“But did not show you the original. It is a lie—the whole thing. Do try to understand it all by the light of what I tell you. Why, here on the very face of it is a proof of its falsehood. Your mother’s name is mentioned.”
“Do you think I have not seen it?” she cried, intensely moved.
“Yes, but I have come straight from her to you. If she had been listed for arrest, should I have found her at home?”
“She is left at liberty because they expect me to return to her, when we should both be arrested. That is why I have not gone home.”
“But surely you can see that that is inconsistent with the other thing they told you—that you would be taken the moment you left this house? They have put your mother’s name on this concocted list in order to frighten you, and vamped this utterly false explanation. If the police are watching your home, you can safely leave here; if, on the other hand, they know how to find you without your going home, why is not your mother already arrested?”
This made some impression. “I do not know what to think,” she murmured.
“There is another thing. If you are to run into danger the instant you leave here, it means that the police know where you are. Do you suppose that, in such a case, they would not have raided this house?”
“Inez is not on the list.”
“Another proof that the whole thing is a fabrication. If the police had such intimate knowledge of the plot that they knew of your slight connexion with it, would they not know of the leaders?”
She considered a moment. “But you yourself knew that the visconte and all of us were suspected. You told him.”