Then, seeing herself beaten at every point, Pussy Wilmott gave way entirely and wept angrily, bitterly, her face buried in the sofa pillows.

“I’m sorry,” repeated M. Paul, and for the first time in the interview he felt himself at a disadvantage.

“Why didn’t I burn them, why didn’t I burn them?” she mourned.

“You trusted to that drawer,” he suggested.

“No, no, I knew the danger, but I couldn’t give them up.  They stood for the best part of my life, the tenderest, the happiest.  I’ve been a weak, wicked woman!”

“Any secrets in these letters will be scrupulously respected,” he assured her, “unless they have a bearing on this crime.  Is there anything you wish to say before I go?”

“Are you going?” she said weakly.  And then, turning to him with tear-stained face, she asked for a moment to collect herself.  “I want to say this,” she went on, “that I didn’t tell you the truth about Kittredge and Martinez.  There was trouble between them; he speaks about it in one of his letters.  It was about the little girl at Notre-Dame!”

“You mean Martinez was attentive to her?”

“Yes.”

“Did she encourage him?”

“I don’t know.  She behaved very strangely—­she seemed attracted to him and afraid of him at the same time.  Martinez told me what an extraordinary effect he had on the girl.  He said it was due to his magnetic power.”

“And Kittredge objected to this?”

“Of course he did, and they had a quarrel.  It’s all in one of those letters.”

“Was it a serious quarrel?  Did Kittredge make any threats?”

“I—­I’m afraid he did—­yes, I know he did.  You’ll see it in the letter.”

“Do you remember what he said?”

“Why—­er—­yes.”

“What was it?”

She hesitated a moment and then, as though weary of resisting, she replied:  “He told Martinez that if he didn’t leave this girl alone he would break his damned head for him.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE THIRD PAIR OF BOOTS

The wheels of justice move swiftly in Paris, and after one quiet day, during which Judge Hauteville was drawing together the threads of the mystery, Kittredge found himself, on Tuesday morning, facing an ordeal worse than the solitude of a prison cell.  The seventh of July!  What a date for the American!  How little he realized what was before him as he bumped along in a prison van breathing the sweet air of a delicious summer morning!  He had been summoned for the double test put upon suspected assassins in France, a visit to the scene of the crime and a viewing of the victim’s body.  In Lloyd’s behalf there was present at this grim ceremony Maitre Pleindeaux, a clean-shaven, bald-headed little man, with a hard, metallic voice and a set of false teeth that clicked as he talked.  “Bet a dollar it’s ice water he’s full of,” said Kittredge to himself.