Then he turned to Annette.
“You must answer Counsel’s question.”
But Annette was beyond answering any question. And Croisette, watching her, saw something of the miracle that was being wrought.
It was the Wolf. It was there in the girl’s frantically appealing eyes. It was there in the heaving bosom, the hands that now gestured towards the man she had been seeking to destroy. What was it? How had it come?
It was not terror of the inquisition to which she was being submitted that Croisette beheld in those agonized eyes. It was some tremendous, pitiful emotion. Some emotion that was tearing the girl’s soul with torturing agony.
There was no doubt now. Annette’s hate of the Wolf was dead. It had died in a moment, slain by the mad impulse of the race to which she belonged. All that had driven her to witness against him had been swept away by some force of whose existence she had been wholly unaware. She was mutely gazing, appealing, praying forgiveness for the enormity of the thing she had done.
“Wolf! Help me! Wolf!” she wailed.
But it was the thunder of Danson’s voice that replied to her.
“I put it to you,” he cried. “It’s as I said. You went to make sure of your payment. And Sinclair laughed at you. You’d handed them over to him, your father; your playmate. He wanted no more of you. So you pulled the Wolf’s gun on him! You shot him cold! You murdered Sinclair!”
“It’s a lie! A foul, crazy lie!” the Wolf shouted frantically.