“What more, sir? My patience, I warn you, is well-nigh exhausted. Beware, sir—beware! My temper is not of the most angelic mold, and I am very weary of this folly.”
“Madam Guiscardini, I ask you plainly, is not that stolen book in yonder cabinet?” demanded the young lawyer.
It was his last throw, and he watched the result with a keen and eager gaze.
The signora made one step, with an affrighted look, as if to take flight. Then she paused, and drew two or three deep, sobbing breaths, like some wild animal pressed very close by the hunters.
“You look like a gentleman,” she cried, after making some ineffectual efforts to speak; “and you behave like a footpad. I know nothing of the book you rave about. I have never heard of the man whose name you have brought forward—this person in the employ of Captain Desfrayne—I—I——”
“You have not answered my question. Can you distinctly say the book is not in that cabinet? You dare not say so.”
“If a denial will satisfy you, I can safely say no book of any kind is within that cabinet,” said madam. “Our interview is at an end, and I decline to receive you again on any pretense whatever.”
“You dare not open that cabinet, and let me see for myself if what you say is true,” said Frank Amberley.
“You do not believe me, then?”
“Candidly, I do not. I say the book is there.”