She turned as white as the paper and her hands holding it shook so you could hear it rustle. Then she looked up and her eyes were awful—hunted, desperate. Yet she made a last frantic effort, with her face like a death mask and all the breath so gone out of her she had only a hoarse thread of voice:
"I—I—don't know what this is—oh, yes, yes, I mean I do. But it—it refers to something else—it's—it's—that friend of mine—Aggie Brown from St. Louis—she's come and Mr. Price—"
She couldn't go on; her lips couldn't get out any words. You could see the brain behind them had had such a shock it wouldn't work.
"Miss Maitland," said the Chief, solemn as an executioner, "we've got you where you can't keep this up. There's no use in these evasions and denials. Where is Bébita?"
"I don't know—I don't know anything about her. I swear to Heaven I don't."
She raised her voice with the last words and looked at them, round at those stony faces, wild like an animal cornered.
"What's the matter with you? Why do you think I'd be a party to such a thing? Why don't you believe me—why can't you believe me? And you don't—not one of you. You think I'm guilty of this infamous thing. All right, think it. Do what you like with me—arrest me, put me in jail, I don't care."
She put her hands over her face and collapsed down in her chair, like a spring that had held her up had broken. That breathing beside me had grown so loud it sounded as if it came from some one running the last lap of a race. Now it suddenly broke into a sound—more like a growl than anything else—and Mrs. Price got up, shuffling and shaking, her hands holding on to the chair in front.
"She ought to be put in jail," she gasped out. "She's bad right through—everything she's said is a lie. And she's a thief too."
There was a movement of consternation among them all—getting up, pushing back chairs, several voices speaking together: