"Ah! you discussed his will with him, then?"

She was horrified at his implication. She cried, "Oh, I begged him not to, but he insisted."

"He said there were other heirs and they might contest his will. Did he mention the heirs?"

"No, sir. I don't think so. I don't remember that he did."

"He did not by any chance refer to the other grandparents of the two children? Mr. and Mrs. Oakby, the father and mother of the father of Victor and Bettina?"

"He didn't refer to them, I'm sure. Yes, I am quite sure."

"Did he say that his money would be left in trust for his grandchildren?"

"No."

"And he gave you twenty thousand pounds just out of generosity?"

"Yes. Yes, Mr. Verrinder."

"It was a fairish amount of money for messenger fees, wasn't it? And it came to you while you were carrying those letters to Nicky?"

"No! Sir Joseph had been ill. He had had a stroke of paralysis."

"And you were afraid he might have another?"

"No!"

"You were not afraid of that?"

"Yes, of course I was, but-- What are you trying to make me say--that I went to him and demanded the money?"

"That idea occurs to you, does it?"

She writhed with disgust at the suggestion. Yet it had a clammy plausibility. Mr. Verrinder went on:

"These messages, you say, concerned a financial transaction?"

"So papa told me."

"And you believed him?"

"Naturally."

"You never doubted him?"

All the tortures of doubt that had a.s.sailed her recurred to her now and paralyzed her power to utter the ringing denial that was needed.

He went on:

"Didn't it strike you as odd that Sir Joseph should be willing to pay you twenty thousand pounds just to carry messages concerning some mythical business?"

She did not answer. She was afraid to commit herself to anything.

Every answer was a trap. Verrinder went on: "Twenty thousand pounds is a ten-per-centum commission on two hundred thousand pounds. That was rather a largish transaction to be carried on through secret letters, eh? Nicky Easton was not a millionaire, was he? Now I ask you, should you think of him as a Rothschild? Or was he, do you think, acting as agent for some one else, perhaps, and if so, for whom?"

She answered none of these. They were based on the a.s.sumption that she had put forward herself. She could find nothing to excuse her.

Verrinder was simply playing tag with her. As soon as he touched her he ran away and came at her from another direction.

"Of course, we know that you were only the adopted daughter of Sir Joseph. But where did you first meet him?"

"In Berlin."

The sound of that word startled her. That German name stood for all the evils of the time. It was the inaccessible throne of h.e.l.l.

Verrinder was startled by it, too.

"In Berlin!" he exclaimed, and nodded his head. "Now we are getting somewhere. Would you mind telling me the circ.u.mstances?"

She blushed a furious scarlet.

"I--I'd rather not."

"I must insist."

"Please send me to the Tower and have me imprisoned for life. I'd rather be there than here. Or better yet--have me shot. It would make me happier than anything you could do."

"I'm afraid that your happiness is not the main object of the moment.

Will you be so good as to tell me how you met Sir Joseph in--in Berlin."

Marie Louise drew a deep breath. The past that she had tried to smother under a new life must be confessed at such a time of all times!

"Well, you know that Sir Joseph had a daughter; the two children up-stairs are hers, and--and what's to become of them, in Heaven's name?"

"One problem at a time, if you don't mind. Sir Joseph had a daughter.

That would be Mrs. Oakby."

"Yes. Her husband died before her second baby was born, and she died soon after. And Sir Joseph and Lady Webling mourned for her bitterly, and--well, a year or so later they were traveling on the Continent--in Germany, they were, and one night they went to the Winter Garten in Berlin--the big music-hall, you know. Well, they were sitting far back, and an American team of musicians came on--the Musical Mokes, we were called."

"We?"

She bent her head in shame. "I was one of them. I played a xylophone and a saxophone and an accordion--all sorts of things. Well, Lady Webling gave a little gasp when she saw me, and she looked at Sir Joseph--so she told me afterward--and then they got up and stole 'way up front just as I left the stage--to make a quick change, you know. I came back--in tights, playing a big trombone, prancing round and making an awful noise. Lady Webling gave a little scream; n.o.body heard her because I made a loud blat on the trombone in the ear of the black-face clown, and he gave a shriek and did a funny fall, and--"

"But, pardon me--why did Lady Webling scream?"

"Because I looked like her dead daughter. It was so horrible to see her child come out of the grave in--in tights, blatting a trombone at a clown in that big variety theater."

"I can quite understand. And then--"

"Well, Sir Joseph came round to the stage door and sent in his card.

The man who brought it grinned and told everybody an old man was smitten on me; and Ben, the black-face man, said, 'I'll break his face,' but I said I wouldn't see him.