At The Villa Rose

Wethermill looked at Hanaud with a certain defiance.

"For a fortnight."

Hanaud raised his eyebrows.

"You met her here?"

"Yes."

"In the rooms, I suppose? Not at the house of one of your

friends?"

"That is so," said Wethermill quietly. "A friend of mine who had

met her in Paris introduced me to her at my request."

Hanaud handed back the portrait and drew forward his chair nearer

to Wethermill. His face had grown friendly. He spoke with a tone

of respect.

"Monsieur, I know something of you. Our friend, Mr. Ricardo, told

me your history; I asked him for it when I saw you at his dinner.

You are of those about whom one does ask questions, and I know

that you are not a romantic boy, but who shall say that he is safe

from the appeal of beauty? I have seen women, monsieur, for whose

purity of soul I would myself have stood security, condemned for

complicity in brutal crimes on evidence that could not be

gainsaid; and I have known them turn foul-mouthed, and hideous to

look upon, the moment after their just sentence has been

pronounced." "No doubt, monsieur," said Wethermill, with perfect

quietude. "But Celia Harland is not one of those women."

"I do not now say that she is," said Hanaud. "But the Juge

d'lnstruction here has already sent to me to ask for my

assistance, and I refused. I replied that I was just a good

bourgeois enjoying his holiday. Still it is difficult quite to

forget one's profession. It was the Commissaire of Police who came

to me, and naturally I talked with him for a little while. The

case is dark, monsieur, I warn you."

"How dark?" asked Harry Wethermill.

"I will tell you," said Hanaud, drawing his chair still closer to

the young man. "Understand this in the first place. There was an

accomplice within the villa. Some one let the murderers in. There

is no sign of an entrance being forced; no lock was picked, there

is no mark of a thumb on any panel, no sign of a bolt being

forced. There was an accomplice within the house. We start from

that."

Wethermill nodded his head sullenly. Ricardo drew his chair up

towards the others. But Hanaud was not at that moment interested

in Ricardo.

"Well, then, let us see who there are in Mme. Dauvray's household.

The list is not a long one. It was Mme. Dauvray's habit to take

her luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was

all that she required to get ready her 'petit dejeuner' in the

morning and her 'sirop' at night. Let us take the members of the

household one by one. There is first the chauffeur, Henri

Servettaz. He was not at the villa last night. He came back to it

early this morning."