"Yes."
"Suppose you begin at the beginning—and tell me just what you know."
It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.
"So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spy upon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?"
It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl had a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting. His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs—to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on her camp.
It was unconvincing.
"So," said Carl keenly, "Baron Tregar does not trust you!"
Themar's lip curled.
"The Baron knew of your ten days in my cousin's house?"
Again the marked hesitancy—the flush.