"Don't tell me I 'say.' I had a necklace worth more money than I dared tell that imp. She wouldn't have believed me. And my niece Esther is as fond of baubles as I am. She stole the thing. And she said she lost it. And it's my opinion—and it's the imp's opinion—she's got it somewhere now."
Alston tapped noiselessly, and regarded her from under brows judicially stern. He wished he knew recipes for frightening Madame Beattie. But, he suspected, there weren't any. She would tell the truth or she would not, as she preferred. He hadn't any delusions about Madame Beattie's cherishing truth as an abstract duty. She was after results. He made a thrust at random.
"I can't see your object in stirring up this matter. If you had any ground of evidence you'd have made your claim and had it settled long ago."
"Not fully," said Madame Beattie, fanning.
"Then you were paid something?"
"Something? How far do you think 'something' would go toward paying for the loss of a diamond necklace? Evidently you don't know the history of that necklace. If you were an older man you would. The papers were full of it for years. It nearly caused a royal separation—they were reconciled after—and I was nearly garroted once when the thieves thought I had it in a hand-bag. There are historic necklaces and this is one. Did you ever hear of Marie Antoinette's?"
"Yes," said Alston absently. He was thinking how to get at her in the house where she lived. How would some of his novelists have written out Madame Beattie and made her talk? "And Maupassant's." This he said ruminatingly, but the lawyer in him here put down a mark. "Note," said the mark, "Maupassant's necklace. She rose to that." There was no doubt of it. A quick cross-light, like a shiver, had run across her eyes. "You know Maupassant's story," he pursued.
"I know every word of Maupassant. Neat, very neat."
"You remember the wife lost the borrowed necklace, and she and her husband ruined themselves to pay for it, and then they found it wasn't diamonds at all, but paste."
"I remember," said Madame Beattie composedly. "But if it had been a necklace such as mine an imitation would have cost a pretty penny."