“What was she like?”

“She was sallow, with black hair and bright eyes like beads.  She was short and about forty-five years old, though it is difficult to judge of these things.  I noticed her hands, for she was taking her gloves off, and they seemed to me to be unusually muscular for a woman.”

“Ah!” cried Louis Besnard.  “That is important.”

“Mme. Dauvray was, as she always was before a seance, in a feverish flutter.  ’You will help Mlle. Celie to dress, Helene, and be very quick,’ she said; and with an extraordinary longing she added, ‘Perhaps we shall see her tonight.’  Her, you understand, was Mme. de Montespan.  And she turned to the stranger and said, “You will believe, Adele, after tonight.”

“Adele!” said the Commissaire wisely.  “Then Adele was the strange woman’s name?”

“Perhaps,” said Hanaud dryly.

Helene Vauquier reflected.

“I think Adele was the name,” she said in a more doubtful tone.  “It sounded like Adele.”

The irrepressible Mr. Ricardo was impelled to intervene.

“What Monsieur Hanaud means,” he explained, with the pleasant air of a man happy to illuminate the dark intelligence of a child, “is that Adele was probably a pseudonym.”

Hanaud turned to him with a savage grin.

“Now that is sure to help her!” he cried.  “A pseudonym!  Helene Vauquier is sure to understand that simple and elementary word.  How bright this M. Ricardo is!  Where shall we find a new pin more bright?  I ask you,” and he spread out his hands in a despairing admiration.

Mr. Ricardo flushed red, but he answered never a word.  He must endure gibes and humiliations like a schoolboy in a class.  His one constant fear was lest he should be turned out of the room.  The Commissaire diverted wrath from him however.

“What he means by pseudonym,” he said to Helene Vauquier, explaining Mr. Ricardo to her as Mr. Ricardo had presumed to explain Hanaud, “is a false name.  Adele may have been, nay, probably was, a false name adopted by this strange woman.”

“Adele, I think, was the name used,” replied Helene, the doubt in her voice diminishing as she searched her memory.  “I am almost sure.”

“Well, we will call her Adele,” said Hanaud impatiently.  “What does it matter?  Go on, Mademoiselle Vauquier.”

“The lady sat upright and squarely upon the edge of a chair, with a sort of defiance, as though she was determined nothing should convince her, and she laughed incredulously.”

Here, again, all who heard were able vividly to conjure up the scene—­the defiant sceptic sitting squarely on the edge of her chair, removing her gloves from her muscular hands; the excited Mme. Dauvray, so absorbed in the determination to convince; and Mlle. Celie running from the room to put on the black gown which would not be visible in the dim light.

“Whilst I took off mademoiselle’s dress,” Vauquier continued, “she said:  ’When I have gone down to the salon you can go to bed, Helene.  Mme. Adele’—­yes, it was Adele—­’will be fetched by a friend in a motorcar, and I can let her out and fasten the door again.  So if you hear the car you will know that it has come for her.’”