The House of the Arrow

CHAPTER TWENTY: Map and the Necklace

Hanaud turned his map round and pushed it across the table to Jim Frobisher.

"What do you make of that?" he asked, and Jim drew up a chair and sat down to examine it.

He made first of all a large scale map of Dijon and its environments, the town itself lying at the bottom of the red hoop and constituting the top of the handle of the tennis racket. As to the red circle, it seemed to represent a tour which some one had made out from Dijon, round a good tract of outlying country and back again to the city. But there was more to it than that. The wavy dividing line, for instance, from the top of the circle to the handle, that is to Dijon; and on the left-hand edge of the hoop, as he bent over the map, and just outside Dijon, the red mark, a little red square which Hanaud had just made. Against this square an hour was marked.

"Eleven a.m.," he read.

He followed the red curve with his eyes and just where this dividing line touched the rim of the hoop, another period was inscribed. Here Frobisher read:

"Eleven forty."

Frobisher looked up at Hanaud in astonishment.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, and he bent again over the map. The point where the dividing line branched off was in a valley, as he could see by the contours—yes—he had found the name now—the Val Terzon. Just before eleven o'clock Betty had stopped the car just outside Dijon, opposite a park with a big house standing back, and had asked him to tighten the strap of the tool box. They had started again exactly at eleven. Betty had taken note of the exact time—and they had stopped where the secondary road branched off and doubled back to Dijon, at the top of the hoop, at the injunction of the rim and the dividing line, exactly at eleven forty.

"This is a chart of the expedition we made to-day," he cried. "We were followed then?"

He remembered suddenly the second motor-cyclist who had come up from behind through the screen of their dust and had stopped by the side of their car to join in their conversation with the tourist.

"The motor-cyclist?" he asked, and again he got no answer.

But the motor-cyclist had not followed them all the way round. On their homeward course they had stopped to lunch in the tangled garden. There had been no sign of the man. Jim looked at the map again. He followed the red line from the junction of the two roads, round the curve of the valley, to the angle where the great National road to Paris cut across and where they had lunched. After luncheon they had continued along the National road into Dijon, whereas the red line crossed it and came back by a longer and obviously a less frequented route.

"I can't imagine why you had us followed this morning, Monsieur Hanaud," he exclaimed with some heat. "But I can tell you this. The chase was not very efficiently contrived. We didn't come home that way at all."

"I haven't an idea how you came home," Hanaud answered imperturbably. "The line on that side of the circle has nothing to do with you at all, as you can see for yourself by looking at the time marked where the line begins."

The red hoop at the bottom was not complete; there was a space where the spliced handle of the racket would fit in, the space filled by the town of Dijon, and at the point on the right hand side where the line started Frobisher read in small but quite clear figures:

"Ten twenty-five a.m."

Jim was more bewildered than ever.

"I don't understand one word of it," he cried.

Hanaud reached over and touched the point with the tip of his pen.

"This is where the motor-cyclist started, the cyclist who met you at the branch road at eleven-forty."

"The tourist?" asked Jim. A second ago it had seemed to him impossible that the fog could thicken about his wits any more. And yet it had.

"Let us say the man with the portmanteau on his trailer," Hanaud corrected. "You see that he left his starting point in Dijon thirty-five minutes before you left yours. The whole manoeuvre seems to have been admirably planned. For you met precisely at the arranged spot at eleven-forty. Neither the car nor the cycle had to wait one moment."

"Manoeuvre! Arranged spot!" Frobisher exclaimed, looking about him in a sort of despair. "Has every one gone crazy? Why in the world should a man start out with a portmanteau in a side-car from Dijon at ten twenty-five, run thirty or forty miles into the country by a roundabout road and then return by a bad straight track? There's no sense in it!"

"No doubt it's perplexing," Hanaud agreed. He nodded to Moreau who went out of the room by a communicating door towards the front of the house. "But I can help you," Hanaud continued. "At the point where you started after tightening the strap of the tool-box, on the edge of the town, a big country house stands back in a park?"

"Yes," said Jim.

"That is the house of Madame Le Vay where this fancy dress ball takes place to-night."

"Madame Le Vay's château!" Frobisher repeated. "Where——" he began a question and caught it back. But Hanaud completed it for him.

"Yes, where Ann Upcott now is. You started from it at precisely eleven in the morning." He looked at his watch. "It is not yet quite eleven at night. So she is still there."

Frobisher started back in his chair. Hanaud's words were like the blade of silver light cutting through the darkness of the cinema hall and breaking into a sheet of radiance upon the screen. The meaning of the red diagram upon Hanaud's map, the unsuspected motive of Betty's expedition this morning were revealed to him.

"It was a rehearsal," he cried.

Hanaud nodded.

"A time-rehearsal."

"Yes, the sort of thing which takes place in theatres, without the principal members of the company," thought Frobisher. But a moment later he was dissatisfied with that explanation.

"Wait a moment!" he said. "That won't do, I fancy."

