"If Mademoiselle gives me the order," he said respectfully.
"At once then, Gaston," Betty replied, and she sat down in a chair.
Francine Rollard was apparently difficult to persuade. For the minutes passed, and when at last she did come into the treasure room she was scared and reluctant. She was a girl hardly over twenty, very neat and trim and pretty, and rather like some wild shy creature out of the woods. She looked round the group which awaited her with restless eyes and a sullen air of suspicion. But it was the suspicion of wild people for townsfolk.
"Rollard," said Hanaud gently, "I sent for you, for I want another woman to help me in acting a little scene."
He turned towards Ann Upcott.
"Now, Mademoiselle, will you please repeat exactly your movements here on the night when Madame Harlowe died? You came into the room—so. You stood by the electric-light switch there. You turned it on, you noticed the time, and you turned it off quickly. For this communicating door stood wide open—so!—and a strong light poured out of Madame Harlowe's bedroom through the doorway."
Hanaud was very busy, placing himself first by the side of Ann to make sure that she stood in the exact place which she had described, and then running across the room to set wide open the communicating door.
"You could just see the light gleaming on the ornaments and panels of the Sedan chair, on the other side of the fireplace on your right. So! And there, Mademoiselle, you stood in the darkness and," his words lengthened out now with tiny intervals between each one—"you heard the sound of the struggle in the bedroom and caught some words spoken in a clear whisper."
"Yes," Ann replied with a shiver. The solemn manner of authority with which he spoke obviously alarmed her. She looked at him with troubled eyes.
"Then will you stand there once more," he continued, "and once more listen as you listened on that night. I thank you!" He went away to Betty. "Now, Mademoiselle, and you, Francine Rollard, will you both please come with me."