"I suppose you have seen the extra edition of the Herald?" the latter asked.
Mountjoy nodded affirmatively.
"Did it occur to you that the unnamed lady was none other than Miss Westbrook?"
The lawyer looked his astonishment, but said nothing.
"Well, it's a fact, Mr. Mountjoy; and I wish to say, first of all, that that ass—that Merkel—never did a worse bit of blundering in his life."
"It seems beyond belief," was Mountjoy's commentary, "that he would give a matter of this nature to the newspapers."
Converse grunted, and cold type cannot express the amount of scorn he managed to inject into it. "It's done—all that he could do to tie my hands."
Mountjoy noted that the inscrutable gray eyes were resting upon Miss Westbrook, as if their owner's thoughts had taken a sudden flight beyond their present environment; and he in turn looked at her, too, and considered.
The idea of associating this girl with such a crime was preposterous; yet the District Attorney had an unbounded confidence in the chief of detectives, and at the same time he was sensible of a feeling of dismay and alarm. He knew her for an intrepid, high-spirited girl, governed largely by capricious impulses, but sane, and at heart pure and generous; he felt that she was more likely to act upon the spur of the moment, and cope with consequences afterward, than regard the consequences first; but all such traits, while they might account for an ordinary offence, were alone very far from being adequate reasons for connecting her with a charge of so grave a nature.
"Let us get at it ab initio," said he quietly, seating himself. "Sit down, John."