“Who doesn’t know her own language,” said Jennings.

“I pass over your insults,” said the woman with dignity.  “But as you intend to take me away, will you please let me enter my bedroom to change my dress?”

Jennings drew aside and permitted her to pass.  “I am not afraid you will escape,” he said politely.  “If you attempt to leave you will fall into the hands of my men.  They watch every door.”

Maraquito winced, and with a last look at the astounded Mallow, passed into the room.  When she shut the door Mallow looked at Jennings.  “I don’t know what all this means,” he said.

“I have told you,” replied Jennings, rather impatiently, “the letter I sent you was to bring you here.  The struggle was a feigned one on my side to make Maraquito defend you.  I knew she would never let you be worsted if she could help; exactly as I knew you would never consent to play such a trick on her.”

“Certainly not.  With all her faults, she loves me.”

“So well that she will kill Juliet Saxon rather than see her in your arms.  Don’t frown, Mallow, Maraquito is a dangerous woman, and it is time she was laid by the heels.  You don’t know what I have found out.”

“Have you learned who killed Miss Loach?”

“No.  But I am on the way to learn it.  I’ll tell you everything another time.  Meanwhile, I must get this woman safely locked up.  Confound her, she is a long time.”

“She may have escaped,” said Mallow, as Jennings knocked at the door.

“I don’t see how she can.  There are men at the front door and at a secret entrance she used to enter as Mrs. Herne.”  He knocked again, but there was no reply.  Finally Jennings grew exasperated and tried to open the door.  It was locked.  “I believe she is escaping,” he said, “help me, Mallow.”

The two men put their shoulders to the door and burst it in.  When they entered the bedroom it was empty.  There was no sign of Maraquito anywhere, and no sign, either, of how she had managed to evade the law.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SECRET ENTRANCE

As may be guessed, Jennings was very vexed that Maraquito had escaped.  He had posted his men at the front and back doors and also at the side entrance through which Senora Gredos in her disguise as Mrs. Herne had entered.  He never considered for the moment that so clever a woman might have some way of escape other than he had guessed.  “Yet I might have thought it,” he said, when Cuthbert and he left the house.  “I expect that place is like a rabbit-burrow.  Maraquito always expected to be taken some day in spite of her clever assumption of helplessness.  That was a smart dodge.”

“How did you learn that she was shamming?”

“I only guessed so.  I had no proof.  But when I interviewed the pseudo Mrs. Herne at her Hampstead lodgings, she betrayed so much emotion when speaking of you that I guessed it was the woman herself.  I only tried that experiment to see if she was really ill.  If she had not moved I should have been done.”