"But why not let him see Mrs. Holymead?" suggested Crewe, after a short pause. "As he only wants to ask her a few short questions, it seems to me that would be the quickest way out of the difficulty, and would save you all the trouble and worry you speak of."
"I tell you I will not," declared Gabrielle vehemently. "I will not have Madame Holymead worried and made ill with the terrible ordeal. Bah! What do you men—so clumsy—know of the delicate feelings of a lady like Madame Holymead? The least soupçon of excitement and she is disturbed, distraite, for days. After last night—after the visit of the police agent—she was quite hysterical."
"Why should she be when she had nothing to be afraid of?" rejoined Crewe.
He spoke in a tone of simple wonder, but Gabrielle shot a quick glance at him from under her veiled lashes as she replied:
"Bah! What has that to do with it? I repeat: Monsieur Crewe, you men cannot understand the feelings of a lady like Madame Holymead in a matter like this. She and her husband were, as I have said before, intime with the great judge. They visited his house, they dined with him, they met him in Society. Behold, he is brutally, horribly killed. Madame, when she hears the terrible news, is ill for days; she cannot eat, she cannot sleep; she can interest herself in nothing. She is forgetting a little when the police agents they catch a man and say he is the murderer. Then comes the trial of this man at the court with so queer a name—Old Bailee. The papers are full of the terrible story again; of the dead man; how he looked killed; how he lay in a pool of blood; how they cut him open! Madame Holymead cannot pick up a paper without seeing these things, and she falls ill again. Then the jury say the man the police agents caught is not the murderer. He goes free, and once more the talk dies away. Madame Holymead once more begins to forget, when this police agent comes to her house to remind her once more all about it. It is too cruel, monsieur, it is too cruel!"
Gabrielle's voice vibrated with indignation as she concluded, and Crewe regarded her closely. He decided that her affection for Mrs. Holymead was not simulated, and that it would be best to handle her from that point of view.
"I am sorry," he said coldly, "but I do not see how I can help you."
"Monsieur," said the Frenchwoman, clasping her hands, "I entreat you not to say so. It would be so easy for you to help—not me, but Madame."
"How?"
"You know this police agent. You also are a police agent, though so much greater. Therefore you whisper just one little word in the ear of your friend the police agent, and he will not bother Madame Holymead again. I think you could do this. And if you need money to give to the police agent, why, I have brought some." She fumbled nervously at her hand-bag.