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"Come, come!" said Hanaud gently, "calm yourself, mademoiselle." Helene Vauquier paused for a moment or two to recover her composure. "I beg your pardon, monsieur, but I have been so long with madame oh, the poor woman! Yes, yes, I will calm myself. Well, madame brought her home, and in a week there was nothing too good for Mlle. Celie. Madame was like a child.
He handed it across the table to Hanaud and leaned back in his chair, watching the detective with all the eagerness of a young author submitting his first effort to a critic. Hanaud read it through slowly. At the end he nodded his head in approval.
"Why did not such a fine idea occur to me, fool that I am! However, we will call the head waiter." The head waiter was sent for and appeared before them. "You knew Mme. Dauvray?" Hanaud asked. "Yes, monsieur oh, the poor woman! And he flung up his hands. "And you knew her young companion?" "Oh yes, monsieur. They generally had their meals here. See, at that little table over there!
"And what do you wish me to do, monsieur?" he asked coldly. "You are upon your holiday, M. Hanaud. I wish you no, I implore you," Wethermill cried, his voice ringing with passion, "to take up this case, to discover the truth, to find out what has become of Celia." Hanaud leaned back in his chair with his hands upon the arms.
He looked up at Wethermill's face and then said quietly: "You have given us no opinion, monsieur. Yet your opinion should be the most valuable of all. Were these two papers written by the same hand?" "I do not know," answered Wethermill. "And I, too," cried Hanaud, in a sudden exasperation, "je ne sais pas. I do not know. It may be her hand carelessly counterfeited. It may be her hand disguised.
The three of them the man, the woman with the red hair, and Mlle. Celie all drove yesterday night to Geneva. That is only one thing we have learnt." "Then you still cling to Geneva?" said Ricardo. "More than ever," said Hanaud. He turned in his chair towards Wethermill. "Ah, my poor friend!" he said, when he saw the young man's distress.
Hanaud was not surprised. He knew the woman-criminal of his country brutal, passionate, treacherous. The anonymous letters in a woman's handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and betray the men who have committed thefts, had left him no illusions upon that figure in the history of crime.
It may be simply that she wrote in a hurry with her gloves on." "It may have been written some time ago," said Mr. Ricardo, encouraged by his success to another suggestion. "No; that is the one thing it could not have been," said Hanaud. "Look round the room. Was there ever a room better tended? Find me a little pile of dust in any one corner if you can! It is all as clean as a plate.
Consider! Marthe Gobin has something to tell us. Think over those eight points of evidence which you drew up yesterday in the Villa des Fleurs, and say whether what she has to tell us is more likely to prove Mlle. Celie's innocence than her guilt. Think well, for I will be guided by you, M. Ricardo," said Hanaud solemnly.
Hanaud nodded sympathetically, and beckoned Ricardo past the window. "But we are nearing the end. These two days have been for him days of great trouble; one can see that very clearly. And he has done nothing to embarrass us. Men in distress are apt to be a nuisance. I am grateful to M. Wethermill. But we are nearing the end. Who knows? Within an hour or two we may have news for him."
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