“And the people are finding out that you have sold your rights twice over,” she said sympathetically.  “That is a pity, monsieur.”

“They know,” he answered; “those in England know.”

“And they are very angry?”

“They threaten me,” said Wethermill.  “They give me a month to restore the money.  Otherwise there will be disgrace, imprisonment, penal servitude.”

Helene Vauquier walked calmly on.  No sign of the intense joy which she felt was visible in her face, and only a trace of it in her voice.

“Monsieur will, perhaps, meet me tomorrow in Geneva,” she said.  And she named a small cafe in a back street.  “I can get a holiday for the afternoon.”  And as they were near to the villa and the lights, she walked on ahead.

Wethermill loitered behind.  He had tried his luck at the tables and had failed.  And—­and—­he must have the money.

He travelled, accordingly, the next day to Geneva, and was there presented to Adele Tace and Hippolyte.

“They are trusted friends of mine,” said Helene Vauquier to Wethermill, who was not inspired to confidence by the sight of the young man with the big ears and the plastered hair.  As a matter of fact, she had never met them before they came this year to Aix.

The Tace family, which consisted of Adele and her husband and Jeanne, her mother, were practised criminals.  They had taken the house in Geneva deliberately in order to carry out some robberies from the great villas on the lake-side.  But they had not been fortunate; and a description of Mme. Dauvray’s jewellery in the woman’s column of a Geneva newspaper had drawn Adele Tace over to Aix.  She had set about the task of seducing Mme. Dauvray’s maid, and found a master, not an instrument.

In the small cafe on that afternoon of July Helene Vauquier instructed her accomplices, quietly and methodically, as though what she proposed was the most ordinary stroke of business.  Once or twice subsequently Wethermill, who was the only safe go-between, went to the house in Geneva, altering his hair and wearing a moustache, to complete the arrangements.  He maintained firmly at his trial that at none of these meetings was there any talk of murder.

“To be sure,” said the judge, with a savage sarcasm.  “In decent conversation there is always a reticence.  Something is left to be understood.”

And it is difficult to understand how murder could not have been an essential part of their plan, since—–­But let us see what happened.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST MOVE

On the Friday before the crime was committed Mme. Dauvray and Celia dined at the Villa des Fleurs.  While they were drinking their coffee Harry Wethermill joined them.  He stayed with them until Mme. Dauvray was ready to move, and then all three walked into the baccarat rooms together.  But there, in the throng of people, they were separated.