"Free!" repeated Ricardo. "She was driven straight from the Villa Rose to the depot. She has been kept AU SECRET ever since."
Ricardo stared in amazement.
"Already you knew of her guilt?"
"Already she had lied to me in her description of Adele Rossignol. Do you remember what she said—a black-haired woman with beady eyes; and I only five minutes before had picked up from the table—this."
He opened his pocket-book, and took from an envelope a long strand of red hair.
"But it was not only because she lied that I had her taken to the depot. A pot of cold cream had disappeared from the room of Mlle. Celie."
"Then Perrichet after all was right."
"Perrichet after all was quite wrong—not to hold his tongue. For in that pot of cold cream, as I was sure, were hidden those valuable diamond earrings which Mlle. Celie habitually wore."
The two men had reached the square in front 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."