d all the more they
would have suspected Mile. Celie. 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. Celie 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. Celie's record as Helene Vauquier gave it to us,
and a record obviously true. There was the fact that she had got rid of
Servettaz. There was the maid upstairs very ill from the chloroform.
What more likely than that Mlle. Celie had arranged a seance, and then
when the lights were out had admitted the murderer through that
convenient glass door?"

"There were, besides, the definite imprints of her shoes," said Mr.
Ricardo.

"Yes, but that is precisely where I began to feel sure that she was
innocent," replied Hanaud dryly. "All the other footmarks had been so
carefully scored and ploughed up that nothing could be made of them.
Yet those little ones remained so definite, so easily identified, and I
began to wonder why these, too, had not been cut up and stamped over.
The murderers had taken, you see, an excess of precaution to throw the
presumption of guilt upon Mlle. Celie rather than upon Vauquier.
However, there the footsteps were. Mlle. Celie had sprung from the room
as I described to Wethermill. But I was puzzled. Then in the room I
found the torn-up sheet of notepaper with the words, 'Je ne sais pas,'
in mademoiselle's handwriting. The words might have been
spirit-writing, they might have meant anything. I put them away in my
mind. But in the room the settee puzzled me. And again I was
troubled--greatly troubled."

"Yes, I saw that."

"And not you alone," said Hanaud, with a smile. "Do you remember that
loud cry Wethermill gave when we returned to the room and once more I
stood before the settee? Oh, he turned it off very well. I had said
that our criminals in France were not very gentle with their victims,
and he pretended that it was in fear of what Mlle. Celie might be
suffering which had torn that cry from his heart. But it was not so. He
was afraid--deadly afraid--not for Mlle. Celie, but for himself. He was
afraid that I had understood what these cushions had to tell me."

"What did they tell you?