"And what of Waberski in all this?" Jim exclaimed.
Hanaud laughed and rose from his chair.
"Waberski? He is for nothing in all this. He brought a charge in which he didn't believe, and the charge happened to be true. That is all." He took a step or two away and returned. "But I am wrong. That is not all. Waberski is indeed for something in all this. For when he was pressed to make good his charge and must rake up some excuse for it somehow, by a piece of luck he thinks of a morning when he saw Betty Harlowe in the street of Gambetta near to the shop of Jean Cladel. And so he leads us to the truth. Yes, we owe something to that animal Boris Waberski. Did I not tell you, Monsieur, that we are all the servants of Chance?"
Hanaud went from the garden and for three days Jim Frobisher saw him no more. But the development which Monsieur Bex feared and for which Hanaud hoped took place, and on the third day Hanaud invited Jim to his office in the Prefecture.
He had Jim's memorandum in his hand.
"Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked. "See!" He pushed the memorandum in front of Jim and pointed to a paragraph.
"But in the absence of any trace of poison in the dead woman's body, it is difficult to see how the criminal can be brought to justice except by:
"(a) A confession.
"(b) The commission of another crime of a similar kind.
"Hanaud's theory—once a poisoner, always a poisoner."