"No; that is the one thing it could not have been," said Hanaud.
"Look round the room. Was there ever a room better tended? Find me
a little pile of dust in any one corner if you can! It is all as
clean as a plate. Every morning, except this one morning, this
room has been swept and polished. The paper was written and torn
up yesterday."
He enclosed the card in an envelope as he spoke, and placed it in
his pocket. Then he rose and crossed again to the settee. He stood
at the side of it, with his hands clutching the lapels of his coat
and his face gravely troubled. After a few moments of silence for
himself, of suspense for all the others who watched him, he
stooped suddenly. Slowly, and with extraordinary care, he pushed
his hands under the head-cushion and lifted it up gently, so that
the indentations of its surface might not be disarranged. He
carried it over to the light of the open window. The cushion was
covered with silk, and as he held it to the sunlight all could see
a small brown stain.
Hanaud took his magnifying-glass from his pocket and bent his head
over the cushion. But at that moment, careful though he had been,
the down swelled up within the cushion, the folds and indentations
disappeared, the silk covering was stretched smooth.
"Oh!" cried Besnard tragically. "What have you done?"
Hanaud's face flushed. He had been guilty of a clumsiness--even
he.
Mr. Ricardo took up the tale.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "what have you done?"
Hanaud looked at Ricardo in amazement at his audacity.
"Well, what have I done?" he asked. "Come! tell me!"
"You have destroyed a clue," replied Ricardo impressively.
The deepest dejection at once overspread Hanaud's burly face.
"Don't say that, M. Ricardo, I beseech you!" he implored. "A clue!
and I have destroyed it! But what kind of a clue? And how have I
destroyed it? And to what mystery would it be a clue if I hadn't
destroyed it? And what will become of me when I go back to Paris,
and say in the Rue de Jerusalem, 'Let me sweep the cellars, my
good friends, for M. Ricardo knows that I destroyed a clue.
Faithfully he promised me that he would not open his mouth, but I
destroyed a clue, and his perspicacity forced him into speech.'"
It was the turn of M. Ricardo to grow red.
Hanaud turned with a smile to Besnard.
"It does not really matter whether the creases in this cushion
remain," he said, "we have all seen them." And he replaced the
glass in his pocket.
He carried that cushion back and replaced it. Then he took the
other, which lay at the foot of the settee, and carried it in its
turn to the window. This was indented too, and ridged up, and just
at the marks the nap of the silk was worn, and there was a slit
where it had been cut. The perplexity upon Hanaud's face greatly
increased. He stood with the cushion in his hands, no longer
looking at it, but looking out through the doors at the footsteps
so clearly defined--the foot-steps of a girl who had run from this
room and sprung into a motor-car and driven away. He shook his
head, and, carrying back the cushion, laid it carefully down. Then
he stood erect, gazed about the room as though even yet he might
force its secrets out from its silence, and cried, with a sudden
violence: "There is something here, gentlemen, which I do not understand."