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Ah, monsieur, what a terrible responsibility for you! Such a monster as that! She should never have been allowed out of sight!" M. de Lourtier-Vaneau made no protest. His air of dejection, his pallor, his trembling hands, all proved his remorse and his despair: "She deceived me," he murmured. "She was outwardly so quiet, so docile! And, after all, she's in a lunatic asylum."
I stared at the list twenty times over, before that little detail took a definite shape." "I don't follow you," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau. "M. de Lourtier, it may be noted that, if a number of persons are brought together in any transaction, or crime, or public scandal or what not, they are almost invariably described in the same way.
He next slid his hand to the window-fastening and turned it softly, while with his left hand he levelled a revolver. "You're not going to fire, surely!" M. de Lourtier-Vaneau entreated. "If I must, I shall." Renine pushed open the window gently. But there was an obstacle of which he was not aware, a chair which toppled over and fell.
He turned up a directory, noted an address "M. de Lourtier-Vaneau, retired colonial governor, 47 bis, Avenue Kleber" and ran down to his car: "Adolphe, 47 bis, Avenue Kleber." He was shown into a large study furnished with magnificent book-cases containing old volumes in costly bindings.
M. de Lourtier-Vaneau was a man still in the prime of life, wearing a slightly grizzled beard and, by his affable manners and genuine distinction, commanding confidence and liking. "M. de Lourtier," said Renine, "I have ventured to call on your excellency because I read in last year's newspapers that you used to know one of the victims of the lady with the hatchet, Honorine Vernisset."
"Several ladies," Renine continued, "wrote the letters which are usual in such cases, to offer a home to the so-called Herminie. But I received an express letter which struck me as interesting." "From whom?" "Read it, M. de Lourtier." M. de Lourtier-Vaneau snatched the sheet from Renine's hands and cast a glance at the signature.
This enabled me to discover their general meaning, to put aside all the tangle of embarrassing theories and, since no one was able to agree as to the motives of all this filthy business, to attribute it to the only class of persons capable of it." "That is to say?" "Lunatics, your excellency." M. de Lourtier-Vaneau started: "Lunatics? What an idea!"
The initial letter is the eighth letter of the alphabet; and the word huit, eight, begins with an H. Always the letter H. And the implement used to commit the crime was a hatchet. Is your excellency prepared to tell me that the lady with the hatchet is not a madwoman?" Renine interrupted himself and went up to M. de Lourtier-Vaneau: "What's the matter, your excellency? Are you unwell?"
At last they reached Ville d'Avray. There was a steep, sloping road on the right and walls interrupted by a long railing. "Drive round the grounds, Adolphe. We mustn't give warning of our presence, must we, M. de Lourtier? Where is the cottage?" "Just opposite," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau. They got out a little farther on. Renine began to run along a bank at the side of an ill-kept sunken road.
You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of the guillotine...." M. de Lourtier-Vaneau nodded his head: "Yes, that is so. One can see the whole affair from that angle ... and I am beginning to believe that this is how one ought to see it.
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