She writhed with disgust at the suggestion. Yet it had a clammy plausibility. Mr. Verrinder went on:
“These messages, you say, concerned a financial transaction?”
“So papa told me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Naturally.”
“You never doubted him?”
All the tortures of doubt that had assailed her recurred to her now and paralyzed her power to utter the ringing denial that was needed. He went on:
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that Sir Joseph should be willing to pay you twenty thousand pounds just to carry messages concerning some mythical business?”
She did not answer. She was afraid to commit herself to anything. Every answer was a trap. Verrinder went on: “Twenty thousand pounds is a ten-per-centum commission on two hundred thousand pounds. That was rather a largish transaction to be carried on through secret letters, eh? Nicky Easton was not a millionaire, was he? Now I ask you, should you think of him as a Rothschild? Or was he, do you think, acting as agent for some one else, perhaps, and if so, for whom?”