“Ask Mrs. Clephane!” she suggested.
“I’ll do it,” said he—and bowed himself out.
“Do it? Of course, you’ll do it,” Madeline Spencer gritted, as the door closed behind him. “I’ve no chance, it seems, against a red-haired woman. The other one also had red hair.” She seized a vase from the table at her hand, and hurled it across the room. It crushed in fragments against the wall. “Damn Mrs. Clephane!” she said softly.
XXI—The Key-Word
Promptly at ten o’clock Marston walked into Carpenter’s office and sent in his card.
It found Carpenter pacing up and down, and frowning at a paper spread open on his desk. At the messenger’s apologetically discreet cough, he glanced around and took the extended card.
“Show him in!” he snapped, and swept the paper from the desk and into a drawer.... “Good-morning, sir!” as Marston bowed on the threshold; then, without any preliminaries: “What success?”
“I have the French code-book,” Marston replied.
“With you?”
Marston drew out the slender book. “It embraces all their codes, I believe,” he remarked.