“I expect you know all about the Club. My husband had started it as a means of getting money out of his patients, but it caught on, and became quite a fashionable resort. It brought him something like £1,000 a year. Of course, his name didn’t appear, but everyone knew he was to be met there regularly. He never missed a dance. The nominal proprietor of the Club was the woman who managed it for him, Madame Bonnell.”
“Yes. I knew all that. And I know Madame Bonnell.”
Mrs. Neobard’s face betrayed some apprehension.
“Know her as a friend, do you mean?” she ventured.
“I know her well enough to think she could be a very dangerous one.”
“Ah, then you do know her. I wish I had!... I went to her to buy a ticket of admission to the Club, as I wasn’t a member. I didn’t mean to tell her who I was, but she knew somehow.”
“Madame Bonnell knew a good deal.”
“Yes, I found that out, too, before I had done with her. She was all politeness; she pretended to think I was coming out of curiosity and treated it as a sort of joke. She promised of her own accord not to let Dr. Weathered know. Promised it playfully, you understand, as if it were of no consequence whether he did or not. What she really thought I can’t tell, but she must have suspected something and meant to get me in her power.
“She deceived me completely. I asked her some questions about the people who came, especially the patients. I wanted to find out which of them came against their will, but I hoped she wouldn’t see what I was driving at.”
A sheep might as well have tried to hoodwink a wolf, was Tarleton’s inward comment, but he thought he had interrupted enough.