Jim was still staring at the necklace in utter disappointment when Moreau knocked upon the other side of the communicating door. Hanaud looked again at his watch.
"Yes, it is eleven o'clock. We must go. The car has started from the house of Madame Le Vay."
He rose from his chair, buried the necklace again within the layers of cotton-wool, and locked it up once more in the drawer. The room had faded away from Jim Frobisher's eyes. He was looking at a big, brilliantly illuminated house, and a girl who slipped from a window and, wrapping a dark cloak about her glistening dress, ran down the dark avenue in her dancing slippers to where a car waited hidden under trees.
"The car may not have started," Jim said with sudden hopefulness. "There may have been an accident to it. The chauffeur may be late. Oh, a hundred things may have happened!"
"With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously rehearsed? No, my friend."
Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against the wall and placed it in his pocket.
"You are going to leave that necklace just like that in a table drawer?" Jim asked. "We ought to take it first to the Prefecture."
"This room is not unwatched," replied Hanaud. "It will be safe."
Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.
"We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch road," he argued. "It is past eleven, as you say—well past eleven. And thirty-five minutes on a motor-cycle in the daytime means fifty minutes in a car at night, especially with a bad road to travel."