned away with a delicacy for which Jim was not prepared. He began to look at the book upon the shelves, that she might have time to control her sorrow, taking down one here or one there, and speaking of them in a casual tone. It is easy to see that this was the library of Mishir Simon Harlow, he said, and was suddenly brought to a stop, for the door was thrown open and a girl broke into the room. Betty, she began, and stood staring from one to another of Betty's visitors. Anne, this is Mishir Heno, said to Betty with a careless wave of her hand, and Anne went white as a sheet. Anne, then this girl was Anne Upcott, thought Jim Frobisher, the girl who had written to him, the girl, all acquaintanship with whom he had twice denied, and he had sat side by side with her, he had even spoken to her. She swept across the room to him. So you have come, she cried, but I knew that you would. Jim was conscious of a mist of shining yellow hair, a pair of sapphire eyes, and of a face impertinently lovely, and the most delicate in its color. Of course I have come, he said feebly, and Heno looked on with a smile. He had an eye on Betty Harlow, and the smile said as clearly as words could say, that young man is going to have a deal of trouble before he gets out of Dijon. End of chapter five