"Recollect. Was one of your servants present?" "Probably . . . as I was dressing. . . ." "What are their names?" "Suzanne and Gertrude." "One of them has red hair, has she not?" "Yes, Gertrude." "Have you known her long?" "Her sister has always been with me . . . and so has Gertrude, for years. . . . She is devotion and honesty personified. . . ." "In short, you will answer for her?" "Oh, absolutely!" "Very well . . . very well." It was half-past seven and the daylight was beginning to wane when the taxi-cab reached the House of Retreat. Without troubling about his companion, the chief detective rushed into the porter's lodge: "Mrs. Kesselbach's maid has just come in, has she not?" "Whom do you mean, the maid?" "Why, Gertrude, one of the two sisters." "But Gertrude can't have been out, sir. We haven't seen her go out." "Still some one has just come in." "No, sir, we haven't opened the door to anybody since--let me see--six o'clock this evening." "Is there no other way out than this gate?" "No. The walls surround the estate on every side and they are very high. . . ." "Mrs. Kesselbach, we will go to your house, please." They all three went. Mrs. Kesselbach, who had no key, rang. The door was answered by Suzanne, the other sister. "Is Gertrude in?" asked Mrs. Kesselbach. "Yes, ma'am, in her room." "Send her down, please," said the chief detective. After a moment, Gertrude came downstairs, looking very attractive and engaging in her white embroidered apron. She had, in point of fact, a rather pretty face, crowned with red hair. M. Lenormand looked at her for a long time without speaking, as though he were trying to read what lay behind those innocent eyes. He asked her no questions. After a minute, he simply said: "That will do, thank you. Come, Gourel." He went out with the sergeant and, at once, as they followed the darkling paths of the garden, said: "That's the one!" "Do you think so, chief? She looked so placid!" "Much too placid. Another would have been astonished, would have wanted to know why I sent for her. Not this one! Nothing but the concentrated effort of a face that is determined to smile at all costs. Only, I saw a drop of perspiration trickle from her temple along her ear." "So that . . . ? "So that everything becomes plain. Gertrude is in league with the two ruffians who are conspiring round the Kesselbach case, in order either to discover and carry out the famous scheme, or to capture the widow's millions. No doubt, the other sister is in the plot as well. At four o'clock, Gertrude, learning that I know of the advertisement in the _Journal_, takes advantage of her mistress's absence, hastens to Paris, finds Ribeira and the man in the soft hat and drags them off to the Palais, where Ribeira annexes Master Steinweg for his own purposes." He reflected and concluded: