The hole is there; it must be there, at the side of the window, in the putty. In a vertical direction, of course.”
The count arose. He was greatly excited. He paced up and down the room, two or three times, in a nervous manner; then, approaching Floriani, said:
“Nobody has been in that room since; nothing has been changed.”
“Very well, monsieur, you can easily satisfy yourself that my explanation is correct.”
“It does not agree with the facts established by the examining judge. You have seen nothing, and yet you contradict all that we have seen and all that we know.”
Floriani paid no attention to the count’s petulance. He simply smiled and said:
“Mon Dieu, monsieur, I submit my theory; that is all. If I am mistaken, you can easily prove it.”
“I will do so at once.… I confess that your assurance—”
The count muttered a few more words; then suddenly rushed to the door and passed out. Not a word was uttered in his absence; and this profound silence gave the situation an air of almost tragic importance. Finally, the count returned. He was pale and nervous. He said to his friends, in a trembling voice:
“I beg your pardon…the revelations of the chevalier were so unexpected.… I should never have thought.…”
His wife questioned him, eagerly:
“Speak…what is it?”
He stammered: “The hole is there, at the very spot, at the side of the window—”
He seized the chevalier’s arm, and said to him in an imperious tone:
“Now, monsieur, proceed. I admit that you are right so far, but now…that is not all…go on…tell us the rest of it.”
Floriani disengaged his arm gently, and, after a moment, continued:
“Well, in my opinion, this is what happened. The thief, knowing that the countess was going to wear the necklace that evening, had prepared his gangway or bridge during your absence. He watched you through the window and saw you hide the necklace. Afterward, he cut the glass and pulled the ring.”
“Ah! but the distance was so great that it would be impossible for him to reach the window-fastening through the transom.”
“Well, then, if he could not open the window by reaching through the transom, he must have crawled through the transom.”
“Impossible; it is too small. No man could crawl through it.”
“Then it was not a man,” declared Floriani.
“What!”
“If the transom is too small to admit a man, it must have been a child.”
“A child!”
“Did you not say that your friend Henriette had a son?”
“Yes; a son named Raoul.”
“Then, in all probability, it was Raoul who committed the theft.”
“What proof have you of that?”
“What proof! Plenty of it.… For instance—”
He stopped, and reflected for a moment, then continued:
“For instance, that gangway or bridge. It is improbable that the child could have brought it in from outside the house and carried it away again without being observed. He must have used something close at hand. In the little room used by Henriette as a kitchen, were there not some shelves against the wall on which she placed her pans and dishes?”
“Two shelves, to the best of my memory.”
“Are you sure that those shelves are really fastened to the wooden brackets that support them? For, if they are not, we could be justified in presuming that the child removed them, fastened them together, and thus formed his bridge. Perhaps, also, since there was a stove, we might find the bent poker that he used to open the transom.”
Without saying a word, the count left the room; and, this time, those present did not feel the nervous anxiety they had experienced the first time. They were confident that Floriani was right, and no one was surprised when the count returned and declared:
“It was the child. Everything proves it.”
“You have seen the shelves and the poker?”
“Yes. The shelves have been unnailed, and the poker is there yet.”
But the countess exclaimed:
“You had better say it was his mother. Henriette is the guilty party. She must have compelled her son—”
“No,” declared the chevalier, “the mother had nothing to do with it.”
“Nonsense! they occupied the same room. The child could not have done it without the mother’s knowledge.”
“True, they lived in the same room, but all this happened in the adjoining room, during the night, while the mother was asleep.”
“And the necklace?” said the count. “It would have been found amongst the child’s things.”
“Pardon me! He had been out. That morning, on which you found him reading, he had just come from school, and perhaps the commissary of police, instead of wasting his time on the innocent mother, would have been better employed in searching the child’s desk amongst his school-books.”
“But how do you explain those two thousand francs that Henriette received each year? Are they not evidence of her complicity?”
“If she had been an accomplice, would she have thanked you for that money? And then, was she not closely watched? But the child, being free, could easily go to a neighboring city, negotiate with some dealer and sell him one diamond or two diamonds, as he might wish, upon condition that the money should be sent from Paris, and that proceeding could be repeated from year to year.”
An indescribable anxiety oppressed the Dreux-Soubise and their guests. There was something in the tone and attitude of Floriani—something more than the chevalier’s assurance which, from the beginning, had so annoyed the count. There was a touch of irony, that seemed rather hostile than sympathetic. But the count affected to laugh, as he said:
“All that is very ingenious and interesting, and I congratulate you upon your vivid imagination.”
“No, not at all,” replied Floriani, with the utmost gravity, “I imagine nothing. I simply describe the events as they must have occurred.”
“But what do you know about them?”
“What you yourself have told me. I picture to myself the life of the mother and child down there in the country; the illness of the mother, the schemes of and inventions of the child sell the precious stones in order to save his mother’s life, or, at least, soothe her dying moments. Her illness overcomes her. She dies. Years roll on. The child becomes a man; and then—and now I will give my imagination a free rein—let us suppose that the man feels a desire to return to the home of his childhood, that he does so, and that he meets there certain people who suspect and accuse his mother…do you realize the sorrow and anguish of such an interview in the very house wherein the original drama was played?”
His words seemed to echo for a few seconds in the ensuing silence, and one could read upon the faces of the Count and Countess de Dreux a bewildered effort to comprehend his meaning and, at the same time, the fear and anguish of such a comprehension. The count spoke at last, and said:
“Who are you, monsieur?”
“I? The chevalier Floriani, whom you met at Palermo, and whom you have been gracious enough to invite to your house on several occasions.”
“Then what does this story mean?”
“Oh! nothing at all! It is simply a pastime,