The motor-cyclist with the side-car had brought his arguments to a standstill. His times were marked upon the map; they were therefore of importance. What had he to do with Ann Upcott's escape? But he visualised the motor-cyclist and his side-car and his connection with the affair became evident. The big portmanteau gave Frobisher the clue. Ann Upcott would be leaving Madame Le Vay's house in her ball-dress, just as if she was returning to the Maison Crenelle—and without any luggage at all. She could not arrive in Paris in the morning like that if she were to avoid probably suspicion and certainly remark. The motor-cyclist was to meet her in the Val Terzon, transfer her luggage rapidly to her car, and then return to Dijon by the straight quick road whilst Ann turned off at the end of the valley to Paris. He remembered now that seven minutes had elapsed between the meeting of the cycle and the motor-car and their separation. Seven minutes then were allowed for the transference of the luggage. Another argument flashed into his thoughts. Betty had told him nothing of this plan. It had been presented to him as a mere excursion on a summer day, her first hours of liberty naturally employed. Her silence was all of a piece with the determination of Betty and Ann Upcott to keep him altogether out of the conspiracy. Every detail fitted like the blocks in a picture puzzle. Yes, there had been a time-rehearsal. And Hanaud knew all about it!

That was the disturbing certainty which first overwhelmed Frobisher when he had got the better of his surprise at the scheme itself. Hanaud knew! and Betty had so set her heart on Ann's escape.

"Let her go!" he pleaded earnestly. "Let Ann Upcott get away to Paris and to England!" and Hanaud leaned back in his chair with a little gasp. The queerest smile broke over his face.

"I see," he said.

"Oh, I know," Frobisher exclaimed, hotly appealing. "You are of the Sûrété and I am a lawyer, an officer of the High Court in my country and I have no right to make such a petition. But I do without a scruple. You can't get a conviction against Ann Upcott. You haven't a chance of it. But you can throw such a net of suspicion about her that she'll never get out of it. You can ruin her—yes—but that's all you can do."

"You speak very eagerly, my friend," Hanaud interposed.

Jim could not explain that it was Betty's anxiety to save her friend which inspired his plea. He fell back upon the scandal which such a trial would cause.

"There has been enough publicity already owing to Boris Waberski," he continued. "Surely Miss Harlowe has had distress enough. Why must she stand in the witness-box and give evidence against her friend in a trial which can have no result? That's what I want you to realise, Monsieur Hanaud. I have had some experience of criminal trials"—O shade of Mr. Haslitt! Why was that punctilious man not there in the flesh to wipe out with an indignant word the slur upon the firm of Frobisher and Haslitt?—"And I assure you that no jury could convict upon such evidence. Why, even the pearl necklace has not been traced—and it never will be. You can take that from me, Monsieur Hanaud! It never will be!"

Hanaud opened a drawer in the table and took out one of those little cedar-wood boxes made to hold a hundred cigarettes, which the better class of manufacturers use in England for their wares. He pushed this across the table towards Jim. Something which was more substantial than cigarettes rattled inside of it. Jim seized upon it in a panic. He had not a doubt that Betty would far sooner lose her necklace altogether than that her friend Ann Upcott should be destroyed by it. He opened the lid of the box. It was filled with cotton-wool. From the cotton-wool he took a string of pearls perfectly graded in size, and gleaming softly with a pink lustre which, even to his untutored eyes, was indescribably lovely.

"It would have been more correct if I had found them in a matchbox," said Hanaud. "But I shall point out to Monsieur Bex that after all matches and cigarettes are akin."

Jim was still staring at the necklace in utter disappointment when Moreau knocked upon the other side of the communicating door. Hanaud looked again at his watch.

"Yes, it is eleven o'clock. We must go. The car has started from the house of Madame Le Vay."

He rose from his chair, buried the necklace again within the layers of cotton-wool, and locked it up once more in the drawer. The room had faded away from Jim Frobisher's eyes. He was looking at a big, brilliantly illuminated house, and a girl who slipped from a window and, wrapping a dark cloak about her glistening dress, ran down the dark avenue in her dancing slippers to where a car waited hidden under trees.

"The car may not have started," Jim said with sudden hopefulness. "There may have been an accident to it. The chauffeur may be late. Oh, a hundred things may have happened!"

"With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously rehearsed? No, my friend."

Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against the wall and placed it in his pocket.

"You are going to leave that necklace just like that in a table drawer?" Jim asked. "We ought to take it first to the Prefecture."

"This room is not unwatched," replied Hanaud. "It will be safe."

Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.

"We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road," he argued. "It is past eleven, as you say—well past eleven. And thirty-five minutes on a motor-cycle in the daytime means fifty minutes in a car at night, especially with a bad road to travel."

"We don't intend to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road," Hanaud returned. He folded up the map and put it aside upon the mantelshelf.

"I take a big risk, you know," he said softly. "But I must take it! And—no! I can't be wrong!" But he turned from the mantelshelf with a very anxious and troubled face. Then, as he looked at Jim, a fresh idea came into his mind.

