It appeared that at five o'clock in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and Mlle. Celie prepared to leave the house on foot. It was their custom to walk down at this hour to the Villa des Fleurs, pass an hour or so there, dine in a restaurant, and return to the Rooms to spend the evening. On this occasion, however, Mme. Dauvray informed Helene that they should be back early and bring with them a friend who was interested in, but entirely sceptical of, spiritualistic manifestations. "But we shall convince her to-night, Celie," she said confidently; and the two women then went out. Shortly before eight Helene closed the shutters both of the upstair and the downstair windows and of the glass doors into the garden, and returned to the kitchen, which was at the back of the house--that is, on the side facing the road. There had been a fall of rain at seven which had lasted for the greater part of the hour, and soon after she had shut the windows the rain fell again in a heavy shower, and Helene, knowing that madame felt the chill, lighted a small fire in the salon. The shower lasted until nearly nine, when it ceased altogether and the night cleared up. It was close upon half-past nine when the bell rang from the salon. Vauquier was sure of the hour, for the charwoman called her attention to the clock. "I found Mme. Dauvray, Mlle. Celie, and another woman in the salon," continued Helene Vauquier. "Madame had let them in with her latchkey." "Ah, the other woman!" cried Besnard. "Had you seen her before?" "No, monsieur." "What was she like?" "She was sallow, with black hair and bright eyes like beads. She was short and about forty-five years old, though it is difficult to judge of these things. I noticed her hands, for she was taking her gloves off, and they seemed to me to be unusually muscular for a woman." "Ah!" cried Louis Besnard. "That is important." "Mme. Dauvray was, as she always was before a seance, in a feverish flutter. 'You will help Mlle. Celie to dress, Helene, and be very quick,' she said; and with an extraordinary longing she added, 'Perhaps we shall see her to-night.' Her, you understand, was Mme. de Montespan." And she turned to the stranger and said, "You will believe, Adele, after to-night." "Adele!" said the Commissaire wisely. "Then Adele was the strange woman's name?" "Perhaps," said Hanaud dryly. Helene Vauquier reflected. "I think Adele was the name," she said in a more doubtful tone. "It sounded like Adele." The irrepressible Mr. Ricardo was impelled to intervene. "What Monsieur Hanaud means," he explained, with the pleasant air of a man happy to illuminate the dark intelligence of a child, "is that Adele was probably a pseudonym." Hanaud turned to him with a savage grin.