“I have no intention,” I resumed, “of matching wits with you either! I expect immediate frankness on your part; for you will find it to your interest, I assure you, not to prevaricate by a syllable. Shall we then come to the point without evasion? I ask you, monsieur: are you by any chance acquainted with a young lady, Madame Madeleine de X....”
I gave her name in full, of course.
The Marquis Gaspard, still smiling and more blandly if anything, nodded and waved his hand in emphasis of assent.
“Very well,” said I. “I will go on. Monsieur, is it, or is it not, a fact, that this lady is a prisoner, at this moment, in this house?”
The hoary head was now slowly raised, while the same wide opened hand sketched a gesture of perplexity. The smile puckered into something expressive of incertitude.
“A prisoner?” said he. “That is hardly the word, Monsieur. It is a fact that the lady in question is, and at this moment as you say, honoring us with her distinguished presence in this house. But if, as I can now hardly doubt, you chanced to meet her on your way, you must have been able to see for yourself, Monsieur, that she was coming alone and of her own accord, without constraint from anyone, to visit us under this roof where you wrongfully choose to call her a prisoner—as she is not, Monsieur, my word of honor!”
Whereupon, he settled back into his chair, and his ghoulish, ironical, joyous face stood out more clearly against the bright brocade of the cushions.
He had outmanoeuvred me in the exchange, and for a second or two I was disconcerted. Then, however, I regained the offensive.
“As you will have it, Sir,” I said. “I was wrong, in my choice of words: I confess my error. Madame de X.... is a free woman here; and, accordingly, there is no reason in the world why I should not be admitted to her presence at once, to offer her my respectful homage. May I see her? I am one of her friends, the most intimate of her friends, I might say.”
The smiling, clean-shaven mouth relaxed into a broad laugh accentuated with little explosions of mirth in that queer falsetto: