"That isn't true," cried Grace. "You sprang at me——"
"My word is as good as yours," Miss Norman interrupted. "And my friend here will bear out what I say." She nodded to Miss Ford. "You also," she again faced Duvall, "broke into my apartment without warrant and killed my pet monkey. You will have to answer for that as well. You have accused me of sending threatening letters to this girl here. I defy you to prove it."
Duvall, who had been coming nearer the woman all the time, reached out and snatched from her hands the umbrella she held. The others in the room regarded him with astonishment. The woman herself gave a cry of anger, and starting forward tried to recover her lost property.
Duvall yielded it to her at once, but not before he had torn from the handle two small round balls covered with knitted silk that hung from it by a heavy silken cord.
Miss Norman, seeing what he had done, drew back with a cry of anger. A few incoherent words trailed from her lips. Duvall, paying no attention to her, ripped open one of the silk-meshed coverings and extracted from it a small, round black object about the size of a hickory nut.
He gazed at it for a moment, then going quickly to the table in the center of the room brought the thing down smartly upon its surface.
There was a crackling sound, and bits of some black substance flew in every direction. A moment later the detective raised in his hand a glittering bit of metal and held it up so that the others might see it.
"The death's-head seal," he said, quietly.
Miss Norman fell on her knees before Ruth Morton, her hands upraised.
"Forgive me—forgive me!" she sobbed.