"By the way," he said. "The façade of Notre Dame?"

Jim nodded.

"The bas-relief of The Last Judgment. We went to see it. We thought your way of saying what you believed a little brutal."

Hanaud remained silent with his eyes upon the floor for a few seconds. Then he said quietly: "I am sorry." He tacked on a question. "You say 'we'?"

"Mademoiselle Harlowe and I," Jim explained.

"Oh, yes—to be sure. I should have thought of that," and once more his troubled cry broke from him. "It must be that!—No, I can't be wrong.... Anyway, it's too late to change now."

A second time Moreau rapped upon the communicating door. Hanaud sprang to alertness.

"That's it," he said. "Take your hat and stick, Monsieur Frobisher! Good! You are ready?" and the room was at once plunged into darkness.

Hanaud opened the communicating door, and they passed into the front room—a bedroom looking out upon the big station square. This room was in darkness too. But the shutters were not closed, and there were patches of light upon the walls from the lamps in the square and the Grande Taverne at the corner. The three men could see one another, and to Jim in this dusk the faces of his companions appeared of a ghastly pallor.

"Daunay took his position when I first knocked," said Moreau. "Patinot has just joined him."

He pointed across the square to the station buildings. Some cabs were waiting for the Paris train, and in front of them two men dressed like artisans were talking. One of them lit a cigarette from the stump of a cigarette held out to him by his companion. The watchers in the room saw the end of the cigarette glow red.

"The way is clear, Monsieur," said Moreau. "We can go." And he turned and went out of the inn to the staircase. Jim started to follow him. Whither they were going Jim had not a notion, not even a conjecture. But he was gravely troubled. All his hopes and Betty's hopes for the swift and complete suppression of the Waberski affair had seemingly fallen to the ground. He was not reassured when Hanaud's hand was laid on his arm and detained him.

"You understand, Monsieur Frobisher," said Hanaud with a quiet authority, his eyes shining very steadily in the darkness, his face glimmering very white, "that now the Law of France takes charge. There must not be a finger raised or a word spoken to hinder officers upon their duty. On the other hand, I make you in return the promise you desire. No one shall be arrested on suspicion. Your own eyes shall bear me out."

The two men followed Moreau down the stairs and into the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Secret House

It was a dark, clear night, the air very still and warm, and the sky bright with innumerable stars. The small company penetrated into the town by the backways and narrow alleys. Daunay going on ahead, Patinot the last by some thirty yards, and Moreau keeping upon the opposite side of the street. Once they had left behind them the lights of the station square, they walked amongst closed doors and the blind faces of unlit houses. Frobisher's heart raced within his bosom. He strained his eyes and ears for some evidence of spies upon their heels. But no one was concealed in any porch, and not the stealthiest sound of a pursuit was borne to their hearing.

"On a night like this," he said in tones which, strive as he might to steady them, were still a little tremulous, "one could hear a footstep on the stones a quarter of a mile away, and we hear nothing. Yet, if there is a gang, it can hardly be that we are unwatched."

Hanaud disagreed. "This is a night for alibis," he returned, lowering his voice; "good, sound, incontestable alibis. All but those engaged will be publicly with their friends, and those engaged do not know how near we are to their secrets."

They turned into a narrow street and kept on its left-hand side.

"Do you know where we are?" Hanaud asked. "No? Yet we are near to the Maison Crenelle. On the other side of these houses to our left runs the street of Charles-Robert."

Jim Frobisher stopped dead.

"It was here, then, that you came last night after I left you at the Prefecture," he exclaimed.

"Ah, you recognised me, then!" Hanaud returned imperturbably. "I wondered whether you did when you turned at the gates of your house."

On the opposite side of the street the houses were broken by a high wall, in which two great wooden doors were set. Behind the wall, at the end of a courtyard, the upper storey and the roof of a considerable house rose in a steep ridge against the stars.

Hanaud pointed towards it.

"Look at that house, Monsieur! There Madame Raviart came to live whilst she waited to be set free. It belongs to the Maison Crenelle. After she married Simon Harlowe, they would never let it, they kept it just as it was, the shrine of their passion—that strange romantic couple. But there was more romance in that, to be sure. It has been unoccupied ever since."

Jim Frobisher felt a chill close about his heart. Was that house the goal to which Hanaud was leading him with so confident a step? He looked at the gates and the house. Even in the night it had a look of long neglect and decay, the paint peeling from the doors and not a light in any window.

Some one in the street, however, was awake, for just above their heads, a window was raised with the utmost caution and a whisper floated down to them.

"No one has appeared."

Hanaud took no open notice of the whisper. He did not pause in his walk, but he said to Frobisher:

"And, as you hear, it is still unoccupied."

At the end of the street Daunay melted away altogether. Hanaud and Frobisher crossed the road and, with Moreau just ahead, turned down a passage between, the houses to the right.

