"But this scrap of cloth," said M. Formery, holding it out to him.
"Yes, yes, that scrap of cloth," said Guerchard. And, turning to the Duke, he added, "Do you know if there's a dog or cat in the house, your Grace? I suppose that, as the fiance of Mademoiselle Gournay-Martin, you are familiar with the house?"
"What on earth--" said M. Formery.
"Excuse me," interrupted Guerchard. "But this is important--very important."
"Yes, there is a cat," said the Duke. "I've seen a cat at the door of the concierge's rooms."
"It must have been that cat which took this scrap of cloth to the edge of the well," said Guerchard gravely.
"This is ridiculous--preposterous!" cried M. Formery, beginning to flush. "Here we're dealing with a most serious crime--a murder--the murder of Victoire--and you talk about cats!"
"Victoire has not been murdered," said Guerchard; and his husky voice was gentler than ever, only just audible.
"But we don't know that--we know nothing of the kind," said M. Formery.
"I do," said Guerchard.
"You?" said M. Formery.
"Yes," said Guerchard.
"Then how do you explain her disappearance?"
"If she had disappeared I shouldn't explain it," said Guerchard.
"But since she has disappeared?" cried M. Formery, in a tone of exasperation.
"She hasn't," said Guerchard.
"You know nothing about it!" cried M. Formery, losing his temper.
"Yes, I do," said Guerchard, with the same gentleness.
"Come, do you mean to say that you know where she is?" cried M. Formery.
"Certainly," said Guerchard.
"Do you mean to tell us straight out that you've seen her?" cried M. Formery.
"Oh, yes; I've seen her," said Guerchard.
"You've seen her--when?" cried M. Formery.
Guerchard paused to consider. Then he said gently:
"It must have been between four and five minutes ago."
"But hang it all, you haven't been out of this room!" cried M. Formery.
"No, I haven't," said Guerchard.
"And you've seen her?" cried M. Formery.
"Yes," said Guerchard, raising his voice a little.
"Well, why the devil don't you tell us where she is? Tell us!" cried M. Formery, purple with exasperation.
"But you won't let me get a word out of my mouth," protested Guerchard with aggravating gentleness.
"Well, speak!" cried M. Formery; and he sank gasping on to a chair.
"Ah, well, she's here," said Guerchard.
"Here! How did she GET here?" said M. Formery.
"On a mattress," said Guerchard.
M. Formery sat upright, almost beside himself, glaring furiously at Guerchard:
"What do you stand there pulling all our legs for?" he almost howled.
"Look here," said Guerchard.
He walked across the room to the fireplace, pushed the chairs which stood bound together on the hearth-rug to one side of the fireplace, and ran the heavy fire-screen on its casters to the other side of it, revealing to their gaze the wide, old-fashioned fireplace itself. The iron brazier which held the coals had been moved into the corner, and a mattress lay on the floor of the fireplace. On the mattress lay the figure of a big, middle-aged woman, half-dressed. There was a yellow gag in her mouth; and her hands and feet were bound together with blue cords.
"She is sleeping soundly," said Guerchard. He stooped and picked up a handkerchief, and smelt it. "There's the handkerchief they chloroformed her with. It still smells of chloroform."
They stared at him and the sleeping woman.
"Lend a hand, inspector," he said. "And you too, Bonavent. She looks a good weight."
The three of them raised the mattress, and carried it and the sleeping woman to a broad couch, and laid them on it. They staggered under their burden, for truly Victoire was a good weight.
M. Formery rose, with recovered breath, but with his face an even richer purple. His eyes were rolling in his head, as if they were not under proper control.
He turned on the inspector and cried savagely, "You never examined the fireplace, inspector!"
"No, sir," said the downcast inspector.
"It was unpardonable--absolutely unpardonable!" cried M. Formery. "How is one to work with subordinates like this?"
"It was an oversight," said Guerchard.
M. Formery turned to him and said, "You must admit that it was materially impossible for me to see her."
"It was possible if you went down on all fours," said Guerchard.
"On all fours?" said M. Formery.
"Yes; on all fours you could see her heels sticking out beyond the mattress," said Guerchard simply.
M. Formery shrugged his shoulders: "That screen looked as if it had stood there since the beginning of the summer," he said.
"The first thing, when you're dealing with Lupin, is to distrust appearances," said Guerchard.
"Lupin!" cried M. Formery hotly. Then he bit his lip and was silent.
He walked to the side of the couch and looked down on the sleeping Victoire, frowning: "This upsets everything," he said. "With these new conditions, I've got to begin all over again, to find a new explanation of the affair. For the moment--for the moment, I'm thrown completely off the track. And you, Guerchard?"
"Oh, well," said Guerchard, "I have an idea or two about the matter still."
"Do you really mean to say that it hasn't thrown you off the track too?" said M. Formery, with a touch of incredulity in his tone.
"Well, no--not exactly," said Guerchard. "I wasn't on that track, you see."
"No, of course not--of course not. You were on the track of Lupin," said M. Formery; and his contemptuous smile was tinged with malice.
The Duke looked from one to the other of them with curious, searching eyes: "I find all this so interesting," he said.
"We do not take much notice of these checks; they do not depress us for a moment," said M. Formery, with some return of his old grandiloquence. "We pause hardly for an instant; then we begin to reconstruct--to reconstruct."
"It's perfectly splendid of you," said the Duke, and his limpid eyes rested on M. Formery's self-satisfied face in a really affectionate gaze; they might almost be said to caress it.
Guerchard looked out of the window at a man who was carrying a hod-full of bricks up one of the ladders set against the scaffolding of the building house. Something in this honest workman's simple task seemed to amuse him, for he smiled.
Only the inspector, thinking of the unexamined fireplace, looked really depressed.
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