conjectures—­and we had nothing but conjectures to build upon-were true, the woman flung upon the sofa could not be Helene Vauquier, for she would have said so; she could have had no reason for concealment.  But it must be Mlle. Celie.  There was the slit in the one cushion and the stain on the other which, of course, I had not accounted for.  There was still, too, the puzzle of the footsteps outside the glass doors.  If Mlle. Celie had been bound upon the sofa, how came she to run with her limbs free from the house?  There was a question—­a question not easy to answer.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ricardo.

“Yes; but there was also another question.  Suppose that Mlle. Celie was, after all, the victim, not the accomplice; suppose she had been flung tied upon the sofa; suppose that somehow the imprint of her shoes upon the ground had been made, and that she had afterwards been carried away, so that the maid might be cleared of all complicity—­in that case it became intelligible why the other footprints were scored out and hers left.  The presumption of guilt would fall upon her.  There would be proof that she ran hurriedly from the room and sprang into a motor-car of her own free will.  But, again, if that theory were true, then Helene Vauquier was the accomplice and not Mlle. Celie.”

“I follow that.”

“Then I found an interesting piece of evidence with regard to the strange woman who came:  I picked up a long red hair—­a very important piece of evidence about which I thought it best to say nothing at all.  It was not Mlle. Celie’s hair, which is fair; nor Vauquier’s, which is black; nor Mme. Dauvray’s, which is dyed brown; nor the charwoman’s, which is grey.  It was, therefore, the visitor’s.  Well, we went upstairs to Mile.  Celie’s room.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ricardo eagerly.  “We are coming to the pot of cream.”

“In that room we learnt that Helene Vauquier, at her own request, had already paid it a visit.  It is true the Commissaire said that he had kept his eye on her the whole time.  But none the less from the window he saw me coming down the road, and that he could not have done, as I made sure, unless he had turned his back upon Vauquier and leaned out of the window.  Now at the time I had an open mind about Vauquier.  On the whole I was inclined to think she had no share in the affair.  But either she or Mlle. Celie had, and perhaps both.  But one of them—­yes.  That was sure.  Therefore I asked what drawers she touched after the Commissaire had leaned out of the window.  For if she had any motive in wishing to visit the room she would have satisfied it when the Commissaire’s back was turned.  He pointed to a drawer, and I took out a dress and shook it, thinking that she may have wished to hide something.  But nothing fell out.  On the other hand, however, I saw some quite fresh grease-marks, made by fingers, and the marks were wet.  I began to ask myself how it