Mrs Moffatt was standing before the table, tearing up old papers. She looked up with a start, to see Guest and Cornelia standing before her in that eloquent, linked attitude, and over her features there passed that helpless, trapped expression of guilt discovered and brought to bay, which, once seen, can never be forgotten. The blood ebbed from her face, leaving it ashen white, except for two fixed spots of colour on either cheek; her fingers relaxed their hold, and the fragments of paper fluttered downward to the floor. There was a ghastly silence.
It was Guest who was the first to speak, standing straight and stern at the opposite side of the table, and at the sound of his opening words the wretched woman trembled violently, and sank on a chair for support.
“Mrs Schuter! I have come here with Miss Briskett to ask your explanation of a letter sent in her name to Mr Marchant, the jeweller, this morning. She has seen the letter, with the forged signature at the end, and has heard that the necklace was brought to this hotel, and delivered to you. May I trouble you to hand it over?”
Each word was sharp and cutting as an icicle, and Guest’s steel-like eyes were alight with remorseless anger. Cornelia turned her head aside, unable to endure the pitiful spectacle. Mrs Moffatt stammered out a broken subterfuge.
“What necklace? I don’t know—I don’t—understand!”
Even as she spoke, one trembling hand twitched upward, to be as quickly lowered, but not before Guest had pounced upon the clue with swift intuition.
“You understand very well! As a matter of fact, you are wearing it at this moment beneath your dress. Will you kindly take it off, and put it on the table?”
He turned aside as he spoke, paying this small tribute to her womanly feelings. A strangled sob broke the silence; the sound of laboured breathing, then a faint, clicking sound, and he looked round to see a dazzle of light on a corner of the table, where the sunbeams had found a plaything. A bauble of green and white stones, for which a woman had sold her soul.
Cornelia was leaning against the mantelpiece, her face hidden in her hands. Guest realised that it was her sob which he had heard, and the knowledge did not soften his heart.
“Thank you!” he said in the same tone of cutting politeness. “That is so much to the good, but I shall have to trouble you still further. There was two hundred pounds lent to you yesterday, ostensibly to be paid to a furrier, that, of course, was a mere excuse!—and thirty pounds in bank-notes this morning. I fear the first sum is gone beyond recall, since your husband’s cheque is probably not worth the paper on which it is written, but I take it that the notes are still intact. As you prefer someone else to pay your bills, you will have kept them for personal use. They are probably in your pocket at this moment!”