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holiday to take up a case because of your little dinner-party in

London Indeed, I should not have interrupted it had I not known

Adolphe Ruel's story As it was I could not resist Wethermill's

very audacity charainst him So few criminals have spirit, M Ricardo It is

deplorable ho But Wethermill! See in what a fine position he

would have been if only I had refused He himself had been the

first to call upon the first detective in France And his

argument! He loved Mlle Celie Therefore she must be innocent!

How he stuck to it! People would have said, 'Love is blind,' and

all the more they would have suspected Mile Celie Yes, but they

love the blind lover Therefore all the more would it have been

impossible for therim crime"

Mr Ricardo drew his chair closer in to the table

"I will confess to you," he said, "that I thought Mlle Celie was

an acco," said Hanaud "Some one within the house

was an accomplice--we start with that fact The house had not been

broken into There was Mlle Celie's record as Helene Vauquier

gave it to us, and a record obviously true There was the fact

that she had got rid of Servettaz There was the maid upstairs

very ill from the chlorofored a seance, and then when the lights were out had

adlass door?"