Beyond the passage they turned again to the right into a narrow lane between high walls; and when they had covered thirty yards or so, Frobisher saw the branches of leafy trees over the wall upon his right. It was so dark here under the shade of the boughs that Frobisher could not even see his companions; and he knocked against Moreau before he understood that they had come to the end of their journey. They were behind the garden of the house in which Madame Raviart had lived and loved.

Hanaud's hand tightened upon Jim Frobisher's arm, constraining him to absolute immobility. Patinot had vanished as completely and noiselessly as Daunay. The three men left stood in the darkness and listened. A sentence which Ann Upcott had spoken in the garden of the Maison Crenelle, when she had been describing the terror with which she had felt the face bending over her in the darkness, came back to him. He had thought it false then. He took back his criticism now. For he too imagined that the beating of his heart must wake all Dijon.

They stood there motionless for the space of a minute, and then, at a touch from Hanaud, Nicolas Moreau stooped. Frobisher heard the palm of his hand sliding over wood and immediately after the tiniest little click as a key was fitted into a lock and turned. A door in the wall swung silently open and let a glimmer of light into the lane. The three men passed into a garden of weeds and rank grass and overgrown bushes. Moreau closed and locked the door behind them. As he locked the door the clocks of the city struck the half hour.

Hanaud whispered in Frobisher's ear:

"They have not yet reached the Val Terzon. Come!"

They crept over the mat of grass and weeds to the back of the house. A short flight of stone steps, patched with mould, descended from a terrace; at the back of the terrace were shuttered windows. But in the corner of the house, on a level with the garden, there was a door. Once more Moreau stooped, and once more a door swung inwards without a sound. But whereas the garden door had let through some gleam of twilight, this door opened upon the blackness of the pit. Jim Frobisher shrank back from it, not in physical fear but in an appalling dread that some other man than he, wearing his clothes and his flesh, would come out of that door again. His heart came to a standstill, and then Hanaud pushed him gently into the passage. The door was closed behind them, an almost inaudible sound told him that now the door was locked.

"Listen!" Hanaud whispered sharply. His trained ear had caught a sound in the house above them. And in a second Frobisher heard it too, a sound regular and continuous and very slight, but in that uninhabited house filled with uttermost blackness, very daunting. Gradually the explanation dawned upon Jim.

"It's a clock ticking," he said under his breath.

"Yes! A clock ticking away in the empty house!" returned Hanaud. And though his answer was rather breathed than whispered, there was a queer thrill in it the sound of which Jim could not mistake. The hunter had picked up his spoor. Just beyond the quarry would come in view.

Suddenly a thread of light gleamed along the passage, lit up a short flight of stairs and a door on the right at the head of them, and went out again. Hanaud slipped his electric torch back into his pocket and, passing Moreau, took the lead. The door at the head of the stairs opened with a startling whine of its hinges. Frobisher stopped with his heart in his throat, though what he feared he could not have told even himself. Again the thread of light shone, and this time it explored. The three found themselves in a stone-flagged hall.

Hanaud crossed it, extinguished his torch and opened a door. A broken shutter, swinging upon a hinge, enabled them dimly to see a gallery which stretched away into the gloom. The faint light penetrating from the window showed them a high double door leading to some room at the back of the house. Hanaud stole over the boards and laid his ear to the panel. In a little while he was satisfied; his hand dropped to the knob and a leaf of the door opened noiselessly. Once more the torch glowed. Its beam played upon the high ceiling, the tall windows shrouded in heavy curtains of red silk brocade, and revealed to Frobisher's amazement a room which had a look of daily use. All was orderly and clean, the furniture polished and in good repair; there were fresh flowers in the vases, whose perfume filled the air; and it was upon the marble chimney-piece of this room that the clock ticked.

The room was furnished with lightness and elegance, except for one fine and massive press, with double doors in marquetry, which occupied a recess near to the fireplace. Girandoles with mirrors and gilt frames, now fitted with electric lights, were fixed upon the walls, with a few pictures in water-colour. A chandelier glittering with lustres hung from the ceiling, an Empire writing-table stood near the window, a deep-cushioned divan stretched along the wall opposite the fire-place. So much had Frobisher noticed when the light again went out. Hanaud closed the door upon the room again.

"We shall be hidden in the embrasure of any of these windows," Hanaud whispered, when they were once more in the long gallery. "No light will be shown here with that shutter hanging loose, we may be sure. Meanwhile let us watch and be very silent."

They took their stations in the deep shadows by the side of the window with the broken shutter. They could see dimly the courtyard and the great carriage doors in the wall at the end of it, and they waited; Jim Frobisher under such a strain of dread and expectancy that each second seemed an hour, and he wondered at the immobility of his companions. The only sound of breathing that he heard came from his own lungs.

