"You mean the 'Whisperer!' H'm! Before you cook your hare, you've got to catch him. A whole lot of men have tried to catch that one. But the Inner Circle still circulates."
Natalie brooded for a moment. When she was a girl, in a set that was conspicuous though not first rate, the "Whisperer" had whispered several nasty things about her. He, She, or It had said that she had come from "Peoria or somewhere" to New York to buy a husband, and had kindly warned her that persons not rich enough to pick and choose their goods had better snap up what they could get the first day of the sale, at the cheap bargain-counter. Since she had taken that advice and snapped up Billy Lowndes, the "Whisperer" had for some reason been silent; but Natalie had never forgiven or forgotten the attack on her attractions, and she had always burned to have some other victim arraigned for justifiable homicide.
"I bet Claremanagh will break the vicious Circle!" she said.
"And I bet he won't. Why should he bring off a stunt none of us ever brought? They say there's nothing to break. Some husband or father goes murder-mad, bursts into the Circle office, and finds no one on the premises but a little old lady. Can he bash that? Besides, why make a cap fit you by wearing it? Lord knows what that d—d 'Whisperer's' working up to when he hints at the Claremanagh pearls being false. But if they are, the Duke must have sold them himself, and had a copy made—two copies, perhaps. By George, I shouldn't wonder if that's just what he did do!—sell—I mean, Juliet told my sister Emmy that Claremanagh refused the million or so she wanted to settle on him, and intended to join the working classes over here. He doesn't get a salary to be proud of, at the Phayre bank, I know for a fact. But I've seen him playing poker at the Grumblers and—er—another game elsewhere. Last night he waltzed into the Grumblers after the opera, and I happened to see him pass a roll of yellow-backs as big as my fist into a man's hand. The other chap dropped the lot, by accident, and the noble Duke stood still with his nose in the air while they were collected. I saw a one thousand-dollar bill with my own eyes, and I have a hunch there were a heap more of the same sort."
"Who was the man?" Natalie asked, curiously.
"I've forgotten his name," Billy evaded her. "There are a lot of new men in the club lately I know only by sight."
"Tell that to the marines!" she scoffed. "You've got some reason for keeping his name dark. Did any one else see Claremanagh pay him the money? Because, if they did, I'll be sure to find out."
"I think everyone was pretty busy just then. I wouldn't have seen, if I hadn't been cutting out of a game at the moment. It's nothing to me who the man was. You're always so damned suspicious of anything I say."
Natalie shrugged her shoulders, a favourite gesture. "But not of what you do, I don't care enough," she retaliated, and picked up the Inner Circle again to re-read "the Whisperer stuff", while she richly pictured Juliet's feelings.
She didn't know the Duchess very well, but she thought that there would be "ructions."