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Judsons?
    “Then,” Mr. Drew went on, “I phoned all the hotels in town. But no one named Raymond Bull was registered at any of them. It’s probably an assumed name.”
    When the Drews arrived at the Nickerson lodge two hours later, they found the Fontaines seated in rocking chairs on the front porch. Regretfully, Nancy told them of the unpleasant incident at the dancing school that afternoon.
    “Oh, my darling slippers!” Helene exclaimed. Tears sprang to her eyes.
    “I’m sure we’ll get them back,” said Nancy. “But have you any idea why Mrs. Judson stole your mother’s ballet slippers?”
    “No. None.”
    “Do they have any special value besides the sentimental one?”
    Henri leaned forward. “They may have,” he answered. “The slippers appeared in a portrait that has a curious story.”
    “Please tell me,” Nancy urged.
    “Nearly two years ago,” Henri began, “while I was still painting portraits, a man by the name of Tomas Renee came to me. He ordered twelve pictures of a dancer in various ballet poses. It took me six months to complete the paintings.”
    “And the slippers?” Nancy prompted.
    “Helene posed for me, and in the last picture she wore the scarlet slippers. In the others she wore her own pink ones.”
    “Monsieur Renee’s name begins with an R,” Nancy observed. “May he be considered a possible owner of the palette knife?”
    “I suppose so,” said Henri, “except that he was an art dealer, not a painter, so far as I know. Well, the first strange thing was that Monsieur Renee put a peculiar paragraph in our contract—the whole transaction was to be kept secret and I was not to sign the paintings.”
    “That was odd,” Nancy murmured.
    “He said that there was a race among dealers to fill an order from a famous dancing school for twelve paintings. Monsieur Renee wanted no one to know that he was entering this race.”
    Henri went on to say that Renee’s wife fancied herself to be a great ballet dancer and wished to model for the portraits.
    “When this Madame Renee came to my studio, I found that she was a miserable dancer. And she could not pose in any of the positions for more than a few seconds.
    “Finally I had to tell Monsieur Renee this. He insisted that we must complete the paintings, and permitted my sister to be the model.”
    “But Madame Renee was very jealous,” Helene put in.
    “Yes,” said Henri. “She claimed that her husband’s visits to our studio were only for the purpose of seeing Helene. And just as I was finishing the last picture, the warning note came, telling Helene and me to leave the country.”
    “Do you think Renee could have had anything to do with the note?” Nancy asked.
    “I didn’t at the time,” Henri replied. “But now I think it’s possible.”
    The young detective turned to her father. “Dad, do you think you could find out more about Tomas Renee?”
    “It may take time,” the lawyer replied. “But my attorney friend, Mr. Scott, happens to be in Paris at the moment. I’ll cable and ask him to track down this new suspect.”
    “And now,” Henri said, “I have an opportunity to continue work on Nancy’s portrait!”
    Mr. Drew said he was not in a hurry to return to River Heights. While Henri prepared to work, the lawyer wrote out his cable and used the lodge telephone to send it to Mr. Scott.
    When the Drews said good night much later, both were pleased with the progress on the portrait, which Mr. Drew declared was to be his Christmas present.
    The following morning Nancy found that Hannah did not feel well. She suggested that the housekeeper let her take over for a while.
    As she did the household chores, the girl detective tried to fit the pieces of the Fontaine puzzle together. Three R’s: Raoul Judson, Raymond Bull, Tomas Renee. Were they associates? Were the names aliases? And what did the strange number in the figurine and on the stamp of the Parisian letter mean?
    She was interrupted by the telephone.