In a while Hanaud laid a hand upon his sleeve, and the clasp of the hand tightened and tightened. Motionless though he stood like a man in a seizure, Hanaud too was in the grip of an intense excitement. For one of the great leaves of the courtyard door was opening silently. It opened just a little way and as silently closed again. But some one had slipped in—so vague and swift and noiseless a figure that Jim would have believed his imagination had misled him but for a thicker blot of darkness at the centre of the great door. There some one stood now who had not stood there a minute before, as silent and still as any of the watchers in the gallery, and more still than one. For Hanaud moved suddenly away on the tips of his toes into the deepest of the gloom and, sinking down upon his heels, drew his watch from his pocket. He drew his coat closely about it and for a fraction of a second flashed his torchlight on the dial. It was now five minutes past twelve.

"It is the time," he breathed as he crept back to his place. "Listen now!"

A minute passed and another. Frobisher found himself shivering as a man shivers at a photographer's when he is told by the operator to keep still. He had a notion that he was going to fall. Then a distant noise caught his ear, and at once his nerves grew steady. It was the throb of a motor-cycle, and it grew louder and louder. He felt Hanaud stiffen at his side. Hanaud had been right, then! The conviction deepened in his mind. When all had been darkness and confusion to him, Hanaud from the first had seen clearly. But what had he seen? Frobisher was still unable to answer that question, and whilst he fumbled amongst conjectures a vast relief swept over him. For the noise of the cycle had ceased altogether. It had roared through some contiguous street and gone upon its way into the open country. Not the faintest pulsation of its engine was any longer audible. That late-faring traveller had taken Dijon in his stride.

In a revulsion of relief he pictured him devouring the road, the glow of his lamp putting the stars to shame, the miles leaping away behind him; and suddenly the pleasant picture was struck from before his vision and his heart fluttered up into his throat. For the leaf of the great coach-door was swung wider, and closed again, and the motor-cycle with its side-car was within the courtyard. The rider had slipped out his clutch and stopped his engine more than a hundred yards away in the other street. His own impetus had been enough and more than enough to swing him round the corner along the road and into the courtyard. The man who had closed the door moved to his side as he dismounted. Between them they lifted something from the side-car and laid it on the ground. The watchman held open the door again, the cyclist wheeled out his machine, the door was closed, a key turned in the lock. Not a word had been spoken, not an unnecessary movement made. It had all happened within the space of a few seconds. The man waited by the gate, and in a little while from some other street the cyclist's engine was heard once more to throb. His work was done.

Jim Frobisher wondered that Hanaud should let him go. But Hanaud had eyes for no one but the man who was left behind and the big package upon the ground under the blank side wall. The man moved to it, stooped, raised it with an appearance of effort, then stood upright holding it in his arms. It was something shapeless and long and heavy. So much the watchers in the gallery could see, but no more.

The man in the courtyard moved towards the door without a sound; and Hanaud drew his companions back from the window of the broken shutter. Quick as they were, they were only just in time to escape from that revealing twilight. Already the intruder with his burden stood within the gallery. The front door was unlatched, that was clear. It had needed but a touch to open it. The intruder moved without a sound to the double door, of which Hanaud had opened one leaf. He stood in front of it, pushed it with his foot and both the leaves swung inwards. He disappeared into the room. But the faint misty light had fallen upon him for a second, and though none could imagine who he was, they all three saw that what he carried was a heavy sack.

Now, at all events, Hanaud would move, thought Frobisher. But he did not. They all heard the man now, but not his footsteps. It was just the brushing of his clothes against furniture: then came a soft, almost inaudible sound, as though he had laid his burden down upon the deep-cushioned couch: then he himself reappeared in the doorway, his arms empty, his hat pressed down upon his forehead, and a dim whiteness where his face should be. But dark as it was, they saw the glitter of his eyes.

"It will be now," Frobisher said to himself, expecting that Hanaud would leap from the gloom and bear the intruder to the ground.

But this man, too, Hanaud let go. He closed the doors again, drawing the two leaves together, and stole from the gallery. No one heard the outer door close, but with a startling loudness some metal thing rang upon stone, and within the house. Even Jim Frobisher understood that the outer door had been locked and the key dropped through the letter slot. The three men crept back to their window. They saw the intruder cross the courtyard, open one leaf of the coach door, peer this way and that and go. Again a key tinkled upon stones. The key of the great door had been pushed or kicked underneath it back into the courtyard. The clocks suddenly chimed the quarter. To Frobisher's amazement it was a quarter-past twelve. Between the moment when the cyclist rode his car in at the doors and now, just five minutes had elapsed. And again, but for the three men, the house was empty.

Or was it empty?

For Hanaud had slipped across to the door of the room and opened it; and a slight sound broke out of that black room, as of some living thing which moved uneasily. At Jim Frobisher's elbow Hanaud breathed a sigh of relief. Something, it seemed, had happened for which he had hardly dared to hope; some great dread he knew with certainty had not been fulfilled. On the heels of that sigh a sharp loud click rang out, the release of a spring, the withdrawal of a bolt. Hanaud drew the door swiftly to and the three men fell back. Some one had somehow entered that room, some one was moving quietly about it. From the corner of the corridor in which they had taken refuge, the three men saw the leaves of the door swing very slowly in upon their hinges. Some one appeared upon the threshold, and stood motionless, listening, and after a few seconds advanced across the gallery to the window. It was a girl—so much they could determine from the contour of her head and the slim neck. To the surprise of those three a second shadow flitted to her side. Both of them peered from the window into the courtyard. There was nothing to tell them there whether the midnight visitors had come and gone or not yet come at all. One of them whispered:

"The key!"

