Again he ignored her reply:
“Is he one of the Embassy?” he demanded. “Is he some emissary of Grey’s? Does he come from their intelligence department? Or is he only a police jackal? Or some lesser rat?”
She shrugged; her night-robe slipped and she drew it over her shoulder with a quick movement. And the man saw the deep blush spreading over face and throat.
“By God!” he said, “you are an actress! I admit it. But now you are going to learn something about real life. You think you’ve got me, don’t you?—you and your Englishman? Because I have been fool enough to trust you—hide nothing from you—act frankly and openly in your presence. You thought you’d get a hold on me, so that if I ever caught you at your treacherous game you could defy me and extort from me the last penny! You thought all that out—very thriftily and cleverly—you and your Englishman between you—didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you? Then why did you ask me the other day whether it was not German money which was paying for the newspaper which I bought?”
“The Mot d’Ordre?”
“Certainly.”
“I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germany’s pay. And Ferez Bey financed the affair. You said so. Besides, you and he discussed it before me in my own salon.”
“And you suspected that I bought the Mot d’Ordre with German money for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily paper?”