Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/149

Rh little harm. Your threat is less terrible than you imagine.”

“Is that so?” with an evil smile. “Hey-day! but it’s an artful one. Suppose I told that there Daintree, instead of the police? What then?”

Claire had suspected this. Yet it took her breath away when it came. “So you are a professional spy!” she gasped. “I might have known it all along, you vile woman, from your face!” To be sure she might have known it then; for the sallow face turned a deeper yellow; the black eyes came as close together as the nozzles of a double-barrelled gun, to blaze as though both triggers had been pulled at once.

“Ah, yes! We don’t all show it in our faces, do we?” hissed the woman. “And which is the worst, I wonder—them that does or them that doesn’t? Is it worse to cheat the man that’s fond of you, like you’ve done, or to tell him, as I mean to do, that he’s being cheated? You think you’ve found me out; he shall find you out! To make one lover pay for the other lover’s defence—a pretty game—and five hundred golden guineas—a pretty price! But he hasn’t paid them yet; no, and he never shall; you may take your oath to that!”

“He must,” said Claire, in a whisper. “The trial begins the day after to-morrow. He has gone too far to draw back now.”

“Not he, when I tell him all I know. He’d pay another five hundred to get your fellow hung! You know him, and you know that, too, as well as I do.”

“I don’t know it,” said Claire, with a last brave effort. “I know that I have been more than once on the verge of telling him myself. But if you tell him—now—after all these dreadful days, well”— with a sob—“it