"To begin with, where\'s the Duchess?"

"At a rehearsal, Monsieur, of an entertainment Madame van Esten has got up. Mademoiselle Pavoya will——"

"We don\'t want to hear about her. The Duchess isn\'t at the rehearsal."

"Then I do not know where she is. It is her affair, not mine." Simone looked the picture of injured innocence.

"Perhaps you don\'t know," agreed Sanders. "But you see, you\'ve made so many of her affairs your affairs, it\'s hard to tell where you draw the line."

The French maid turned pale in rather a repulsive way she had, beginning at the lips, which she bit to keep their colour. From her looks she might have been furious—or frightened.

"I do not understand you, Monsieur," she almost spat.

"That doesn\'t matter much. What does matter is, we understand you."

Under her black-dotted veil Simone\'s olive sallowness greened. "Monsieur accuses me of—something?" Sanders grinned with the utmost cruelty. "Well, what do you think?"

"I think a person has perhaps told lies about me, Monsieur!"

"Ah!" the detective leapt in his chair as if he had caught her—as if she had given him a chance for which he\'d waited. "Ah! What\'s the name of that person?"

The Frenchwoman began to feel sick. Her fears, though acute, had been vague. Suddenly they became definite. She floundered. So much depended on saying the right thing that she was terribly afraid of saying the wrong one. She glanced at Captain Manners again, but he had taken up a paper. To her horror it was the Inner Circle, which Sanders had bought and brought in to discuss. Her knees turned to water. She could not help giving a faint gasp. Her eyes were fixed on the "Whisperer\'s" page, which was held up—as if purposely. Both men saw the stare: and into the minds of both sprang the same thought.

Jack had had it before. He had even hinted it to Juliet, who laughed it to scorn, and remarked that she knew Simone better than he could possibly know her. Sanders had had the thought, and mentioned it to Manners. But there was no proof; and the Frenchwoman\'s "shadower" had never seen her go to the office of the Inner Circle. As for letters—Sanders had put Togo onto watching for them. Simone had sent out none at all from the house. Yet now that one bleak glare at the open paper, and both men were as sure as if the woman had confessed.

"You think your editor has been talking, eh?" the detective said. "That\'s as may be. Anyhow, we know."

The telephone bell rang. Jack took up the receiver. "Yes, Mr. Sanders is here," he replied to some question. "He\'ll speak with you in a second. Hold the line."

Sanders bounded to the \'phone. "Yes—yes—good!" were the only words he said. But Jack knew he was speaking to his man at the café. Then he turned again to Simone. "Come here and call your friend Defasquelle," he sharply ordered. "Tell him he must turn up at his house at once or there\'ll be a disaster for you both."

Simone grasped the back of a chair, and clung to it. "I cannot, Monsieur," she gulped. "I know Monsieur Defasquelle only by seeing him here. I——"

"Don\'t waste words," Sanders cut her short. "It\'ll be the worse for you if you do. You\'ve just been with him now, at Rudin\'s. Call him up at his hotel."

"If—if I will not?" she stammered.

"Do you want to go to prison while he\'s left free—to marry his girl in Marseilles?"

That was a chance shot, but it found its billet.

"He has no girl in Marseilles!" Simone shrilled.

"Oh, yes, he has. I have his dossier from the Paris police. If you get him here and make him tell the truth, I promise you that marriage won\'t take place."

"I will call him," said Simone, sickly pale. She flitted across the room to the telephone.

Sanders rubbed his hands, and nodded to Jack. But Jack was glancing at his wrist-watch.

"What am I to do?" he asked the detective in a low voice. "The time\'s almost here for me to keep my appointment with Mademoiselle Pavoya."

"Go to it!" said Sanders. "I\'m equal to Simone and Defasquelle. Now I\'ve got proof enough to bluff on—my waiter man \'phoned that the pair were talking about the pearls and apparently blackguarding each other! I\'ll strip them of their secrets like a tree of ripe fruit. But look here, I have a \'hunch\' that there\'s more in this Inner Circle business than meets the eye. Simone\'s been a catspaw. There may be wheels within wheels. When you go to meet Mademoiselle Pavoya take my tip and accept Old Nick\'s offer."

"What, have him with me?"

"Yes, wherever Pavoya sends you."

"She may not send me anywhere."

"I think she will send you somewhere. Meanwhile, I\'ll pump Simone and Defasquelle dry. When you get back I may have the pearls in pink cotton!"

Manners was torn. He wished to hear what Simone said over the telephone. He wished to stay and witness the scene through between her, Defasquelle, and Sanders. But most of all he wished not to be late for Lyda. Nothing was worth that!


Jack arrived at the theatre just after Lyda had finished rehearsing a dance which she herself had arranged for the charity fête with Mrs. Van Esten\'s spoiled little girl.

Mademoiselle Pavoya was in her dressing room, he was told, and was expecting him. He went there quickly, afraid of being caught by someone he knew on the way, and forced to stop and talk nonsense, for the place was like a rabbit-warren—alive with pretty women and men who thought they were Society incarnate.

Lyda wore the swan costume she had worn the first night of their meeting—or one much like it; and the thought of that wonderful night thrilled him. How had he lived before that time? Yet he had gone out of her presence to doubt her truth, her honour! Never could he forgive himself for that, never could he worship her quite enough to make up for those hours of disloyalty.

She held out her hands to him, and he crushed first one then the other against his lips. "My Swan Goddess!" he exclaimed. "You\'re too marvellous like this. I can hardly believe you\'re flesh and blood—that I\'m not dreaming you. I love you so much!"

She drew her hands away, and pushed him back when he would have taken her in his arms, wings and all.

"Perhaps you are dreaming me!" she smiled, "Dreaming the woman you think I am. And—you\'re not to do that! My hands only!"

"Yet you said you cared! You said you\'d never felt for any man as you felt when our eyes first met."

"Ah, I said that when you\'d confessed doubting me, and begged forgiveness, and vowed that nothing on earth or in heaven—or the other place—could ever make you doubt again. I owed you some confession in return."

"Then it was true?"

"Yes, it was true——"

"And is still?"

"But—of course! I do not change. Yet we are to be friends and nothing more until all is made clear—until even your cousin believes in me and doesn\'t think you\'d be better dead than loving Lyda Pavoya. If that day could ever come!"

"It will come—soon. Oh, Lyda, remember that first night—at your house. You let me hold you in my arms then."

"But that was as a friend. You understood, I know! I was so stirred, so hard pressed, I wanted protection fro............