it on the day before. He would not have noticed that some
of his many tins which had been full yesterday were empty to-day. We
should not have discovered that about four in the morning the car was
close to the Villa Rose and that it had travelled, between midnight and
five in the morning, a hundred and fifty kilometres."

"But you had already guessed 'Geneva,'" said Ricardo. "At luncheon,
before the news came that the car was found, you had guessed it."

"It was a shot," said Hanaud. "The absence of the car helped me to make
it. It is a large city and not very far away, a likely place for people
with the police at their heels to run to earth in. But if the car had
been discovered in the garage I should not have made that shot. Even
then I had no particular conviction about Geneva. I really wished to
see how Wethermill would take it. He was wonderful."

"He sprang up."

"He betrayed nothing but surprise. You showed no less surprise than he
did, my good friend. What I was looking for was one glance of fear. I
did not get it."

"Yet you suspected him--even then you spoke of brains and audacity. You
told him enough to hinder him from communicating with the red-haired
woman in Geneva. You isolated him. Yes, you suspected him."

"Let us take the case from the beginning. When you first came to me, as
I told you, the Commissaire had already been with me. There was an
interesting piece of evidence already in his possession. Adolphe
Ruel--who saw Wethermill and Vauquier together close by the Casino and
overheard that cry of Wethermill's, 'It is true: I must have
money!'--had already been with his story to the Commissaire. I knew it
when Harry Wethermill came into the room to ask me to take up the case.
That was a bold stroke, my friend. The chances were a hundred to one
that I should not interrupt my holiday to take up a case because of
your little dinner-party in London. Indeed, I should not have
interrupted it had I not known Adolphe Ruel's story. As it was I could
not resist. Wethermill's very audacity charmed me. Oh yes, I felt that
I must pit myself against him. So few criminals have spirit, M.
Ricardo. It is deplorable how few. But Wethermill! See in what a fine
position he would have been if only I had refused. He himself had been
the first to call upon the first detective in France. And his argument!
He loved Mlle. Celie. Therefore she must be innocent! How he stuck to
it! People would have said, 'Love is blind,' an