And the other, the shorter one, crept into the hall and returned with the key which had been dropped through the letter slot in her hand. The taller of the two laughed, and the sound of it, so clear, so joyous like the trill of a bird, it was impossible for Jim Frobisher even for a second to mistake. The second girl standing at the window of this dark and secret house, with the key in her hand to tell her that all that had been plotted had been done, was Betty Harlowe. Jim Frobisher had never imagined a sound so sinister, so alarming, as that clear, joyous laughter lilting through the silent gallery. It startled him, it set his whole faith in the world shuddering.

"There must be some good explanation," he argued, but his heart was sinking amidst terrors. Of what dreadful event was that laughter to be the prelude?

The two figures at the window flitted back across the gallery. It seemed that there was no further reason for precautions.

"Shut the door, Francine," said Betty in her ordinary voice. And when this was done, within the room the lights went on. But time and disuse had warped the doors. They did not quite close, and between them a golden strip of light showed like a wand.

"Let us see now!" cried Betty. "Let us see," and again she laughed; and under the cover of her laughter the three men crept forward and looked in: Moreau upon his knees, Frobisher stooping above him, Hanaud at his full height behind them all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Corona Machine

The detective's hand fell softly upon Frobisher's shoulder warning him to silence; and this warning was needed. The lustres of the big glass chandelier were so many flashing jewels; the mirrors of the girandoles multiplied their candle-lamps; the small gay room was ablaze; and in the glare Betty stood and laughed. Her white shoulders rose from a slim evening frock of black velvet; from her carefully dressed copper hair to her black satin shoes she was as trim as if she had just been unpacked from a bandbox; and she was laughing whole-heartedly at a closed sack on the divan, a sack which jerked and flapped grotesquely like a fish on a beach. Some one was imprisoned within that sack. Jim Frobisher could not doubt who that some one was, and it seemed to him that no sound more soulless and cruel had ever been heard in the world than Betty's merriment. She threw her head back: Jim could see her slender white throat working, her shoulders flashing and shaking. She clapped her hands with a horrible glee. Something died within Frobisher's breast as he heard it. Was it in his heart, he wondered? It was, however, to be the last time that Betty Harlowe laughed.

"You can get her out, Francine," she said, and whilst Francine with a pair of scissors cut the end of the sack loose, she sat down with her back to it at the writing-table and unlocked a drawer. The sack was cut away and thrown upon the floor, and now on the divan Ann Upcott lay in her gleaming dancing-dress, her hands bound behind her back, and her ankles tied cruelly together. Her hair was dishevelled, her face flushed, and she had the look of one quite dazed. She drew in deep breaths of air, with her bosom labouring. But she was unaware for the moment of her predicament or surroundings, and her eyes rested upon Francine and travelled from her to Betty's back without a gleam of recognition. She wrenched a little at her wrists, but even that movement was instinctive; and then she closed her eyes and lay still, so still that but for her breathing the watchers at the door would hardly have believed that she still lived.

Betty, meanwhile, lifted from the open drawer, first a small bottle half-filled with a pale yellow liquid, and next a small case of morocco leather. From the case she took a hypodermic syringe and its needle, and screwed the two parts together.

"Is she ready?" Betty asked as she removed the stopper from the bottle.

"Quite, Mademoiselle," answered Francine. She began with a giggle, but she looked at the prisoner as she spoke and she ended with a startled gasp. For Ann was looking straight at her with the strangest, disconcerting stare. It was impossible to say whether she knew Francine or knowing her would not admit her knowledge. But her gaze never faltered, it was actually terrifying by its fixity, and in a sharp, hysterical voice Francine suddenly cried out:

"Turn your eyes away from me, will you?" and she added with a shiver: "It's horrible, Mademoiselle! It's like a dead person watching you as you move about the room."

Betty turned curiously towards the divan and Ann's eyes wandered off to her. It seemed as though it needed just that interchange of glances to awaken her. For as Betty resumed her work of filling the hypodermic syringe from the bottle, a look of perplexity crept into Ann Upcott's face. She tried to sit up, and finding that she could not, tore at the cords which bound her wrists. Her feet kicked upon the divan. A moan of pain broke from her lips, and with that consciousness returned to her.

