me and have me arrested.  By the fall of the curtain he meant to kill me or at least to keep me imprisoned for some hours.  And now it’s poison, the cowardly poison which kills by stealth, which they put in my water to-day and which they will put in my food to-morrow.  And next it will be the dagger and then the revolver and then the rope, no matter which, so long as I disappear; for that is what they want:  to get rid of me.

“I am the adversary, I am the man they’re afraid of, the man who will discover the secret one day and pocket the millions which they’re after.  I am the interloper.  I stand mounting guard over the Mornington inheritance.  It’s my turn to suffer.  Four victims are dead already.  I shall be the fifth.  So Gaston Sauverand has decided:  Gaston Sauverand or some one else who’s managing the business.”

Perenna’s eyes narrowed.

“The accomplice is here, in this house, in the midst of everything, by my side.  He is lying in wait for me.  He is following every step I take.  He is living in my shadow.  He is waiting for the time and place to strike me.  Well, I have had enough of it.  I want to know, I will know, and I shall know.  Who is he?”

The girl had moved back a little way and was leaning against the round table.  He took another step forward and, with his eyes still fixed on hers, looking in that immobile face for a quivering sign of fear or anxiety, he repeated, with greater violence: 

“Who is the accomplice?  Who in the house has sworn to take my life?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know.  Perhaps there is no plot, as you think, but just a series of chance coincidences—­”

He felt inclined to say to her, with his habit of adopting a familiar tone toward those whom he regarded as his adversaries: 

“You’re lying, dearie, you’re lying.  The accomplice is yourself, my beauty.  You alone overheard my conversation on the telephone with Mazeroux, you alone can have gone to Gaston Sauverand’s assistance, waited for him in a motor at the corner of the boulevard, and arranged with him to bring the top half of the walking-stick here.  You’re the beauty that wants to kill me, for some reason which I do not know.  The hand that strikes me in the dark is yours, sweetheart.”

But it was impossible for him to treat her in this fashion; and he was so much exasperated at not being able to proclaim his certainty in words of anger and indignation that he took her fingers and twisted them violently, while his look and his whole attitude accused the girl even more forcibly than the bitterest words.

He mastered himself and released his grip.  The girl freed herself with a quick movement, indicating repulsion and hatred.  Don Luis said: 

“Very well.  I will question the servants.  If necessary I shall dismiss any whom I suspect.”

“No, don’t do that,” she said eagerly.  “You mustn’t.  I know them all.”