“Old Bob is alive and Pere Bernier is dead. Be seated, Monsieur.”
Arthur Rance stared at the speaker in amazement; then looked in consternation at the drawing board, the dish of paint and the bloody skull and demanded:
“Who killed him?”
Then, condescending to notice that his wife was there, he pressed her hand, but his eyes were fixed upon the Lady in Black.
“Before his death, Bernier accused Frederic Larsan,” answered M. Darzac.
“Do you mean to say by that that he accused Old Bob?” interrupted M. Rance indignantly. “I will not suffer that. I, too, had some doubts in regard to the personality of our beloved uncle, but I tell you that I have the ruby-headed pin!”
What was he talking about with his “little ruby-headed pin”? I remembered that Mme. Edith had told us that Old Bob had snatched one from her hand when she had playfully pricked him with it on the night of the drama of the Square Tower. But what relation could there be between this pin and the adventure of Old Bob? Arthur Rance did not wait for us to ask him, but hurried on to tell us that this little pin had disappeared at the same time as Old Bob and that he had found it in the possession of “the Hangman of the Sea,” fastening a sheaf of bank notes which the old uncle had paid him on that fated night for his complicity and his silence in having brought him in the fisher boat to the grotto of Romeo and Juliet. And M. Rance told us moreover that Tullio had withdrawn from the spot at dawn, greatly disquieted at the non-appearance of his passenger. Rance concluded, triumphantly:
“A man who gives a ruby pin to another man in a boat cannot be at the same moment tied up in a potato sack in the Square Tower.”
Upon which Mrs. Rance inquired:
“What gave you the idea of going to San Remo? Did you know that Tullio was to be found there?”