"We don't want to hear about her. The Duchess isn't at the rehearsal."
"Then I do not know where she is. It is her affair, not mine." Simone looked the picture of injured innocence.
"Perhaps you don't know," agreed Sanders. "But you see, you've made so many of her affairs your affairs, it's hard to tell where you draw the line."
The French maid turned pale in rather a repulsive way she had, beginning at the lips, which she bit to keep their colour. From her looks she might have been furious—or frightened.
"I do not understand you, Monsieur," she almost spat.
"That doesn't matter much. What does matter is, we understand you."
Under her black-dotted veil Simone's olive sallowness greened. "Monsieur accuses me of—something?" Sanders grinned with the utmost cruelty. "Well, what do you think?"
"I think a person has perhaps told lies about me, Monsieur!"
"Ah!" the detective leapt in his chair as if he had caught her—as if she had given him a chance for which he'd waited. "Ah! What's the name of that person?"
The Frenchwoman began to feel sick. Her fears, though acute, had been vague. Suddenly they became definite. She floundered. So much depended on saying the right thing that she was terribly afraid of saying the wrong one. She glanced at Captain Manners again, but he had taken up a paper. To her horror it was the Inner Circle, which Sanders had bought and brought in to discuss. Her knees turned to water. She could not help giving a faint gasp. Her eyes were fixed on the "Whisperer's" page, which was held up—as if purposely. Both men saw the stare: and into the minds of both sprang the same thought.