“Yes,” she said sullenly.  “You know too much, and it is useless for me to deny the truth in the face of the evidence you bring against me.  I would fight though,” she added, raising her head like a snake its crest, “if I was not sick and tired of fighting.”

“Fighting?”

“Yes, against trouble and worry and money difficulties and creditors.  Oh,” she struck her breast, “what do you know of life, you rich, easy-going man?  I have been in the depths, and not through my own fault.  I had a bad mother, a bad husband.  I was dragged in the mire by those who should have helped me to rise.  I have starved for days; I have wept for years; in all God’s earth there is no more miserable a creature than I am.”

“Kindly talk without so much melodrama,” said Random cruelly.

“Ah,” Mrs. Jasher sat down and locked her hands together, “you don’t believe me.  I daresay you don’t understand, for life, real life, is a sealed book to you.  It is useless for me to appeal to your sympathy, for you are so very ignorant.  Let us stick to facts.  What do you wish to know?”

“Who killed Sidney Bolton:  who has the emeralds.”

“I can’t tell you.  Listen!  With my past life you have nothing to do.  I will commence from the time I came down here.  I had just lost my husband, and I managed to scrape together a few hundred pounds—­oh, quite in a respectable way, I assure you,” she added scoffingly, on seeing her listener wince.  “I came here to try and live quietly, and, if possible, to secure a rich husband.  I knew that the Fort was here and thought that I might marry an officer.  However, the Professor’s position attracted me, and I decided to marry him.  I am engaged, and but for your cleverness in tracing that letter I should be Mrs. Braddock within a very short time.  I have exhausted all my money.  I am deeply, in debt.  I cannot hold out longer.”

“But the money you inherited—­”

“That is all bluff also.  I never had a brother.  I inherit no money.  I know nothing of Pekin, save that a friend of mine sends that scent to me as a yearly Christmas present.  I am an adventuress, but perhaps not so bad as you think me.  Lucy and Donna Inez have heard no wickedness from my lips.  I have always been a good woman in one sense—­a moral woman, that is—­and I did wish to marry the Professor and live a happy life.  Seeing that I was at the end of my resources, and that Professor Braddock expected a legacy with me before marriage, I looked round to, see how I could get the money.  I heard that you were accused by Captain Hervey, and so last night I wrote that letter and posted it in London, thinking that you would yield to save yourself from arrest.”

Random laughed cynically.

“You must have thought me weak,” he muttered.

“I did,” said Mrs. Jasher frankly.  “To tell you the truth, I thought that you were a fool.  But by tracing that letter and withstanding my demand, you have proved yourself to be more clever than I took you to be.  Well, that is all.  I know nothing of the murder.  My letter is sheer bluff to extort from you five thousand pounds.  Had you paid I should have passed it off to the Professor as the money left to me by my brother.  But now—­”