“Quite right. But why do you say it was a woman?” asked Guy Rossett quickly.
“If I had not already been sure it was a woman, my friend, I should be quite sure of it by your sudden question. You English people are not quite so subtle as we who have southern blood in our veins.”
Rossett bit his lip. He felt he had given himself away to this quick-witted foreigner, nine-tenths Spanish and one-tenth English.
There was a long pause. Moreno shifted his point of attack.
“Do you know that Mrs Hargrave is over in Spain, in Fonterrabia?”
“What!” almost shouted Guy in his astonishment.
Moreno looked at him steadily. “Ah, you have not heard that from headquarters. Well, you see, they don’t know the little side-currents as well as I do. They do not know, for instance, that she is a sworn and apparently zealous member of the brotherhood.”
“Violet Hargrave, of all people!” cried Rossett. He was in a state of bewilderment.
“You know, I daresay, that Mrs Hargrave is no friend of yours now, whatever she may have been once,” said Moreno, speaking in his quiet, level tones.
“Yes, I think I can understand that.”