ont of the Etablissement des
Bains. Ricardo dropped on to a bench and wiped his forehead.

"But I am in a maze," he cried. "My head turns round. I don't know
where I am."

Hanaud stood in front of Ricardo, smiling. He was not displeased with
his companion's bewilderment; it was all so much of tribute to himself.

"I am the captain of the ship," he said.

His smile irritated Ricardo, who spoke impatiently.

"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would tell me how you
discovered all these things. And what it was that the little salon on
the first morning had to tell to you? And why Celia Harland ran from
the glass doors across the grass to the motor-car and again from the
carriage into the house on the lake? Why she did not resist yesterday
evening? Why she did not cry for help? How much of Helene Vauquier's
evidence was true and how much false? For what reason Wethermill
concerned himself in this affair? Oh! and a thousand things which I
don't understand."

"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