He took a handkerchief from Parcolet and once more the handkerchief from his pocket.
“See, I mark the Lydia Flight handkerchief! Those twisted ends would tell us, but to make sure — so” — and with Durasoy’s indelible pencil he wrote L.F. on the handkerchief. “Now tell me what little oddity you see?” He took them both across to Mr. Ricardo, who shot his linen, as the old saying goes, and bent himself to his task.
“Aha!” said Hanaud gleefully. “Je m’y oblige, hein! A mystery? Pouf! In a minute and you are its tumbler!”
Mr. Ricardo, however, did not tumble to it at all. He borrowed the magnifying glass, he scrutinised every portion of those two handkerchiefs, he shut his eyes and opened them again. No! They were two gaudy, cheap common handkerchiefs, and nothing more. No clues, no marks, nothing.
“I am not even one of its wine-glasses,” he said with a laugh, and he passed the handkerchiefs on to Parcolet.
Parcolet, however, was no more acute than Mr. Ricardo.
“If I could see what you see, I should no doubt be Inspecteur Principal of the Sûreté Generale. But I am only Parcolet the Commissaire of Caudebec;” and he gave back the Lydia Flight handkerchief to Hanaud, who had now lost all his gaiety.
“Is this the great mistake which all criminals who are caught are supposed to make?” he said slowly. “Certainly the Monsieur Stallard noticed that bulge in the pocket of the coat. Certainly he stayed behind in the bedroom, when we were moving into the dressing-room. Did he guess then that a mistake had been made? Certainly in the lounge he wanted to go with Durasoy. Tomorrow we may know. To-night I shall explain to you what is strange in these handkerchiefs, but later. For already we arrive.”
The launch slid alongside the hard in front of the hotel.
Hanaud put a question to Parcolet.
“The two men of monsieur’s launch — you can answer for them?”
Parcolet knew their fathers and their mothers. They had their faults, very sure, but they were loyal men who could hold their tongues.
“Very well. They should eat now and return. For I think we shall have a busy night,” said Hanaud.
Ricardo passed on the order to his engineer. The whole party disembarked and crossed to the hotel. They were followed closely by a young rustic whom Ricardo had never seen in these parts before. Hanaud, however, made no objection. In the doorway they were stopped by the patron of the hotel. The young lady of the houseboat had stopped her car at the door a few moments ago. She would not wait. It was a small car with a purple body. Yes, without a doubt it was the young lady of the house-boat. She begged Monsieur Hanaud to excuse her delay. She would come back.
Hanaud stood for a moment in an indecision. Then he led the way up the stairs; and to Ricardo’s astonishment the yokel plodded up at their heels. When they were within Ricardo’s sitting-room, Hanaud hung up his hat on the rack.
“It is as well, perhaps,” he said thoughtfully. “Tonight we have so much to do...Yes, that will do.” He turned now briskly to the door, his indecision gone. “Perrichet!” he called, and an old acquaintance of Mr. Ricardo stepped forward into the light.
“Perrichet!” cried Ricardo. That bovine face, that mop of hair so light that its hue was almost silver! The policeman of Aix-les-Bains, who found himself promoted to plain clothes because he was so much more intelligent than his looks! Ricardo shook him by the hand. “The old comrade!” he cried.
Perrichet’s face split across in a grin of delight.
“Monsieur remembers me?”
“Of course he remembers the intelligent Perrichet,” said Hanaud. “Perrichet, you have eaten?”
“Yes, Monsieur Hanaud.”
“Perrichet, you will not sleep to-night.”
“No, monsieur.”
“And probably not to-morrow.”
“It arrives like that.”
Hanaud gave his attention to the Commissaire.
“We shall go to your office. There are many messages to be sent, and the telephone here might as well be in the middle of the street. At your office you will oblige me greatly if you write a letter to the charming Madame Bouchette, saying that the foolish Parisian Hanaud is alarmed for the security of herself and her friend, with all the servants except her maid sleeping on shore. Therefore a guard will be set, so that no harm comes to her. Perrichet shall hire a boat and deliver the note and then tie up his boat to the service barge, however much Madame Bouchette may declare such precautions unnecessary at Caudebec-en-Caux. And all night, with an electric torch at his side, Perrichet will watch. At any noise, or movement in the house-boat, he will turn on his torch and drop down to the house-boat and ask if he can help. He will look very stupid. That is done. He will speak very stupidly too, and obstinately. He shall have a pistol as well as a torch,” and all the humour died out of Hanaud’s face. “For nothing must happen, Perrichet, upon that boat during the hours of darkness.”
