A. E. W. Mason

“ Célie. Yes, but they love the blind lover. Therefore all the more would it have been impossible for them to believe Harry Wethermill had any share in that grim crime."
Mr. Ricardo drew his chair closer in to the table.
"I will confess to you," he said, "that I thought Mlle. Célie was an accomplice."
"It is not surprising," said Hanaud. "Some one within the house was an accomplice—we start with that fact. The house had not been broken into. There was Mlle. Célie's record as Hélène Vauquier gave it to us, and a record obviously true. ”

“ The rage of the murderers at their inability to discover the plunder for which they had risked their necks, the old woman crumpled up on the floor against the wall, the girl writing laboriously with fettered arms 'I do not know' under threats of torture, and then in the stillness of the night the clear, tiny click of the gate and the measured, relentless footsteps. ”

“ She knows that it is very possible that her room will be searched before she regains consciousness, or before she is well enough to move. There is only one place to hide them in, only one place where they will be safe. In bed with her. But in the morning she must get rid of them, and a nurse is with her. Hence the excuse to go to Mlle. Célie's room. If the eardrops are found in the pot of cold cream, it would only be thought that Mlle. ”

“ And it is enough to make any one afraid! That I can tell you. No wonder she lay still as a mouse upon the sofa in the bedroom. No wonder she ran quickly into the house. Well, there you have the explanation. I had only my theory to work upon even after Mme. Gobin's evidence. But as it happened it was the right one. Meanwhile, of course, I made my inquiries into Wethermill's circumstances. My good friends in England helped me. They were precarious. He owed money in Aix, money at his hotel. We knew from the motor-car that the man we were searching for had returned to Aix. ”

“ The absence of the car helped me to make it. It is a large city and not very far away, a likely place for people with the police at their heels to run to earth in. But if the car had been discovered in the garage I should not have made that shot. Even then I had no particular conviction about Geneva. I really wished to see how Wethermill would take it. ”