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"Those," said Hanaud, "are the footsteps of my intelligent friend, Perrichet, who was careful not to disturb the ground." Perrichet beamed all over his rosy face, and Besnard nodded at him with condescending approval. "But I wish, M. le Commissaire" and Hanaud pointed to a blur of marks "that your other officers had been as intelligent. Look!

On the card the gummed fragments of paper revealed a sentence: "Je ne sais pas." "'I do not know," said Ricardo; "now this is very important." Beside the card Celia's letter to Wethermill was laid. "What do you think?" asked Hanaud. Besnard, the Commissaire of Police, bent over Hanaud's shoulder. "There are strong resemblances," he said guardedly. Ricardo was on the look-out for deep mysteries.

To-day you will see the same thing going on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do not realize why these works of art are superior and can no more explain to you why they think as they do than the sheep that follow each other through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for their actions.

The pale and attentive face of the lady makes one think of the great English master's best works; the necklace, the flesh, the flounce of lace and the hands are marvels of skill and of taste, which the greatest modern virtuosos, Sargent and Besnard, have not surpassed, and, as far as the man in the background is concerned, his white waistcoat, his dress-coat, his gloved hand would suffice to secure the fame of a painter.

In such Futurist pictures as I have seen perhaps I should except some by Severini the drawing, whenever it becomes representative as it frequently does, is found to be in that soft and common convention brought into fashion by Besnard some thirty years ago, and much affected by Beaux-Art students ever since.

All the great artists, in whatever medium, take so rare a delight, now and again, in interpreting some unutterable emotion, some ineffable vision, in mere terms of technique. In Chopin, in Rodin, in Besnard, in Rossetti, indeed in any supreme artist, again and again I have noted this.

But as he did so a man in plain clothes, who had been waiting upon the landing, stepped forward. He carried in his hand a piece of thin, strong whipcord. "Ah, Durette!" cried Besnard. "Monsieur Hanaud, I sent Durette this morning round the shops of Aix with the cord which was found knotted round Mme. Dauvray's neck." Hanaud advanced quickly to the man. "Well! Did you discover anything?"

"It was here that you saw the light at half-past nine?" Hanaud said, turning to Perrichet. "Yes, monsieur," replied Perrichet. "We may assume, then, that Mlle. Celie was changing her dress at that time." Besnard was looking about him, opening a drawer here, a wardrobe there. "Mlle.

"Quite so," said Hanaud, and he turned to Besnard. "I think that may be important. I do not know," he said. "But since the car is gone," cried Besnard, "how could the chauffeur not look immediately at his tins?" The question had occurred to Ricardo, and he wondered in what way Hanaud meant to answer it. Hanaud, however, did not mean to answer it. He took little notice of it at all.

"But that is astounding," said Besnard, in an awe-struck voice. "Then she was never robbed after all?" cried Ricardo. Hanaud rose to his feet. "What a piece of irony!" he whispered. "The poor woman is murdered for her jewels, the room's turned upside down, and nothing is found. For all the while they lay safe in this cache. Nothing is taken except what she wore. Let us see what she wore."