"But how?" she cried, genuinely surprised. "You are under no expense here."
"Since candor is in the air, I may as well acquaint you with the facts," said Raymond bitterly. "You blurted out your own secret, and I thought I saw a way of improving my position. I should have won too if it were not for a piece of cursed ill luck in the finding of those boxes. I employed Duquesne to ferret out your early history in Paris. If I disappear, you had better pay him well, or he may take it into his head to go to Rupert Fosdyke with the story. Of course I don't expect you to place much credence in anything I say; but mere commonsense should show you that the only safe course is to send me to Paris with sufficient means to secure Duquesne's silence. That is a fair offer. Take it or leave it, as you will. Let me point out, however, that the Madeleine Demoret affair supplies a reasonable excuse for my journey, and, if you are as generous as you can afford to be, I promise to devote myself wholly to the task of diverting any suspicions Duquesne may have formed as to the motive behind my previous instructions."
Tollemache, with a wisdom beyond his years, seemed to know when to strike and when to hold his hand. Raymond's suggestion was eminently reasonable. The evil spirit that had raised all this commotion could best allay it.
"Come, Yvonne," he said. "Let us leave Mrs. Carmac to determine this matter as she thinks fit. I offer no opinion. Mrs. Carmac has not compounded a felony,—that responsibility rests with me,—and, if she chooses to employ Raymond in a personal undertaking, I cannot interfere. He knows the penalty if she is troubled by any future act of his. I'll hunt him round the globe!"
Yvonne never knew what terms her mother made with Raymond. That they did not err on the side of parsimony may be taken for granted. Long after the tornado that swept through Pont Aven that Christmastide was forgotten by all save a few, the ex-secretary was able to buy a share in an automobile agency.
Lorry was hugely amused as the two descended the stairs. "Socrates believes there isn't any guile in my composition," he grinned. "I wonder what he'll say when he reads the screed to which that beauty has just put his left-handed signature?"
"Dad will agree with me that you carried a very difficult matter through with great skill, Lorry," said Yvonne.
"But the joke is that if Raymond stuck to his guns I was done for. Who cares tuppence whether a skunk like him goes to prison or not? Not a soul! But the whole press of Europe would stand up on its hind legs and roar if the Carmac millions were thrown into the melting pot of the law courts. Don't you see, Yvonne, I had to rush Raymond off his feet. I've broken about twenty statutes made and provided. If he had shown one quarter the nerve in that room which he displayed when the Stella was drifting on to the reef, he could have laughed at me."
"For all that, Lorry, you were very clever, and I think you're a dear," said Yvonne quietly.