"Yes—someone else. A man … wearing a sort of cowl——"
"Oh?" she cried and threw out her hands in entreaty. "Do not ask me of him! I dare not answer—I dare not!"
"You have answered," said Stuart, in a voice unlike his own; for a horrified amazement was creeping upon him and supplanting the contemptuous anger which the discovery of this beautiful girl engaged in pilfering his poor belongings had at first aroused.
The mystery of her operations was explained—explained by a deeper and a darker mystery. The horror of the night had been no dream but an almost incredible reality. He now saw before him an agent of the man in the cowl; he perceived that he was in some way entangled in an affair vastly more complex and sinister than a case of petty larceny.
"Has the golden scorpion anything to do with the matter?" he demanded abruptly.
And in the eyes of his beautiful captive he read the answer. She flinched again as she had done when he had taunted her with being a thief; but he pressed his advantage remorselessly.
"So you were concerned in the death of Sir Frank Narcombe!" he said.
"I was not!" she cried at him fiercely, and her widely opened eyes were magnificent. "Sir Frank Narcombe is——"
She faltered—and ceased speaking, biting her lip which had become tremulous again.
"Sir Frank Narcombe is?" prompted Stuart, feeling himself to stand upon the brink of a revelation.