im. He ran his eye
over the white Louis Seize furniture, the white panels of the wall, the
polished floor, the pink curtains. Even the delicate tracery of the
ceiling did not escape his scrutiny. Yet he saw nothing likely to help
him but an overturned chair and a couple of crushed cushions on a
settee. It was very annoying, all the more annoying because M. Hanaud
was so uncommonly busy. Hanaud looked carefully at the long settee and
the crumpled cushions, and he took out his measure and measured the
distance between the cushion at one end and the cushion at the other.
He examined the table, he measured the distance between the chairs. He
came to the fireplace and raked in the ashes of the burnt-out fire. But
Ricardo noticed a singular thing. In the midst of his search Hanaud's
eyes were always straying back to the settee, and always with a look of
extreme perplexity, as if he read there something, definitely
something, but something which he could not explain. Finally he went
back to it; he drew it farther away from the wall, and suddenly with a
little cry he stooped and went down on his knees. When he rose he was
holding some torn fragments of paper in his hand. He went over to the
writing-table and opened the blotting-book. Where it fell open there
were some sheets of note-paper, and one particular sheet of which half
had been torn off. He compared the pieces which he held with that torn
sheet, and seemed satisfied.

There was a rack for note-paper upon the table, and from it he took a
stiff card.

"Get me some gum or paste, and quickly," he said. His voice had become
brusque, the politeness had gone from his address. He carried the card
and the fragments of paper to the round table. There he sat down and,
with infinite patience, gummed the fragments on to the card, fitting
them together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.

The others over his shoulders could see spaced words, written in
pencil, taking shape as a sentence upon the card. Hanaud turned
abruptly in his seat toward Wethermill.

"You have, no doubt, a letter written by Mlle. Celie?"

Wethermill took his letter-case from his pocket and a letter out of the
case. He hesitated for a moment as he glanced over what was written.
The four sheets were covered. He folded back the letter, so that only
the two inner sheets were visible, and handed it to Hanaud. Hanaud
compared it with the handwriting upon the card.

"Look!" he said at length, and the three men