"Betty!" she whispered, and Betty turned with the needle ready in her hand. She did not speak, but her face spoke for her. Her upper lip was drawn back a little from her teeth, and there was a look in her great eyes which appalled Jim Frobisher outside the door. Once before he had seen just that look—when Betty was lying on Mrs. Harlowe's bed for Hanaud's experiment and he had lingered in the treasure-room with Ann Upcott. It had been inscrutable to him then, but it was as plain as print now. It meant murder. And so Ann Upcott understood it. Helpless as she was, she shrank back upon the divan; in a panic she spoke with faltering lips and her eyes fixed upon Betty with a dreadful fascination.

"Betty! You had me taken and brought here! You sent me to Madame Le Vay's—on purpose. Oh! The letter, then! The anonymous letter!"—and a new light broke in upon Ann's mind, a new terror shook her. "You wrote it! Betty, you! You—the Scourge!"

She sank back and again struggled vainly with her bonds. Betty rose from her chair and crossed the room towards her, the needle shining bright in her hand. Her hapless prisoner saw it.

"What's that?" she cried, and she screamed aloud. The extremity of her horror lent to her an unnatural strength. Somehow she dragged herself up and got her feet to the ground. Somehow she stood upright, swaying as she stood.

"You are going to——" she began, and broke off. "Oh, no! You couldn't! You couldn't!"

Betty put out a hand and laid it on Ann's shoulder and held her so for a moment, savouring her vengeance.

"Whose face was it bending so close down over yours in the darkness?" she asked in a soft and dreadful voice. "Whose face, Ann? Guess!" She shook her swaying prisoner with a gentleness as dreadful as her quiet voice. "You talk too much. Your tongue's dangerous, Ann. You are too curious, Ann! What were you doing in the treasure-room yesterday evening with your watch in your hand? Eh? Can't you answer, you pretty fool?" Then Betty's voice changed. It remained low and quiet, but hatred crept into it, a deep, whole-hearted hatred.

"You have been interfering with me too, haven't you, Ann? Oh, we both understand very well!" And Hanaud's hand tightened upon Frobisher's shoulder. Here was the real key and explanation of Betty's hatred. Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more, might at any moment light upon the whole truth. Yes! Ann Upcott's disappearance would look like a panic-stricken flight, would have the effect of a confession—no doubt! But above all these considerations, paramount in Betty Harlowe's mind was the resolve at once to punish and rid herself of a rival.

"All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my way!" she said. "And here's your reward for it, Ann. Yes. I had you bound hand and foot and brought here. The water-lily!" She looked her victim over as she stood in her delicate bright frock, her white silk stockings and satin slippers, swaying in terror. "Fifteen minutes, Ann! That fool of a detective was right! Fifteen minutes! That's all the time the arrow-poison takes!"

Ann's eyes opened wide. The blood rushed into her white face and ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.

"Arrow-poison!" she cried. "Betty! It was you, then! Oh!" she would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe pushed her shoulder gently and she fell back upon the divan. That Betty had been guilty of that last infamy—the murder of her benefactress—not until this moment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected. It was clear to her, too, that there was not the slightest hope for her. She burst suddenly into a storm of tears.

Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and watched her closely and curiously with a devilish enjoyment. The sound of the girl's sobbing was music in her ears. She would not let it flag.

"You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and alone," she said in a low voice, bending over her, "To-morrow Espinosa will put you under one of the stone flags in the kitchen. But to-night you shall lie just as you are. Come!"

She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her arm with one hand and advancing the needle with the other; and a piercing scream burst from Francine Rollard.

"Look!" she cried, and she pointed to the door. It was open and Hanaud stood upon the threshold.

Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from her face. She sat like an image of wax, staring at the open doorway, and a moment afterwards with a gesture swift as lightning she drove the needle into the flesh of her own arm and emptied it.

Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to prevent her, but Hanaud roughly thrust him back.

"I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere," he said with a savage note in his voice, which Jim had not heard before; and Betty Harlowe dropped the needle on to the couch, whence it rolled to the floor.

She sprang up now to her full height, her heels together, her arms outstretched from her sides.

"Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud," she cried with bravado. "I am safe from you."

Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptuously in her face.

"Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn't kill."

Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself.

"Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!" she said.

"We shall see."

The confidence of his tone convinced her. She flashed across the room to her writing-table. Swift as she was, Hanaud met her there.

"Ah, no!" he cried. "That's quite a different thing!" He seized her wrists. "Moreau!" he called, with a nod towards Francine. "And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will you release that young lady, if you please!"

Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and locked her safely away. Jim seized upon the big scissors and cut the cords about Ann's wrists and ankles, and unwound them. He was aware that Hanaud had flung the chair from the writing-table into an open space, that Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor. When he had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled. Betty had bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.

"Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning I met you," Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you didn't wear a wrist-watch, because you hated things on your wrists. My apologies! I had forgotten!"

He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand into the drawer. He drew out a small cardboard box and removed the lid.

"Five!" he said. "Yes! Five!"

He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who was standing against the wall with a face like death.

"Look!"

There were five white tablets in the box.

"We know where the sixth is. Or, rather, we know where it was. For I had it analysed to-day. Cyanide of potassium, my friend! Crunch one of them between your teeth and—fifteen minutes? Not a bit of it! A fraction of a second! That's all!"

