xed
upon Hanaud's face, and that was all. Hanaud, for his part, asked for
no reply from him. Indeed, he did not look towards Harry Wethermill's
face at all. Ricardo understood. Hanaud did not mean to be deterred by
the suffering written there.

He went down again into the little gay salon lit with flowers and
August sunlight, and stood beside the couch gazing at it with troubled
eyes. And, as he gazed, he closed his eyes and shivered. He shivered
like a man who has taken a sudden chill. Nothing in all this morning's
investigations, not even the rigid body beneath the sheet, nor the
strange discovery of the jewels, had so impressed Ricardo. For there he
had been confronted with facts, definite and complete; here was a
suggestion of unknown horrors, a hint, not a fact, compelling the
imagination to dark conjecture. Hanaud shivered. That he had no idea
why Hanaud shivered made the action still more significant, still more
alarming. And it was not Ricardo alone who was moved by it. A voice of
despair rang through the room. The voice was Harry Wethermill's, and
his face was ashy white.

"Monsieur!" he cried, "I do not know what makes you shudder; but I am
remembering a few words you used this morning."

Hanaud turned upon his heel. His face was drawn and grey and his eyes
blazed.

"My friend, I also am remembering those words," he said. Thus the two
men stood confronting one another, eye to eye, with awe and fear in
both their faces.

Ricardo was wondering to what words they both referred, when the sound
of wheels broke in upon the silence. The effect upon Hanaud was
magical. He thrust his hands in his pockets.

"Helene Vauquier's cab," he said lightly. He drew out his
cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette.

"Let us see that poor woman safely off. It is a closed cab I hope."

It was a closed landau. It drove past the open door of the salon to the
front door of the house. In Hanaud's wake they all went out into the
hall. The nurse came down alone carrying Helene Vauquier's bag. She
placed it in the cab and waited in the doorway.

"Perhaps Helene Vauquier has fainted," she said anxiously: "she does
not come." And she moved towards the stairs.

Hanaud took a singularly swift step forward and stopped her.

"Why should you think that?" he asked, with a queer smile upon his
face, and as he spoke a door closed gently upstairs. "See," he
continued, "you are wrong: she is coming."

Ricardo was puzzled. It had seemed