“That I sha’n’t,” said she. “What do you take me for? I promised the man that I wouldn’t. I have told you once that he isn’t a thousand miles from Piccadilly, and that’s about all you’ll get from me.”
“Good! I understand your position,” said David. “But before you refuse out and out, hear what I have to say. This man Strauss is a man who induced Gwendoline Barnes, whom you know, to leave her home, married her while his first wife was alive, and so caused her to make away with herself. And now this same man, under the name of Van Hupfeldt, is about to marry her sister, without telling her that he even knew the girl whom he has murdered. I don’t know what the sister’s motive for marrying him is—quite possibly there’s some trick about it—but I know that the motive is not love. Now, just think a moment, and tell me if this is fair to your woman’s mind.”
“Oh, that’s how it is!” exclaimed Ermyn L’Estrange.
“All the facts which I have mentioned I know for certain,” said David.
“Then, that explains—”
“Explains what?”
“I’ll tell you; but this is between us, mind. Some time ago Strauss comes to me, and he says: ‘I have given your address to a young lady—a Miss Violet Mordaunt—who is about to write you a letter asking whether you did or did not find any certificates in a picture in the Eddystone Mansions flat; and I want you in answer to deny to her for my sake that any certificates were ever found.’”
“And you did?” cried David with deep reproach.
“Now, no preaching, or I never tell you anything again,” shrilled Miss L’Estrange. “Here’s gratitude in man! Of course I did! He said it was only an innocent fib which could do no harm to anybody, and if you saw the bracelet I got for it, my boy—”