"You remember with whom you danced? If it was necessary, could you give me a list of your partners?"
She rose and, crossing to the writing table, sat down in front of it. She drew a sheet of paper towards her and took up a pencil. Pausing now and again to jog her memory with the blunt end of the pencil at her lips, she wrote down a list of names.
"These are all, I think," she said, handing the list to Hanaud. He put it in his pocket.
"Thank you!" He was all contentment now. Although his questions followed without hesitation, one upon the other, it seemed to Jim that he was receiving just the answers which he expected. He had the air of a man engaged upon an inevitable formality and anxious to get it completely accomplished, rather than of one pressing keenly a strict investigation.
"Now, Mademoiselle, at what hour did you arrive home?"
"At twenty minutes past one."
"You are sure of that exact time? You looked at your watch? Or at the clock in the hall? Or what? How are you sure that you reached the Maison Crenelle exactly at twenty minutes past one?"
Hanaud hitched his chair a little more forward, but he had not to wait a second for the answer.
"There is no clock in the hall and I had no watch with me," Betty replied. "I don't like those wrist-watches which some girls wear. I hate things round my wrists," and she shook her arm impatiently, as though she imagined the constriction of a bracelet. "And I did not put my watch in my hand-bag because I am so liable to leave that behind. So I had nothing to tell me the time when I reached home. I was not sure that I had not kept Georges—the chauffeur—out a little later than he cared for. So I made him my excuse, explaining that I didn't really know how late I was."
"I see. It was Georges who told you the time at the actual moment of your arrival?"