She told her share of the story--she told what happened. There was
apparently one terrible scene when she was confronted with Harry
Wethermill in the office of Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge
d'lnstruction, and on her knees, with the tears streaming down her
face, besought him to confess the truth. For a long while he held
out. And then there came a strange and human turn to the affair.
Adele Rossignol--or, to give her real name, Adele Tace, the wife
of Hippolyte--had conceived a veritable passion for Harry
Wethermill. He was of a not uncommon type, cold and callous in
himself, yet with the power to provoke passion in women. And Adele
Tace, as the story was told of how Harry Wethermill had paid his
court to Celia Harland, was seized with a vindictive jealousy.
Hanaud was not surprised. He knew the woman-criminal of his
country--brutal, passionate, treacherous. The anonymous letters in
a woman's handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and
betray the men who have committed thefts, had left him no
illusions upon that figure in the history of crime. Adele
Rossignol ran forward to confess, so that Harry Wethermill might
suffer to the last possible point of suffering. Then at last
Wethermill gave in and, broken down by the ceaseless
interrogations of the magistrate, confessed in his turn too. The
one, and the only one, who stood firmly throughout and denied the
crime was Helene Vauquier. Her thin lips were kept contemptuously
closed, whatever the others might admit. With a white, hard face,
quietly and respectfully she faced the magistrate week after week.
She was the perfect picture of a servant who knew her place. And
nothing was wrung from her. But without her help the story became
complete. And Ricardo was at pains to write it out.