"Give me your love—your forgiveness," begged Juliet. "I want nothing else."
"You'll have to take the lot!" Pat almost laughed. "But as to forgiveness—why, darling one, there's nothing to forgive!"
Leon Defasquelle's look, when he saw Sanders instead of the Frenchwoman alone, was in itself a confession. He knew he was trapped. His dark, southern face faded to the yellow green of seasickness. Speechless, anxious-eyed as a kicked dog, he would have backed to the door, but Sanders was ready for that. He stepped between him and the hope of escape. "It's all up, my friend," the detective said, in his quiet voice. Then, remembering that Defasquelle had little English, he went on in half-forgotten school French, a little slang thrown in from novels he'd read.
"Your chère amie has split on you. No good getting out the pistol from your pocket. Nothing doing in that line!" (He showed his Browning.) "We can settle this business without blood if you've got common sense."
"That woman—that devil has told her side of the story!" Defasquelle raged, with a look that longed to kill. "Now you shall have mine. She was the temptress. She has ruined me."
"Liar!" shrilled Simone. "Coward and deceiver! You have a fiancée in Marseilles. You let me think you'd marry me!"
"You threatened to betray! I had to defend myself. You made me a thief!"
"Ah, accuse me!"
"Because you are guilty!"
It was thus that Sanders heard the story, bit by bit. And patching together these torn rags of recrimination he got the pattern of the whole cloth.