E are not yet quite at the end," said Hanaud as he sat with Frobisher for awhile upon the lawn after Ann Upcott had gone in. "But we are near to it. There is still my question to be answered. 'Why was the communicating door open between the bedroom of Madame Harlowe and the treasure-room on the night when Ann Upcott came down the stairs in the dark?' When we know that, we shall know why Francine Rollard and Betty Harlowe between them murdered Madame Harlowe."
"Then you believe Francine Rollard had a hand in that crime too?" asked Jim.
"I am sure," returned Hanaud. "Do you remember the experiment I made, the little scene of reconstruction? Betty Harlowe stretched out upon the bed to represent Madame, and Francine whispering 'That will do now'?"
"Yes."
Hanaud lit a cigarette and smiled.
"Francine Rollard would not stand at the side of the bed. No! She would stand at the foot and whisper those simple but appalling words. But nowhere else. That was significant, my friend. She would not stand exactly where she had stood when the murder was committed." He added softly, "I have great hopes of Francine Rollard. A few days of a prison cell and that untamed little tiger-cat will talk."
"And what of Waberski in all this?" Jim exclaimed.
Hanaud laughed and rose from his chair.
"Waberski? He is for nothing in all this. He brought a charge in which he didn't believe, and the charge happened to be true. That is all." He took a step or two away and returned. "But I am wrong. That is not all. Waberski is indeed for something in all this. For when he was pressed to make good his charge and must rake up some excuse for it somehow, by a piece of luck he thinks of a morning when he saw Betty Harlowe in the street of Gambetta near to the shop of Jean Cladel. And so he leads us to the truth. Yes, we owe something to that animal Boris Waberski. Did I not tell you, Monsieur, that we are all the servants of Chance?"
Hanaud went from the garden and for three days Jim Frobisher saw him no more. But the development which Monsieur Bex feared, and for which Hanaud hoped, took place, and on the third day Hanaud invited Jim to his office in the Prefecture.
He had Jim's memorandum in his hand.
"Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked. "See!" He pushed the memorandum in front of Jim and pointed to a paragraph.
"But in the absence of any trace of poison in the dead woman's body, it is difficult to see how the criminal can be brought to justice except by:
"(a) A confession.
"(b) The commission of another crime of a similar kind. "Hanaud's theory—once a poisoner, always a poisoner."
Frobisher read it through.
"Now that is very true," said Hanaud. "Never have I come across a case more difficult. At every step we break down. I think I have my fingers on Jean Cladel. I am five minutes too late. I think that I shall get some useful evidence from a firm in Paris. The firm has ceased to be for the last ten years. All the time I strike at air. So I must take a risk—yes, and a serious one. Shall I tell you what that risk was? I have to assume that Mademoiselle Ann will be brought alive to the Hôtel de Brebizart on that night of Madame Le Vay's ball. That she would be brought back I had no doubt. For one thing, there could be no safer resting-place for her than under the stone flags of the kitchen there. For another, there was the portmanteau in the side-car. It was not light, the portmanteau. Some friends of mine watched it being put into the side-car before young Espinosa started for his rendezvous. I have no doubt it weighed just as many kilos as Mademoiselle Ann."
"I never understood the reason of that portmanteau," Frobisher interrupted.