Valentin turned pale. "I tell you I have no such cigarettes!" he cried.
"Are they not the sort, then, that you usually smoke?"
"I do not smoke at all, Monsieur."
Duvall laughed. "So you both tell the same story, it seems. My friend, I dislike to discuss these matters before a stranger." He glanced significantly at Grace.
She dared not go. To speak—even to bid Valentin good evening, would, she felt sure, betray her. So she remained silent.
"Then take yourself off. I certainly have no desire to discuss them. I tell you, I do not smoke—I have no cigarettes—that is enough!"
"What does that note mean, then?" asked Duvall sternly.
"That is Miss Lanahan's affair—and mine."
Duvall drew out his pocketbook, and extracted from it the bit of cigarette stump, with the gold tip, which he had found that morning in the Bois de Boulogne. "Monsieur Valentin," he said, "I found this end of a cigarette at the exact place in the grass, in the Bois de Boulogne, where Mr. Stapleton's child and nurse were, when the boy was stolen. The chauffeur was asleep. You could readily have walked up, taken away the child, and no one would have been the wiser. The story of Mary Lanahan, that no one came near her, that the boy disappeared into thin air, is absurd. The presence of the half-smoked cigarette, of a kind which I have reason to believe you use, convinces me that you were there in the Bois, with the nurse, at the time of the kidnapping—if indeed you did not take an active part in it. The message from Mary Lanahan, which I have just handed you, directing you to destroy the cigarettes,—which, no doubt, she feared, after my questioning, might be used as evidence against you,—serves as strong additional proof. I believe that you know where Mr. Stapleton's child is."
The statements which her husband made convinced Grace that she had made a mistake in confiding in Valentin. She herself had seen the gold-tipped cigarettes on his table—had seen them stolen. It was not very conclusive evidence, she realized; but, taken with the nurse's letter, it was significant.