Frobisher leaned forward and whispered in Hanaud's ear. "Leave them within her reach!"

His first instinctive thought had been to hinder Betty from destroying herself. Now he prayed that she might, and with so desperate a longing that a deep pity softened Hanaud's eyes.

"I must not, Monsieur," he said gently. He turned to Moreau. "There is a cab waiting at the corner of the Maison Crenelle," and Moreau went in search of it. Hanaud went over to Ann Upcott, who was sitting upon the divan her head bowed, her body shivering. Every now and then she handled and eased one of her tortured wrists.

"Mademoiselle," he said, standing in front of her, "I owe you an explanation and an apology. I never from the beginning—no, not for one moment—believed that you were guilty of the murder of Madame Harlowe. I was sure that you had never touched the necklace of pink pearls—oh, at once I was sure, long before I found it. I believed every word of the story you told us in the garden. But none of this dared I shew you. For only by pretending that I was convinced of your guilt, could I protect you during this last week in the Maison Crenelle."

"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied with a wan effort at a smile.

"But, for to-night, I owe you an apology," he continued. "I make it with shame. That you were to be brought back here to the tender mercies of Mademoiselle Betty, I hadn't a doubt. And I was here to make sure you should be spared them. But I have never in my life had a more difficult case to deal with, so clear a conviction in my own mind, so little proof to put before a court. I had to have the evidence which I was certain to find in this room to-night. But I ask you to believe me that if I had imagined for a moment the cruelty with which you were to be handled, I should have sacrificed this evidence. I beg you to forgive me."

Ann Upcott held out her hand.

"Monsieur Hanaud," she replied simply, "but for you I should not be now alive. I should be lying here in the dark and alone, as it was promised to me, waiting for Espinosa—and his spade." Her voice broke and she shuddered violently so that the divan shook on which she sat.

"You must forget these miseries," he said gently. "You have youth, as I told you once before. A little time and——"

The return of Nicolas Moreau interrupted him; and with Moreau came a couple of gendarmes and Girardot the Commissary.

"You have Francine Rollard?" Hanaud asked.

"You can hear her," Moreau returned dryly.

In the corridor a commotion arose, the scuffling of feet and a woman's voice screaming abuse. It died away.

"Mademoiselle here will not give you so much trouble," said Hanaud.

Betty was sitting huddled in her chair, her face averted and sullen, her lips muttering inaudible words. She had not once looked at Jim Frobisher since he had entered the room; nor did she now.

Moreau stooped and untied her ankles and a big gendarme raised her up. But her knees failed beneath her; she could not stand; her strength and her spirit had left her. The gendarme picked her up as if she had been a child; and as he moved to the door, Jim Frobisher planted himself in front of him.

"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was strong and resonant. "Monsieur Hanaud, you have said just now that you believed every word of Mademoiselle Ann's story."

"It is true."

"You believe then that Madame Harlowe was murdered at half-past ten on the night of the 27th of April. And at half-past ten Mademoiselle here was at Monsieur de Pouillac's ball! You will set her free."

Hanaud did not argue the point.

"And what of to-night?" he asked. "Stand aside, if you please!"

Jim held his ground for a moment or two, and then drew aside. He stood with his eyes closed, and such a look of misery upon his face as Betty was carried out that Hanaud attempted some clumsy word of condolence:

"This has been a bitter experience for you, Monsieur Frobisher," he began.

"Would that you had taken me into your confidence at the first!" Jim cried volubly.

"Would you have believed me if I had?" asked Hanaud, and Jim was silent. "As it was, Monsieur Frobisher, I took a grave risk which I know now I had not the right to take and I told you more than you think."

He turned away towards Moreau.

"Lock the courtyard doors and the door of the house after they have gone and bring the keys here to me."

Girardot had made a bundle of the solution, the hypodermic syringe, the tablets of cyanide, and the pieces of cord.

"There is something here of importance," Hanaud observed and, stooping at the writing-table, he picked up a square, flat-topped black case. "You will recognise this," he remarked to Jim as he handed it to Girardot. It was the case of a Corona typewriting machine; and from its weight, the machine itself was clearly within the case.

"Yes," Hanaud explained, as the door closed upon the Commissary. "This pretty room is the factory where all those abominable letters were prepared. Here the information was filed away for use; here the letters were typed; from here they were issued."

"Blackmailing letters!" cried Jim. "Letters demanding money!"

"Some of them," answered Hanaud.

"But Betty Harlowe had money. All that she needed, and more if she chose to ask for it."

"All that she needed? No," answered Hanaud with a shake of the head. "The blackmailer never has enough money. For no one is so blackmailed."

A sudden and irrational fury seized upon Frobisher. They had agreed, he and Hanaud, that there was a gang involved in all these crimes. It might be that Betty was of them, yes, even led them, but were they all to go scot-free?

"There are others," he exclaimed. "The man who rode this motor-cycle——"