Ricardo clenched his hands.

“But that’s horrible!” he cried; and as he uttered the words the car swerved into the drive and stopped before the door of the Hotel Majestic.

Ricardo sprang out.  A feeling of remorse seized hold of him.  All through that evening he had not given one thought to Harry Wethermill, so utterly had the excitement of each moment engrossed his mind.

“He will be glad to know!” cried Ricardo.  “Tonight, at all events, he shall sleep.  I ought to have telegraphed to him from Geneva that we and Miss Celia were coming back.”  He ran up the steps into the hotel.

“I took care that he should know,” said Hanaud, as he followed in Ricardo’s steps.

“Then the message could not have reached him, else he would have been expecting us,” replied Ricardo, as he hurried into the office, where a clerk sat at his books.

“Is Mr. Wethermill in?” he asked.

The clerk eyed him strangely.

“Mr. Wethermill was arrested this evening,” he said.

Ricardo stepped back.

“Arrested!  When?”

“At twenty-five minutes past ten,” replied the clerk shortly.

“Ah,” said Hanaud quietly.  “That was my telephone message.”

Ricardo stared in stupefaction at his companion.

“Arrested!” he cried.  “Arrested!  But what for?”

“For the murders of Marthe Gobin and Mme. Dauvray,” said Hanaud. 
“Good-night.”

CHAPTER XIV

MR. RICARDO IS BEWILDERED

Ricardo passed a most tempestuous night.  He was tossed amongst dark problems.  Now it was Harry Wethermill who beset him.  He repeated and repeated the name, trying to grasp the new and sinister suggestion which, if Hanaud were right, its sound must henceforth bear.  Of course Hanaud might be wrong.  Only, if he were wrong, how had he come to suspect Harry Wethermill?  What had first directed his thoughts to that seemingly heart-broken man?  And when?  Certain recollections became vivid in Mr. Ricardo’s mind—­ the luncheon at the Villa Rose, for instance.  Hanaud had been so insistent that the woman with the red hair was to be found in Geneva, had so clearly laid it down that a message, a telegram, a letter from Aix to Geneva, would enable him to lay his hands upon the murderer in Aix.  He was isolating the house in Geneva even so early in the history of his investigations, even so soon he suspected Harry Wethermill.  Brains and audacity—­yes, these two qualities he had stipulated in the criminal.  Ricardo now for the first time understood the trend of all Hanaud’s talk at that luncheon.  He was putting Harry Wethermill upon his guard, he was immobilising him, he was fettering him in precautions; with a subtle skill he was forcing him to isolate himself.  And he was doing it deliberately to save the life of Celia Harland in Geneva.  Once Ricardo lifted himself up with the hair stirring on