"Informed the authorities, of course," the Duke replied without hesitation.
"Good! Then assuming for the sake of argument your charge against yourself to be correct, you incurred a mortal peril voluntarily, not from personal considerations affecting yourself, but for fear of involving other people—most of them dead, by the way—in disgrace. I don't see how you can make moral cowardice out of that."
"I do," said Beaumanoir, bluntly.
"But," proceeded the Senator, with bland insistence, "you might have avoided the peril to your own life and the besmirching of the family name by the simple expedient of carrying out the behests of Ziegler and Company. You had every facility for pulling the job off without a breath of suspicion ever touching you."
The diplomatic opening, the psychological moment, for which poor, blundering Beaumanoir had been hoping, had arrived. It would be uncharitable to suggest that it was proffered to him, as a card is "forced," by an American gentleman with a taste for strawberry leaves; but be it as it may, Beaumanoir was not too dull to seize his chance.
"I might have done that—I was tempted to," he blurted out. "In fact, I believe I should have done it if—if I hadn't come over in the same ship with your—with Mrs. and Miss Sherman."
The General, sitting up stiffly with his chin on the knob of his malacca cane, turned his head sharply to hear his old friend's judgment on this amazing confession. It was pronounced with Trans-Atlantic briskness.
"Then, sir, by token of that frankness, your Grace is a straight man," the Senator said, decidedly, and with an air that invested his words with greater weight than was perhaps due to their moral perspective. "And," he added in a lighter vein, "somehow, the honor of your house seems to have got inextricably mixed with that of mine."
"That's exactly the way I hoped you'd look at it," responded the Duke, earnestly. "I think you take my meaning. May I speak to Leonie?"
"It's what I should do in your place," was the Senator's reply—a reply which had the effect of relaxing General Sadgrove's ramrod-like attitude, and of causing that grim man-hunter to subside into his corner, with a not unkindly chuckle.