"I watched the door of the apartment. He came out. I followed, and where do you suppose he went? To the ticket office where he booked a compartment for two—on the twelve o'clock train to-morrow for Marseilles."
"And what of that?" she stammered.
"Merely that yer friend Jim Horton, failing of success with his brother's wife, has decided upon a honeymoon to the Riviera with a lady who is more complaisante than yerself."
"I don't believe it."
"Ye'd find it less difficult to believe if ye guessed how mad she was for him, how handsome she is and how skilled in the wily arts of her sex and trade," he said keenly. "Oh," he said, with a shrug, "it could only have been a great passion that would have dared the rescue from the house in the Rue Charron. And no man remains long ungrateful for such an act of unselfishness."
Moira leaned against the mantel-shelf, staring at him wide-eyed, but he met her look with one more steady than hers, hardy, indignant, but injured and grieved too at her attitude. Skillfully he had baited his hook with a truth that she knew. He saw the fleeting question in her eyes and answered it quickly.
"If ye want the proofs——go to the Boulevard Clichy now." He paused to give the suggestion weight, "Or if ye've no heart to-night for such a brutal encounter—to-morrow—on the train to Marseilles."
He had caught her ear. He knew it by the sudden shutting of her teeth over her words, the proud lift of her chin, the hard look that came into her eyes. And though she answered him still defiantly, her tone had no body in it and trembled with the new uncertainty.
"I don't believe you."
"I don't ask ye to. But ye will believe in the evidence of yer eyes, and I'll be providing ye with that, my dear."