"Blackmailing letters!" cried Jim. "Letters demanding money!"
"Some of them," answered Hanaud.
"But Betty Harlowe had money. All that she needed, and more if she chose to ask for it."
"All that she needed? No," answered Hanaud with a shake of the head. "The blackmailer never has enough money. For no one is so blackmailed."
A sudden and irrational fury seized upon Frobisher. They had agreed, he and Hanaud, that there was a gang involved in all these crimes. It might be that Betty was of them, yes, even led them, but were they all to go scot-free?
"There are others," he exclaimed. "The man who rode this motor-cycle——"
"Young Espinosa," replied Hanaud. "Did you notice his accent when you stopped at the fork of the roads in the Val Terzon? He did not mount his cycle again. No!"
"And the man who carried in the—the sack?"
"Maurice Thevenet," said Hanaud. "That promising young novice. He is now at the Depot. He will never get that good word from me which was to unlock Paris for him."
"And Espinosa himself—who was to come here to-morrow——" he stopped abruptly with his eyes on Ann.