“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.”

“Ah!” said Ricardo, in a significant exclamation.  Wethermill did not stir.  He sat still as a stone, with a face deadly white and eyes burning upon Hanaud’s face.

“But wait,” said Hanaud, holding up a warning hand to Ricardo.  “Servettaz was in Chambery, where his parents live.  He travelled to Chambery by the two o’clock train yesterday.  He was with them in the afternoon.  He went with them to a cafe in the evening.  Moreover, early this morning the maid, Helene Vauquier, was able to speak a few words in answer to a question.  She said Servettaz was in Chambery.  She gave his address.  A telephone message was sent to the police in that town, and Servettaz was found in bed.  I do not say that it is impossible that Servettaz