Mrs. Plant was silent. Then gazing unseeingly at the rose bed, as if living over again that tragic interview, she said in a curiously toneless voice, “He said that a pretty woman like me could always obtain money if it was necessary. He said he would introduce me to a man out of whom I—I could get it, if I played my cards properly. He said if I wasn’t ready with the two hundred and fifty pounds within three months he would tell my husband everything.”
“My God!” said Roger softly, appalled.
Mrs. Plant looked him suddenly straight in the face.
“That will show you what sort of a man Mr. Stanworth was, if you didn’t know,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t,” Roger answered. “This explains a good deal,” he added to himself. “And then, I suppose, Jefferson came in?”
“Major Jefferson?” Mrs. Plant repeated, in unmistakable astonishment.
“Yes. Wasn’t that when he came in?”
Mrs. Plant stared at him in amazement.
“But Major Jefferson never came in at all!” she exclaimed. “What ever makes you think that?”
It was Roger’s turn to be astonished.