This was worse than Jack's fears. He couldn't refuse to follow his cousin. From everyone's point of view, that would be poor policy. But he hated to go to Pat's study. He did not wish to see anything Juliet had to show him there.
"If it's a letter, I won't——" he had begun when she cut him short.
"It isn't a letter! After the scolding you gave me at the Lorne, I wouldn't glance at the wildest love-letter of Pavoya's even if she'd printed it so large I could read every word across the room."
"I didn't give you a scolding," Jack defended himself. "I only said a man wouldn't do what you did—or some such thing as that."
"Yes. That's just what you did say." Juliet was unlocking the door of Pat's study, of which she had the key.
"I never knew you not to do what you wanted to do because I or any one else scolded you!"
"How hard you are to me, Jack!" she reproached him. "This is different. And I am different. I don't want to do anything a man would think mean. I want to be fair to Pat, whatever happens. But about the pearls I can't be fair to him and Pavoya both. I'm going to show you why not."
As she spoke she went to Pat's desk, where things were wildly scattered, as in his notorious carelessness he had left them. Jack Manners' heart beat rather thickly as he remembered his last visit to this room: how Defasquelle had come in; how he, Jack, had sat on the club fender, very conscious during the scene which followed that Lyda Pavoya must be hidden behind the curtains or the screen; how he had advised Pat to do what Defasquelle asked; how Pat refused, and showed the safe in the wall which was already open.
"Here's his seal ring," Juliet was saying. "I found it lying on the desk. This is what I brought you in to see. Now take the ring in your hand, please. Look at it closely, and tell me if you notice anything odd."
As Jack took the ring, he recalled that Pat had pulled it off his finger and given it to Defasquelle, telling the Frenchman to compare it with the seals on the packet. Relieved that, for a moment, Juliet was letting Lyda's name rest in peace, he examined the ring.