“Ah, the cushions, and the scrap of paper, and the aluminium flask,” said Hanaud; and the triumph faded from his face.  He spoke now to Ricardo with a genuine friendliness.  “You must not be angry with me if I keep you in the dark for a little while.  I, too, Mr. Ricardo, have artistic inclinations.  I will not spoil the remarkable story which I think Mlle. Celie will be ready to tell us.  Afterwards I will willingly explain to you what I read in the evidences of the room, and what so greatly puzzled me then.  But it is not the puzzle or its solution,” he said modestly, “which is most interesting here.  Consider the people.  Mme. Dauvray, the old, rich, ignorant woman, with her superstitions and her generosity, her desire to converse with Mme. de Montespan and the great ladies of the past, and her love of a young, fresh face about her; Helene Vauquier, the maid with her six years of confidential service, who finds herself suddenly supplanted and made to tend and dress in dainty frocks the girl who has supplanted her; the young girl herself, that poor child, with her love of fine clothes, the Bohemian who, brought up amidst trickeries and practising them as a profession, looking upon them and upon misery and starvation and despair as the commonplaces of life, keeps a simplicity and a delicacy and a freshness which would have withered in a day had she been brought up otherwise; Harry Wethermill, the courted and successful man of genius.

“Just imagine if you can what his feelings must have been, when in Mme. Dauvray’s bedroom, with the woman he had uselessly murdered lying rigid beneath the sheet, he saw me raise the block of wood from the inlaid floor and take out one by one those jewel cases for which less than twelve hours before he had been ransacking that very room.  But what he must have felt!  And to give no sign!  Oh, these people are the interesting problems in this story.  Let us hear what happened on that terrible night.  The puzzle—­that can wait.”  In Mr. Ricardo’s view Hanaud was proved right.  The extraordinary and appalling story which was gradually unrolled of what had happened on that night of Tuesday in the Villa Rose exceeded in its grim interest all the mystery of the puzzle.  But it was not told at once.

The trouble at first with Mlle. Celie was a fear of sleep.  She dared not sleep—­even with a light in the room and a nurse at her bedside.  When her eyes were actually closing she would force herself desperately back into the living world.  For when she slept she dreamed through again that dark and dreadful night of Tuesday and the two days which followed it, until at some moment endurance snapped and she woke up screaming.  But youth, a good constitution, and a healthy appetite had their way with her in the end.