“If only you had heard of the telegram yesterday in time!” he cried.

“Ah, yes!” Hanaud agreed.  “But it was only sent off at a quarter to one.  It was delivered to Wethermill and a copy was sent to the Prefecture, but the telegram was delivered first.”

“When was it delivered to Wethermill?” asked Ricardo.

“At three.  We had already left for the station.  Wethermill was sitting on the verandah.  The telegram was brought to him there.  It was brought by a waiter in the hotel who remembers the incident very well.  Wethermill has seven minutes and the time it will take for Marthe Gobin to drive from the station to the Majestic.  What does he do?  He runs up first to your rooms, very likely not yet knowing what he must do.  He runs up to verify his telegram.”

“Are you sure of that?” cried Ricardo.  “How can you be?  You were at the station with me.  What makes you sure?”

Hanaud produced a brown kid glove from his pocket.

“This.”

“That is your glove; you told me so yesterday.”

“I told you so,” replied Hanaud calmly; “but it is not my glove.  It is Wethermill’s; there are his initials stamped upon the lining—­see?  I picked up that glove in your room, after we had returned from the station.  It was not there before.  He went to your rooms.  No doubt he searched for a telegram.  Fortunately he did not examine your letters, or Marthe Gobin would never have spoken to us as she did after she was dead,”

“Then what did he do?” asked Ricardo eagerly; and, though Hanaud had been with him at the entrance to the station all this while, he asked the question in absolute confidence that the true answer would be given to him.

“He returned to the verandah wondering what he should do.  He saw us come back from the station in the motor-car and go up to your room.  We were alone.  Marthe Gobin, then, was following.  There was his chance.  Marthe Gobin must not reach us, must not tell her news to us.  He ran down the garden steps to the gate.  No one could see him from the hotel.  Very likely he hid behind the trees, whence he could watch the road.  A cab comes up the hill; there’s a woman in it—­not quite the kind of woman who stays at your hotel, M. Ricardo.  Yet she must be going to your hotel, for the road ends.  The driver is nodding on his box, refusing to pay any heed to his fare lest again she should bid him hurry.  His horse is moving at a walk.  Wethermill puts his head in at the window and asks if she has come to see M. Ricardo.  Anxious for her four thousand francs, she answers ‘Yes.’  Perhaps he steps into the cab, perhaps as he walks by the side he strikes, and strikes hard and strikes surely.  Long before the cab reaches the hotel he is back again on the verandah.”

“Yes,” said Ricardo, “it’s the daring of which you spoke which made the crime possible—­the same daring which made him seek your help.  That was unexampled.”