"Miss Brandon said she hadn't got one, and changed the subject. Then they all left me. That was all that happened."
"I understand," said Sabran; "that is interesting, and it helps us to understand the methods of the novelist. But we are still no nearer a solution. I must think it over. _Que diable y avait-il dans cette lettre?_"
The more I thought over the whole story the more puzzling it seemed to me. The puzzle was increased rather than simplified by a letter which I received from Kranitski from Africa, in which he expressed no intention of coming back, but said he was living by himself, quite contented in his solitude.
I told Sabran of this letter and the Doctor said we were without one important _donnée,_ some probably quite simple fact which would be the clue of the whole situation: the contents of the letter Kranitski had received when he was with me--
"What we want," he said, "is a moral Sherlock Holmes, to deduce what was in that letter----"
It was after I had been at Haréville about ten days, that Sabran asked me whether I would like to make the acquaintance of a Countess Yaskov. She was staying at Haréville and was taking the waters. He had only lately made her acquaintance himself, but she was dining with him and he wanted to ask a few people to meet her. I asked him what she was like. He said she was not exactly pretty, but gentle and attractive. He said: "_Elle n'est pas vraiment jolie, mais elle a une jolie taille, de beaux yeux, et des perles._"
She had been divorced from her husband for years and lived generally at Rome, so he had been told.
I went to Sabran's dinner. There were several people there. I had never met Countess Yaskov before. She seemed to be a very pleasant and agreeable lady. I sat next to her. She was an accomplished musician, and she played the pianoforte after dinner with a ravishing touch. She was certainly gentle, intelligent, and natural. We were talking of Italy, when she astonished me by saying she had not been there for some time. Later on she astonished me still more by talking of her husband in the most natural way in the world. But I had heard cases of Russians being divorced and yet continuing to be good friends. I longed to ask her if she knew Kranitski, but I could not bring his name across my lips. I asked her if she knew Princess Kouragine. She said, "Which one?" And when I explained or tried to describe the one I knew, there turned out to be about a dozen Princess Kouragines scattered all over Europe; some of them Russian and some of them not, so we did not get any further, and Countess Yaskov was vagueness itself.