Perrichet saluted and Hanaud clapped him on the shoulder.
“Aha, he is my Brigadier, the old one! Yes, I took him to Paris. The rascals of Paris think they can roll me the moment they see my Brigadier at my door. You can’t imagine the successes we have. Come, and perhaps Monsieur Ricardo will order some food. An hour, we shall be here again.”
With Parcolet and followed by an obvious farm labourer in his Sunday suit glowing with pride and pleasure, Hanaud descended the stairs. Whilst Parcolet wrote his letter, Hanaud dispatched telegrams to London, asking for information concerning Oliver Ransom, Major Scott Carruthers, Guy Stallard, Lydia Flight and the little ostler, Nicholas Furlong. Then he telephoned to the Commissaire of Police at Trouville. Would it be possible to find out, for instance, how Major Scott Carruthers, staying at the Hotel des Fontaines, passed the evening of Thursday? Did he stay in the hotel, or visit a cinema or play at the Casino? If so, at what time did he return? The night porter at the hotel and the manager might be asked discreetly those and a few other questions. Now came the turn of the Sûreté Generale. It would interest Hanaud to know of the recent movements of that celebrated little vulgarian, Elsie Marsh. She might even be asked, and as soon as possible, what she was doing on the house-boat, Marie-Popette, at Caudebec. It would not be out of place, perhaps, to shake her up a little. A type like her was on the whole the better for a trifle of alarm. Also there was a question of a cheap line of handkerchiefs. One of the handkerchiefs would reach the Sûreté by the morning post and there should be no delay in making the necessary enquiries. Also all jewellers, known receivers, mountains of piety and such institutions should be warned, lest the Chitipur pearls be offered to them. Finally, Hanaud got into touch with His Highness the young Rajah at his hotel at Havre. He had no very consoling news to give.
“The affair is of the most serious,” he said. “There are very curious circumstances. For instance, does your Highness know that a copy of the rope of pearls was executed with the utmost care by the firm of Tabateau in the month of January?”
“What!” cried His Highness, believing that he heard amiss. “I know nothing of the kind.”
“Yet it is true. Major Scott Carruthers had it made.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line; and then in quite another voice:
“Wait a moment, Monsieur Hanaud!”
His Highness Nahendra Nao had been wild perhaps and was certainly young. But he was no fool and he had a most excellent memory. It took him a few seconds to recover from the shock of Hanaud’s announcement. There had been a good deal of hero worship in his estimate of Scott Carruthers. He knew him for a first-class polo player, an admirable shot, a man of courage and good temper. Above all, Scott Carruthers carried with him the high prestige of his race and his military rank. But as soon as Nahendra Nao had got over his incredulity and horror, he began to remember.
“The morning I brought back to my hotel in Paris the spoilt chaplet — yes, I wanted to show it to Tabateau, but Scott Carruthers found all sorts of reasons against it. He wanted it to go to Crevette in Bond Street
. That was in March. I couldn’t understand why he was so anxious. I see now. I should have found out about the copy. Yes...I remember something else, too. When I agreed to take the rope to Crevette’s he became — well — boisterous. Yes. I thought it curious. He was generally self-contained, you know. Not that that’s important—”
It was now for Hanaud to cry:
“Wait a moment! This is to be considered. I want to know about this Major. I hear of him as calm and authoritative, but I find an hysteric, a girl of the old days in a crinoline. He became a little boisterous when the suspense was ended. Yes? I beg you not to mention to the Major a word about this copy.”
His Highness duly promised and Hanaud rang off.
“I do not like this Major who is calm and forceful when all is easy and so shrill and violent when a difficulty lifts itself, who secretly makes copies of jewels which can’t be replaced, and is in the depths of misery when the original is lost. No! He is a type, that one.”
