“It seems like it. Have you any idea of who the traitor was?”
Moreno rose and walked over to the little shabby sofa, typical furniture of the mean lodgings, where she sat. He flung at her the direct challenge.
“It is not a question of having an idea. I know.” She laughed hysterically; she hardly knew what she was saying. “You think you know, perhaps. Probably you have been led to suspect the wrong person.”
“Not when I have seen the actual memoranda, not when I have a photograph of that memoranda in my possession, to show, if necessary, to Contraras.”
For a moment she seemed paralysed. All the colour left her cheeks. She could only clasp her hands together and moan piteously.
Moreno spoke quite gently. “Violet Hargrave, you haven’t an ounce of fight left in you. Give in and own you sold those secrets to Guy Rossett. I expect he paid a handsome sum for them—and probably because you sold them, you lost your lover.”
She burst into a fit of wild sobbing, and threw herself at his feet. She had not the heroic spirit of Valerie Delmonte. She was only a very commonplace adventuress, with a well-defined streak of cowardice in her. Like Madame Du Barri, she would have gone shrieking to her death.
“Are you going to denounce me?” she cried wildly.
Moreno was a kind-hearted man. To an extent he despised her, although he was half in love with her. But he could not but feel pitiful at the spectacle of her abject terror.
“That depends,” he said quietly. “It is quite possible we may drive a bargain.”