She almost gasped, and then laughed out loudly. "The Queen's commands—the commands of Madame Grosse-Tête to me! Ha! ha! ha! I took you for an insolent fool; but you are mad, monsieur, mad!"
For answer I held out to her one of her letters to De Ganache.
"The Queen desires you to see this, madame. It is your own writing to a man you have killed, body and soul—and there are many others like this—so it would be useless to destroy it. Read it!"
She stared at me for an instant in blank amaze, and then snatched the paper from me, her face white, her hands trembling. One glance at it, and she burst out:
"This is a forgery! A base forgery!" And then I laughed, for there would now be no mercy shown towards this she-wolf.
"There is no forgery there! And there are other proofs. What think you that your Syrian go-between will say when put to the question? What of your glovemaker Camus, and the house in the Rue des Lavandières? Madame, you are alone here but for a half score of your archers and that fool Créquy. Think you that with such proofs in her hand the Queen would hesitate even to arrest you?"
"Arrest me!" she stammered.
"Yes! There are charges enough. What think you that the King—Monsieur Grosse-Tête as you call him—will say when he sees these letters, and hears of the triangle, and learns that all France, and all Europe, will know his shame, and of the infamous grant you cajoled him into giving you?"
She shivered and looked around her as I went on coldly:
"Call your guards if you will; but I swear to you that if you do within the hour you will fall so low that the very women of the Marais and the Temple would pity you!"