He might be a type, but Hanaud could only print the faintest of impressions out of him so far.
Parcolet rushed rather excitedly into the room.
“It is a complaint from the forest guard,” he said, flourishing a paper on which he had written the message down.
Hanaud took the paper from him, read it and sat back in his chair. It gave him a piece of information which not so long before Guy Stallard had given to Scott Carruthers.
“We shall meet this man before morning?” Parcolet suggested.
“Before people are awake,” Hanaud replied. “Let this man watch for us at two o’clock on the bank at some place not too near the village of La Vacquerie, not too near the House of the Pebble, a place where we can land. He can show a light to guide us. So!”
Parcolet telephoned the instruction and with Durasoy at his heels, and Hanaud at his side, returned to Mr. Ricardo’s hotel. The three men dined together in Mr. Ricardo’s fine sitting-room overlooking the hard and the river. At the end of the dinner Hanaud looked at his watch, and said:
“It is still too early,” and Parcolet nodded.
“Yes, the forest guard is not to meet us until two in the morning.”
“Good! We have the cigars? Yes. The coffee? Yes. The fine champagne? Yes. And then, the table cleared, Hanaud will amuse you with his parlour tricks.”
The coffee, the cigars, the fine champagne were all produced at the order of Monsieur Ricardo, and duly credited to Monsieur Ricardo’s account.
“My friend, Monsieur Ricardo, he is a prince,” said Hanaud, swirling the brown liqueur brandy round and round in a great goblet. “He is on the top of the holes. I drink to him.”
Monsieur Parcolet, not being as yet familiar with Hanaud’s version of the English idiom, was no doubt a little baffled, but he gathered that the phrase was complimentary.
“Superior to them all,” he said, and stroked his beard and bowed.
Mr. Ricardo, a modest man, was abashed by these praises. He managed some sort of response.
“Whatever my friend Hanaud sees of mine that he wants, he takes. Whatever he does not see, he asks for. I meet him once a year. If I met him twice a year, he would still be welcome.”
They bowed and they made little chimes in the room as they clinked their glasses, and Mr. Ricardo was seized with a terrible fear that he would find himself being kissed on both cheeks. And indeed that might well have happened had not Hanaud arrested them all by lifting his hand.
“Listen!”
The glass doors upon the balcony stood open. From the quiet of the night outside the regular beat of a propeller drifted into the room. The noise was still faint. Hanaud ran to one of the open doors and looked upstream. A white light on a low mast and a green starboard light were moving swiftly towards them. A smile spread over the Inspector’s face.
“Aha! There has been a conference on the Marie-Popette. Yes, yes, my good people, there was need to confer, to ask the explanations and prepare the new plans.”
“I turn out the lights,” Parcolet suggested, hurrying to the switch on the wall.
“No,” cried Hanaud. “Let them see us taking our ease like honest shopkeepers after the day’s work is done. It will give them some comfort, poor fellows! And they want it, I think.”
He bustled his companions out on to the balcony with their coffee cups and their big goblets, and settled them down in the cushioned wicker chairs and under the baskets of flowers, with the strong light from the room behind lighting up their faces.
“So! We are at our leisures. I am telling you stories of the wonderful brilliancies I have done, and you are gaping in admiration. Let us hope they say: ‘He is telling what a whale he is, but he is only a poor fish.’ So they get some sleep to-night.”
The launch of the Château du Caillou swept past the front of the hotel, the noise of its crew waking the town. It showed none but its navigation lights; but the three men upon the balcony did not doubt that both Guy Stallard and Scott Carruthers were in the cockpit with their eyes fixed anxiously upon the hotel. Hanaud watched the launch disappear into darkness, only a green line of light tumbling on the water and the dwindling revolutions of the propeller informing him of its course. A few minutes and a red light in place of the green showed him that it had reached the bend of the river and altered its course.
“But I, too, am uneasy,” he said suddenly. “There was a conference on the Marie-Popette to-night. There must have been. Well then, was Lydia Flight at the conference? Has she been fooling us? Was she holding me off until she and her friends could meet and concoct some fine new plan? If not...” He shook himself impatiently, as though he would throw a load from his shoulders, but he remained bowed under it none the less. He stood up and said in a voice of relief: “I show you the handkerchiefs. It will pass the time until we go.”
