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He was with them in the afternoon. He went with them to a cafe in the evening. Moreover, early this morning the maid, Helene Vauquier, was able to speak a few words in answer to a question. She said Servettaz was in Chambery. She gave his address. A telephone message was sent to the police in that town, and Servettaz was found in bed.
He came back to it early this morning." "Ah!" said Ricardo, in a significant exclamation. Wethermill did not stir. He sat still as a stone, with a face deadly white and eyes burning upon Hanaud's face. "But wait," said Hanaud, holding up a warning hand to Ricardo. "Servettaz was in Chambery, where his parents live. He travelled to Chambery by the two o'clock train yesterday.
"Perhaps mademoiselle would do better still to speak to Servattaz himself and encourage him to ask with his own lips. Madame has her moods, is it not so? She does not always like it to be forgotten that she is the mistress." On the next day accordingly Celia did speak to Servettaz, and Servettaz asked for his holiday. "But of course," Mme. Dauvray at once replied. "We must decide upon a day."
You can go to-morrow by the train which leaves Aix at 1.52 and arrives at Chambery at nine minutes after two." Hanaud started. "'I was right, Alphonse. Were those her words? And 'Madame has a kind heart. Come, come, what is all this?" He lifted a warning finger and said gravely, "Be very careful, Servettaz." "Those were her words, monsieur." "'I was right, Alphonse. Madame has a kind heart'?"
Servettaz examined the tank. "A long way, monsieur. From a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty kilometers, I should say." "Yes, just about that distance, I should say," cried Hanaud. His eyes brightened, and a smile, a rather fierce smile, came to his lips. He opened the door, and examined with a minute scrutiny the floor of the carriage, and as he looked, the smile faded from his face.
"That is my coat, monsieur," said Servettaz, and as he spoke he lifted it up from the chauffeur's seat. "It is Mme. Dauvray's livery." Harry Wethermill groaned aloud. "We have lost him. He was within our grasp he, the murderer! and he was allowed to go!" Perrichet's grief was pitiable. "Monsieur," he pleaded, "a car slackens its speed and goes on again it is not so unusual a thing.
Dauvray's household. The list is not a long one. It was Mme. Dauvray's habit to take her luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was all that she required to get ready her 'petit dejeuner' in the morning and her 'sirop' at night. Let us take the members of the household one by one. There is first the chauffeur, Henri Servettaz. He was not at the villa last night.
By that time the motor-car would have been back three hours ago in its garage. Servettaz, the chauffeur, would have returned from Chambery some time in the morning, he would have cleaned the car, he would have noticed that there was very little petrol in the tank, as there had been when he had left it on the day before.
A hedge separated the garden of the villa from the road, and above the hedge rose a board with the words "To Let" upon it. At the gate a gendarme was standing, and just within the gate Ricardo saw Louis Besnard, the Commissaire, and Servettaz, Mme. Dauvray's chauffeur. "It is here," said Besnard, as the party descended from the cab, "in the coach-house of this empty villa."
Ricardo had the impression of a man tying up an important document which for the moment he has done with, and putting it away ticketed in some pigeon-hole in his desk. "Let us see the garage!" They followed the road between the bushes until a turn showed them the garage with its doors open. "The doors were found unlocked?" "Just as you see them." Hanaud nodded. He spoke again to Servettaz.
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