"But there is some one whom you suspect of this murder?"
Carlita did not reply at once. Her dark eyes blazed, her lips were scorched and parted, and through them her hot breath came in little gasps; yet when she could control herself sufficiently to speak, she cried out passionately:
"Have I the right to speak suspicion?"
The detective leaned forward, almost touching the small table between them, holding her spell-bound by the strange gleam of his piercing eyes, which seemed to be searching her very soul.
"Shall I tell you whom it is that you accuse in your own heart, Miss de Barryos?" he asked, in a tense half-whisper. "It is Leith Pierrepont! But why? That is the question which I am most anxious to have answered."
A crimson flush overspread her face from throat to brow. She shrank backward in her seat, but the detective leaned even further forward, touching the table now with his long, slender fingers.
"Miss de Barryos," he continued, after a brief pause, "if I am to do anything for you, you must not begin by blindfolding me and then telling me to see. A detective occupies much the same position toward his client that a lawyer or doctor does. He must be trusted all in all, or not at all. I am not here through curiosity, but at your desire."
"You are right, and I all wrong," she cried out; "but the subject is so hateful a one that I must needs shrink from it. There is a reason why I suspect—the man whom you have mentioned. He has dared to speak to me of love, knowing that I was the betrothed wife of the friend who trusted him as a brother. He swore in my presence that, let what would happen, I should be his wife. He is a man whom I have never trusted—whom I despise; and I believe he has done this cowardly thing in order to carry out the vile oath that he swore."