The three men returned to the room. Hanaud once more spread side by side the handkerchief from the pocket of Lydia Flight’s coat and one of those taken from Furlong’s wardrobe.
“You see the parallel strips of crimson and yellow. Beginning at the border here, there are fourteen threads of crimson, then fourteen threads of yellow. Take the magnifying glass and you can count them. Do you see? There are fourteen threads to each strip.”
Mr. Ricardo and Parcolet in turn screwed the glass into an eye and counted.
“Yes,” they agreed.
“Then we work across the handkerchiefs. Fourteen threads of crimson, fourteen threads of yellow, fourteen crimson, fourteen yellow. Right! But look here” — and suddenly both of the men who were looking on realised that the next strip, crimson, was slightly broader and the next strip yellow slightly narrower than those which they had already examined.
“You see,” cried Hanaud, looking up at them eagerly. “Eighteen threads crimson and ten threads yellow and again eighteen threads crimson and ten yellow. Then the original pattern goes on again fourteen — crimson and fourteen yellow. There’s a fault in the weaving. Probably the shuttles carrying the yellow threads were short of their quantity or something was wrong with the working of the loom. But that change half-way across this handkerchief can’t be intentional. And it’s possible that it only occurs in a certain number of these cheap handkerchiefs. I shall know more about it when our people in Paris have made their enquiries.”
Mr. Ricardo held one of the handkerchiefs up to the light. Now that the flaw in the pattern had been pointed out to him, it was evident enough. It caught his eye. He could not but see it. But he was quite sure that if it had not been pointed out to him, he might have contemplated that handkerchief for a twelvemonth and noticed nothing at all.
“And you saw it at once!” he cried, gazing at Hanaud in admiration.
“No! I saw something at once; or almost at once,” Hanaud corrected. “As I laid the handkerchief across my knees, after I had taken it out of the pocket of the coat, there was something which seemed wrong. It was just a chance that. But it is my business to use chances. If we speak the truth we must say that so many discov
eries come from chance that not to use it is a crime. It is my business if anything strikes me as wrong to find out why it strikes me as wrong, and not to be satisfied until I have found out why. So I take my little glass out of my pocket — oh, I do not examine the pattern too closely before those clever gentlemen. No! I want them anxious and frightened. I want them to say: ‘That camel of a Hanaud has discovered something. What is it?’ and not to guess what it is — and so to be more nervous and frightened than ever. For once people are nervous and frightened, they are easy. They run here and they run there and they make all the mistakes possible and at last they plunge into your net.”
He stood up suddenly.
“Oh,” he said, like a man remembering a point which he had forgotten to include in his speech, or discovering a new one. He walked out on to the balcony and stood there, leaning on the balustrade with his back to the room. When he came back it occurred to Ricardo that he looked tired and haggard. His face was noticeably paler and had he been another man, Ricardo would have called the look in his eyes a look of fear.
But he merely folded up his handkerchiefs again and said:
“So I do not look too closely until we are by ourselves upon the launch with the curtains drawn. A little sleep, eh? For an hour. We shall be the fresher. You come with us too?”
He put the question to Mr. Ricardo, who bounced out of his chair in indignation. On what errand they were going he had not the remotest suspicion. But this he knew — if he was left behind, it would be fatal to the expedition.
“Of course I come too,” he cried, and Hanaud drew a prodigious breath of relief.
CHAPTER XXI
SCOTT CARRUTHERS PREFERS CHESSMEN
GUY STALLARD ACCOMPANIED Hanaud and — shall we say? — his suite, to the pier of the House of the Pebble. Scott Carruthers remained behind, with his mind bruised and torn from the rack of Hanaud’s questions. He rang for another brandy and soda, and lifting himself from his chair with the ungainly heaviness of an old man, he carried his drink out on to the terrace. From that high point he watched the launch slip out into the river, its cabin lights blaze up behind the drawn curtains, its comet tail of tumbled water lengthen and expand as its speed increased. What were they planning and debating in that cabin, those sons of Belial?
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 138