“Will madame look in the glass for an answer? You were—well, a lady, your people loyal, and I was frantic for a day. I hesitated until I saw you driving toward the Bois de Boulogne in a storm. What followed you know.”
“Yes.”
“You concealed the papers, and the police for a while thought you had burned them. You were clever.”
“Not very,” said Mrs. Merton. “I tried to burn all the big double envelops, but the men hurried me.”
“I see,” returned the count. “Your ruse, if it was that, deceived them, delayed things, and then the papers somehow were removed. And here my curiosity reaches a climax. It puzzled me for years, and, as I know, has puzzled the police.”
“But why?” asked I.
“The pistol-shots were, of course, believed to have been a means of decoying away the guard. The old caretaker was found in her room and the room locked. She was greatly alarmed at the cries and the shots, and for a while would not open the door.”
Mrs. Merton laughed. “Ah, my good old nurse.”
“But the man in charge of the house never left it, or so he said, and the doors, all of them, were locked.”