"With all respect, dear lady, I sincerely hope that she is the victim of an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances—and no more. But her position is even far more desperate and dangerous than you could possibly imagine."
Charlotte sat down again, and quietly—very quietly—watched her interlocutor. She appeared stunned. Presently she asked with bated breath:
"What will happen? My God! do you wish to lead me to answering your unanswered question? Do you wish me to say that Paquita—oh, that wretched name!—spells disaster for those that are dearest to me?" She uttered a laugh of bitterest scorn. "If my loyalty amounted to no more than that," with a slight emphatic gesture of one clenched hand, "I would be the most despicable creature on the face of the earth. Now—"
"I am not responsible for the existing condition, Miss Fairchild; I only want to convince you of the extreme urgency of the situation. I have told you a friend was in trouble, and that you would have an opportunity to succor that friend; but it is more than a trouble; that friend is menaced by the gravest peril imaginable."
Rapidly he laid before her, one by one, his reasons for suspecting Joyce Westbrook; and as his hearer saw how deadly serious the cumulative facts were, she gradually grew outwardly composed, yielding no hint of how his words were impressing her.
Next he told of Joyce's movements the preceding night, concluding:
"And now, Miss Fairchild, the most damaging feature against her is her refusal to deny or admit anything at all. I need only an eye-witness who saw her in or about the Nettleton Building, and—" A grim tightening of his hard-featured face put a sufficiently obvious period to the thought.
"Mobley must tell me what he knows," she said presently, her voice trembling. "I do not promise to repeat it, for I am ignorant of its nature; but if I can see in this secret the way to finding light upon the deed of which it is a child, you shall know." She fairly startled the Captain by springing from her seat and grasping his arm. Some sudden joyous thought had evidently flooded her intelligence, and her manner imparted its quickening impulse to him.
"Mr. Converse—where you are wrong—your error—" she cried, in disjointed phrases. "Why did you never think of it? Joyce was not in the Nettleton Building that day. The—"
"But, my dear lady—" he sought to interrupt; but her new-born enthusiasm bore him down.