“The bag I did draw out of the pool, but only because I had taken it down there in my blouse front.  Did you think a man could see that or anything else indeed in that maddening swirl of water?”

“But it was Mrs. Ransom’s bag,” came from Harper in ill-disguised amazement.  Even his sang-froid was leaving him before these evidences of a plot so deep as to awaken awe.  “Where did you get it?  Not from Mrs. Ransom herself?  Her own surprise is warranty for that.”

“No, I got it from the river, another reason why I credited her drowning.  It was fished up from the sand, a little way from the Fall.  My man found it; I had sent him there in a vain hope that he might find evidence of the tragedy which others had overlooked.  He did, but he told no one but me.  You flung the thing too far,” he remarked to Georgian.  “You should have dropped it nearer the bank.  Only such a prodder as my man Ives would ever have discovered it.”

Georgian shook her head, impatient at such banalities, in the face of the important matters they had to discuss.  “To the point,” she cried, “tell these men what will clear me of everything but a wild attempt at freedom.”

“I have said what I had to say,” returned her brother.

Georgian’s head fell.  For a moment her courage seemed to fail her.

Mr. Harper rose and locked the door.

“We must have no intruders here,” said he, pausing with a certain sense of shock, as he noticed the faint smile, full of some sinister meaning, which for an instant twisted Hazen’s lips at these words.

But the delay was but momentary.  With an odd sense of haste he rushed at once to the attack.

Stepping in front of Hazen, he observed with force and unmistakable resolution: 

“Your devotion to the legatee Auchincloss cannot possibly be explained by any ordinary feeling of obligation.  Your sister has mentioned a Cause.  Can he by any possibility be the treasurer of that Cause?”

But Hazen was as impervious to direct attack as he had been to a covert one.

“Georgian will tell you,” said he.  “When a woman looks as she looks now, and is so given over to her own personal longings that she forgets the most serious oaths, the most binding promises, nothing can hold back her speech.  She will talk, and since this must be, let her talk now and in my presence.  But let it be briefly,” he admonished her, “and with discretion.  An unnecessary word will weigh heavily in the end.  You know in what scales.  You shall have just fifteen minutes.”

He looked about for a clock, but seeing none drew out his watch from his vest pocket and laid it on the table.  Then he settled himself again in his chair, with a look and gesture of imperative command towards Georgian.

Struck with dismay, she hesitated and he had time to add:  “I shall not interrupt unless you pass the bounds where narrative ends and disclosure begins.”  And Harper and Ransom, glancing up at this, wondered at his rigidity and the almost marble-like quiet into which his restless eye and frenzied movements had now subsided.