"Peter Blakeney sneaked in through that open window. My back was turned that way and I heard nothing, as I was intent on reading your manuscript. He attacked me from behind. I was taken unawares, but I tried to put up a fight. However, he is younger and more athletic than I am, and he knocked me down. He had already snatched your manuscript out of my hand, and he disappeared with it the way he came, through the open window, at the very moment that you entered the room."
Rosemary had listened to this without moving a muscle. She stood in the middle of the room as if she had been turned to stone, alive only by her eyes, which were fixed with such an intensity of questioning on Jasper that instinctively he turned away, as if dreading to meet her glance.
"That is all, my dear," he said, with a sudden assumption of meekness. "I was certainly to blame for allowing that precious manuscript to be taken from me. I should, I know, have guarded it with my life, and so on, and I have probably sunk very low in your estimation as a coward. But I was taken entirely unawares, and one is not usually prepared for daylight robbery in a house filled with servants. So that must be my excuse——" He paused a moment, then added dryly: "That and the fact that I warned you more than once that Peter Blakeney was working against you. Now perhaps you are convinced."
At last Rosemary recovered the use of her tongue, but her voice sounded strange to herself, toneless and distant, as if it came from beneath the earth. "You are quite sure, I suppose," she said slowly, "that it was Peter Blakeney who—who did what you say?"
"Aren't you?" he retorted with a harsh laugh. She made no reply to the taunt. Outwardly she did not even wince.
"You are quite sure that he got away with the manuscript?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I am quite sure," he replied.
"What do you suppose he means to do with it?"
"Sell it to Naniescu, of course."
"In exchange for Philip and Anna's freedom?"