“You had locked it away?” cried Hanaud.
“Yes. My maid did not see it.”
Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope, one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden she might enclose with it a photograph.
“And to whom did you send it?” asked Mr. Ricardo.
“To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address carefully. Then I went out and posted it.”
“Where?” Hanaud inquired.
“In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar Square.”
Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.
“You had your wits about you, I see,” he said.
“What if the envelope gets lost?” said Ricardo.
Hanaud laughed grimly.
“If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will be that one,” he said. “The news of the crime is published, you see,” and he swung round to Joan.
“Did you know that, Miss Carew?”
“No,” she answered in an awe-stricken voice.
“Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to say about it.” And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of him.
IV
There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the administration of the anæsthetic.
“It’s murder none the less,” said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going to do.
“I must tell my story to the police,” she replied painfully and slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.
Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. “Well,” he asked, “and what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers, dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?”
“Yes.”
“And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?”
“I should think so.”
“Then what will your confession do beyond — I quote your English idiom — putting you in the coach?”
Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line. His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the tablecloth with her fingers.
“Yet I think I must tell the police,” she repeated, looking up and dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were very long. For the first time Hanaud’s face relaxed.
“And I think you are quite right,” he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo’s surprise. “Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I will go with you myself to Scotland Yard.”
“Thank you,” said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.
Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.
“It was all right,” he said. “The police were very kind. Miss Joan Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately, the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan’s story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out of the witness-box if they can.”
“She is to stay here in London, then?” asked Ricardo.
“Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of the disguise which they had used.” Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash of shrewdness, said:
“It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever be caught at all.”
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
“There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white pigeon. That is the value of the chance.”
“But,” exclaimed Ricardo, “those pearls were of great value, and I have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come upon the market — —”
“That is true,” Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. “But how are they known?”
“By their weight,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Exactly,” replied Hanaud. “But did you not also hear at this trial of yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes — but you can no longer identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a new pearl which can be traded.” He looked at Ricardo. “Who shall say that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?”
Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. “I have some experience in these matters,” he said loftily to Hanaud. “I am sure that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed.”
Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under Hanaud’s tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter rested.
The days flew by. It was London’s play-time. The green and gold of early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under England’s pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang “Louise” at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.
But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development. Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud. She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told another story which, to Mr. Ricardo’s thinking, was yet more strange and — yes — yet more suspicious.
“It has been going on for some time,” she began. “I thought of coming to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited — oh, you’ll never believe me!”
“Let us hear!” said Hanaud patiently.
“I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself awake.”
“But you couldn’t,” said Hanaud with a smile. “Only the old can do that.”
“No, I couldn’t,” she admitted; “and — oh, my nights were horrible until” — she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully— “un
til one night the mask slipped.”
“What — ?” cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his voice. “What are you saying?”
With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:
“It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men — of the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead visible — no more.”
“Well?” asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a revelation.
“I waked up,” the girl continued, “in the darkness, and for a moment the whole scene remained vividly with me — for just long enough for me to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white forehead showing above the mask.”
“When was that?” asked Ricardo.
“A fortnight ago.”
“Why didn’t you come with your story then?”
“I waited,” said Joan. “What I had to tell wasn’t yet helpful. I thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides, I — it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man’s carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at all. Do you understand that?” she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal on Hanaud’s face.
“Yes,” replied Hanaud. “I follow your thought.”
“I thought there was a chance now — the strangest chance — that the truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it,” and she turned eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn her batteries on his companion. “My whole point of view was changed. I was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished to dream, but — —”
“But you could not,” suggested Hanaud.
“No, that is the truth,” replied Joan Carew. “Whereas before I was anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber.”
Hanaud nodded.
“It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by contraries.”
Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud’s voice, some look of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other. Hanaud was listening patiently.
“Then came my rehearsals,” Joan Carew continued, “and that wonderful opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that haunting music in my ears — the call of Paris — oh, you must remember it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?”
Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that question.
“It is true, my friend,” he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. “The great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great part.”
“Thank you,” said Hanaud gravely. “And now Miss Carew may perhaps resume her story.”
“It was the very night of my début,” she continued. “I had supper with some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again.”
“Yes?”
“This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought — nay, I was sure — that if that strip vanished I should know the man.”
“And it did vanish?”
“Three nights afterwards.”
“And you did know the man?”
The girl’s face became troubled. She frowned.
“I knew the face, that was all,” she answered. “I was disappointed. I had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I have seen him.”
“You don’t even remember when?” asked Hanaud.
“No.” Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet, and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. “No. I try all the time to remember. But it is no good.”
Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew, just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men, an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men’s weaknesses than a girl of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of questions:
“How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed complete the face of your assailant?”
Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.
“I know,” she exclaimed. “I was at the opera.”
“And what was being given?”
“The Jewels of the Madonna.”
Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected precisely that answer.
“Now,” he continued, “you are sure that you have seen this man?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” said Hanaud. “There is a game you play at children’s parties — is there not? — animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I.”
Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud’s face. As he put each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered doubtfully he pressed it.
“You crossed on the Lucania from New York?”
“Yes.”
“Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture quite clear?”
“Yes.”
“Was it at breakfast that you saw him?”
“No.”
“At luncheon?”
“No.”
“At dinner?”
She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at the tables.
“No.”
“Not in the dining-table at all, then?”
“No.”
“In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day lift your head and see him?”
“No.”
“On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?”
“No.”
Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start of joy, she cried: “Yes, it was there.”
Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
“Ouf!” he grunted. “To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear.”
It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left the improvi
sed stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing, and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.
“I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly,” she said. “He was tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young — thirty-five or so, I should say — a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people.”
“Do you remember to whom?”
“No.”
“Did he notice you, do you think?”
“I am sure he didn’t,” the girl replied emphatically. “He never looked at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me afterwards.”
She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and singers as she knew at that party. “And that is all,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Hanaud. “It is perhaps a good deal. But it is perhaps nothing at all.”
“You will let me hear from you?” she cried, as she rose to her feet.
“Miss Carew, I am at your service,” he returned. She gave him her hand timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the table at Ricardo.
“Yes,” he said, “all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace, a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all, this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it. But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine’s lodging in the Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned.”
“You have an idea?” exclaimed Ricardo.
“Perhaps!” said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the Times. “Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre.”
“You are the most irritating man!” Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively. “If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: ‘I know,’ when you know nothing at all.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 805