The confidence of his tone convinced her. She flashed across the room to her writing-table. Swift as she was, Hanaud met her there.
"Ah, no!" he cried. "That's quite a different thing!" He seized her wrists. "Moreau!" he called, with a nod towards Francine. "And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will you release that young lady, if you please!"
Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and locked her safely away. Jim seized upon the big scissors and cut the cords about Ann's wrists and ankles, and unwound them. He was aware that Hanaud had flung the chair from the writing-table into an open space, that Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor. When he had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled. Betty had bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.
"Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning I met you," Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you didn't wear a wrist-watch, because you hated things on your wrists. My apologies! I had forgotten!"
He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand into the drawer. He drew out a small cardboard box and removed the lid.
"Five!" he said. "Yes! Five!"
He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who was standing against the wall with a face like death.
"Look!"
There were five white tablets in the box.
"We know where the sixth is. Or, rather, we know where it was. For I had it analysed to-day. Cyanide of potassium, my friend! Crunch one of them between your teeth and—fifteen minutes? Not a bit of it! A fraction of a second! That's all!"