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Updated: May 19, 2025
He has left no trace. Look at this town of Aix, where people come and go like a crowd about the baccarat-table! He may be at Marseilles today. He may be in this very room where we are taking our luncheon. How shall we find him?" Wethermill nodded his head in a despairing assent. "I know. But it is so hard to sit still and do nothing," he cried.
"Tell us where did you hide them?" he cried. "The girl will know," said Helene. Wethermill rose up and looked wildly at Celia. "Yes, yes," he said. He had no scruple, no pity any longer for the girl. There was no gain from the crime unless she spoke. He would have placed his head in the guillotine for nothing.
A block of wood rose from the floor, he pulled it out, laid it noiselessly down, and inserted his hand into the opening. Wethermill at Ricardo's elbow uttered a stifled cry. "Hush!" whispered Hanaud angrily. He drew out his hand again. It was holding a green leather jewel-case. He opened it, and a diamond necklace flashed its thousand colours in their faces.
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.
A glance at Wethermills face, however, and the ringing note of anguish in his voice, told him that the thought was wrong. Mr. Ricardo slipped out of his affectations as out of a loose coat. "What has happened?" he asked quietly. "Something terrible." With shaking fingers Wethermill held out a newspaper. "Read it," he said.
But," and his face grew stern and he brought his fist down upon the table with a bang, "I shall follow it to the end now, be the consequences bitter as death to you." "That is what I wish, monsieur," said Wethermill. Hanaud locked up the slips of paper in his lettercase. Then he went out of the room and returned in a few minutes. "We will begin at the beginning," he said briskly.
But as he stood with his arm poised there came a singular change upon his face. "Did you hear anything?" he asked in a whisper. All listened, and all heard in the quiet of the night a faint click, and after an interval they heard it again, and after another but shorter interval yet once more. "That's the gate," said Wethermill in a whisper of fear, and a pulse of hope stirred within Celia.
And off goes a telegram to the Geneva paper, handed in by a waiter from the cafe at the station of Chambery before five o'clock. Wethermill went to Chambery that afternoon when we went to Geneva. Once we could get him on the run, once we could so harry and bustle him that he must take risks why, we had him. And that afternoon he had to take them."
He did not take his eyes from Harry Wethermill, but the anger died out of them. "Monsieur," he said, "I do not know what your procedure is in England. But in France a detective does not take up a case or leave it alone according to his pleasure. We are only servants. This affair is in the hands of M. Fleuriot, the Juge d'lnstruction of Aix."
Then he stood erect, gazed about the room as though even yet he might force its secrets out from its silence, and cried, with a sudden violence: "There is something here, gentlemen, which I do not understand." Mr. Ricardo heard some one beside him draw a deep breath, and turned. Wethermill stood at his elbow.
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