“But she had been gone from the house a long time before the shooting was supposed to have taken place, and although she was taken to the prefecture of police and closely questioned, not a thing could be determined against her. Is that substantially what was told to you by the chief, Mr. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“Did he inform you also that not one centime of the money, and not one trace of the jewels, could be found after the death of my father?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That is all I care to ask you about the circumstance at the present moment; but I wish to add to it one statement of my own.”
“Well?”
“My father went to Paris on a secret mission in which there was almost no hope of success; a secret mission in which his life was at stake from the moment he departed from St. Petersburg. The display of the jewels was a necessary part of his enterprise. The possession of a great sum of money, and the lavish expenditure of that money, was another necessary part of it. The woman known as ‘The Leopard,’ was supposed at that time to be also in the service of Russia, but it has been thought—not determined, mind you, but only suspected—since then, that she was all the while in the actual service of another government. It was because she was ostensibly in the service of Russia, that she was seen so much with my father. That was another definite part of the enterprise.”
“I understand.”
“My own opinion—and it is only an opinion, not knowledge—is that she was all the time working against my father in Paris. If she did not actually murder him, she was nevertheless the direct cause of his death. Well, sir, now I come to the point toward which this conversation has tended.”