“By all means,” replied Hanaud, with a smile of extreme courtesy.  “Nothing could be more delicious than monsieur’s suggestions”; and with that remark he walked on silently.

Mr. Ricardo was in a little doubt as to the exact significance of the words.  But he was too excited to dwell long upon them.  Distressed though he sought to be at his friend’s grief, he could not but assume an air of importance.  All the artist in him rose joyfully to the occasion.  He looked upon himself from the outside.  He fancied without the slightest justification that people were pointing him out.  “That man has been present at the investigation at the Villa Rose,” he seemed to hear people say.  “What strange things he could tell us if he would!”

And suddenly, Mr. Ricardo began to reflect.  What, after all, could he have told them?

And that question he turned over in his mind while he ate his luncheon.  Hanaud wrote a letter between the courses.  They were sitting at a corner table, and Hanaud was in the corner with his back to the wall.  He moved his plate, too, over the letter as he wrote it.  It would have been impossible for either of his guests to see what he had written, even if they had wished.  Ricardo, indeed, did wish.  He rather resented the secrecy with which the detective, under a show of openness, shrouded his thoughts and acts.  Hanaud sent the waiter out to fetch an officer in plain clothes, who was in attendance at the door, and he handed the letter to this man.  Then he turned with an apology to his guests.

“It is necessary that we should find out,” he explained, “as soon as possible, the whole record of Mlle. Celie.”

He lighted a cigar, and over the coffee he put a question to Ricardo.

“Now tell me what you make of the case.  What M. Wethermill thinks--that is clear, is it not?  Helene Vauquier is the guilty one.  But you, M. Ricardo?  What is your opinion?”

Ricardo took from his pocket-book a sheet of paper and from his pocket a pencil.  He was intensely flattered by the request of Hanaud, and he proposed to do himself justice.  “I will make a note here of what I think the salient features of the mystery”; and he proceeded to tabulate the points in the following way: 

(1) Celia Harland made her entrance into Mme. Dauvray’s household under very doubtful circumstances.

(2) By methods still more doubtful she accquired an extraordinary ascendency over Mme. Dauvray’s mind.

(3) If proof were needed how complete that ascendency was, a glance at Celia Harland’s wardrobe would suffice; for she wore the most expensive clothes.

(4) It was Celia Harland who arranged that Servettaz, the chauffeur, should be absent at Chambery on the Tuesday night—­the night of the murder.

(5) It was Celia Harland who bought the cord with which Mme. Dauvray was strangled and Helene Vauquier bound.

(6) The footsteps outside the salon show that Celia Harland ran from the salon to the motor-car.