She stammered several syllables.
"What's that you say? Speak more distinctly, will you? Do you want me to give it another twist?"
"No ... no," she implored. "It's there ... at the Manor ... in the river."
"In the river? What nonsense! You threw it into the river? You're laughing at me!"
He held her down with one knee on her chest, their hands clenched round one another. From her post of observation Dorothy watched them, horror-stricken, powerless against these two men, but nevertheless unable to resign herself to inaction.
"Then I'll twist it, what?" growled the ruffian. "You prefer it to speaking?"
He made a quick movement which drew a cry from Juliet Assire. And all at once she raised herself, showed her face convulsed with terror, moved her lips, and succeeded in stuttering:
"The c—c—cupboard ... the cupboard ... the flagstones."
The sentence was never finished, though the mouth continued to move, but a strange thing happened: her frightful face little by little grew calm, assumed an ineffable serenity, became happy, smiling; and of a sudden Juliet Assire burst out laughing. She no longer felt the torture of her twisted wrist and she laughed gently, not jerkily, with an expression of beatitude.
She was mad.