“Yes,” she murmured.
Vance gave her a soothing smile.
“Colonel Ostrander told me he saw you and Mr. Benson at the Marseilles.”
“Yes; and I was terribly ashamed. He knew what Mr. Benson was, and had warned me against him only a few days before.”
“I was under the impression the Colonel and Mr. Benson were good friends.”
“They were—up to a week ago. But the Colonel lost more money than I did in a stock pool which Mr. Benson engineered recently, and he intimated to me very strongly that Mr. Benson had deliberately misadvised us to his own benefit. He didn’t even speak to Mr. Benson that night at the Marseilles.”
“What about these rich and precious stones that accompanied your tea with Mr. Benson?”
“Bribes,” she answered; and her contemptuous smile was a more eloquent condemnation of Benson than if she had resorted to the bitterest castigation. “The gentleman sought to turn my head with them. I was offered a string of pearls to wear to dinner; but I declined them. And I was told that, if I saw things in the right light—or some such charming phrase—I could have jewels just like them for my very, very own—perhaps even those identical ones, on the twenty-first.”
“Of course—the twenty-first,” grinned Vance. “Markham, are you listening? On the twenty-first Leander’s note falls due, and if it’s not paid the jewels are forfeited.”
He addressed himself again to Miss St. Clair.