“The Honorable Miss Gusset, Mr. Strong, is nothing to me.”
“Nothing to you?”
“Nothing, sir—nothing. What I have done I have done; it belongs to the past. Take the hint, sir; but understand, as a gentleman, I will not betray a woman. Her affairs are her affairs; I meddle no further. And the second demand?”
“That you inform me who it was that wrote a certain anonymous letter concerning my son.”
Maltravers, suave diplomat, contrived to conjure up a laugh over the question.
“Really, Mr. Strong,” he said, “I have not the faintest notion.”
“Impossible.”
Turning suddenly, the soldier strode to a bureau, unlocked it, fumbled in a pigeon-hole, drew out a crumpled sheet of note-paper, tossed it on the table before John Strong.
“The very letter,” he said, apparently much amused; “take it, sir, and unravel the mystery for yourself. Eve might have written it, so far as I am concerned.”
“And now—”