As no one spoke, she continued:
“Not long ago, Mr. Carter appeared, during an evening, at my home in Virginia. He did not say that he was a detective, then; and I did not suspect it till after he had gone away. I remembered that Mr. Carter possessed an international reputation, and thought it not unlikely that he knew something about me, as you have known me here. I followed him to New York when he returned there—and then I followed him here.”
She paused for a moment and turned squarely toward Nick Carter. Then she spoke directly to him.
“I have followed you here, Mr. Carter, for my own protection,” she said, using her eyes with all the art she possessed, and lowering her voice until it purred like the animal for which the Paris police had named her. “The chief will tell you that I am not a criminal, and that there is nothing against me, although many ugly things have been said about me.
“Mr. Carter, I do not want to have all these matters discussed over there in your country, where I have married, and am happy, so I have come here after you to plead with you to spare me. Surely that is not a great boon to ask at your hands. I ask you now to come with me to my hotel so that I may tell you the story of my chequered life—so that I may prevail upon you to become my champion instead of my traducer. Will you go there with me?”
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SIREN AT WORK.
“Madam,” said Nick Carter, “let us understand each other. I came here to trace out the career you have pursued, not because I expected to make you the victim of my researches, but because I believed that through you I would be able to prove the identity of Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea. That is the reply to your request for me to tell you why I am in Paris. I will add this: My work here is already finished. I have found the information that I expected to find.” He looked at his watch. “In three hours from now I shall leave for London.”
They were seated opposite each other in the parlor of the suite she had taken on her arrival in the city, where he had accompanied her from the office of the chief.