“He sprang up.”

“He betrayed nothing but surprise.  You showed no less surprise than he did, my good friend.  What I was looking for was one glance of fear.  I did not get it.”

“Yet you suspected him—­even then you spoke of brains and audacity.  You told him enough to hinder him from communicating with the red-haired woman in Geneva.  You isolated him.  Yes, you suspected him.”

“Let us take the case from the beginning.  When you first came to me, as I told you, the Commissaire had already been with me.  There was an interesting piece of evidence already in his possession.  Adolphe Ruel—­who saw Wethermill and Vauquier together close by the Casino and overheard that cry of Wethermill’s, ’It is true:  I must have money!’—­had already been with his story to the Commissaire.  I knew it when Harry Wethermill came into the room to ask me to take up the case.  That was a bold stroke, my friend.  The chances were a hundred to one that I should not interrupt my holiday to take up a case because of your little dinner-party in London.  Indeed, I should not have interrupted it had I not known Adolphe Ruel’s story.  As it was I could not resist.  Wethermill’s very audacity charmed me.  Oh yes, I felt that I must pit myself against him.  So few criminals have spirit, M. Ricardo.  It is deplorable how few.  But Wethermill!  See in what a fine position he would have been if only I had refused.  He himself had been the first to call upon the first detective in France.  And his argument!  He loved Mlle. Celie.  Therefore she must be innocent!  How he stuck to it!  People would have said, ‘Love is blind,’ and all the more they would have suspected Mile.  Celie.  Yes, but they love the blind lover.  Therefore all the more would it have been impossible for them to believe Harry Wethermill had any share in that grim crime.”

Mr. Ricardo drew his chair closer in to the table.

“I will confess to you,” he said, “that I thought Mlle. Celie was an accomplice.”

“It is not surprising,” said Hanaud.  “Some one within the house was an accomplice—­we start with that fact.  The house had not been broken into.  There was Mlle. Celie’s record as Helene Vauquier gave it to us, and a record obviously true.  There was the fact that she had got rid of Servettaz.  There was the maid upstairs very ill from the chloroform.  What more likely than that Mlle. Celie had arranged a seance, and then when the lights were out had admitted the murderer through that convenient glass door?”

“There were, besides, the definite imprints of her shoes,” said Mr. Ricardo.