A young Englishman at Aix-les-Bains meets a girl who is companion to a rich widow, and the next morning the widow is murdered and the girl has vanished — and everyone knows what to think. Inspector Hanaud of the Sûreté does not. Mason had been an actor and an MP and would run naval intelligence in Spain; he invented Hanaud in 1910 as a deliberate anti-Holmes — fat, jovial, and interested in people.