The detective lunged toward her.  “Just what I say.  Now don’t get on your ear, Mrs. Munger.”  He was the thorough bully now.  “It won’t cut any ice with me or with Mr. Mangan.  It didn’t this morning or he wouldn’t have sent me down here.  We want that mantilla and we got to have it.  If we don’t there’ll be trouble.  If you know anything about it, now’s the time to say so.  The woman you call Mrs. Stanton got all balled up this morning, and couldn’t say what she did with it.  They all do that—­we get half a dozen of ’em every week.  She’s pawned it all right—­what I want to know is where.  Rosenthal’s in a hole if we don’t get it.  If you’ve spent the money, I’ve got a roll right here.”  And he tapped his pocket.  “No questions asked, remember!  All I want is the mantilla, and if it don’t come she’ll be in the Tombs and you’ll go with her.  We mean business, and don’t you forget it!”

Martha turned squarely upon him—­was about to speak—­changed her mind—­and drawing up a chair, settled down upon it.

“You’re a nice young man, you are!” she exclaimed, scornfully.  “A very nice young man!  And you think that poor child is a thief, do you?  Do you know who she is and what she’s suffered?  If I could tell you, you’d never get over it, you’d be that ashamed!”

She was not afraid of him; her army hospital experience had thrown her with too many kinds of men.  What filled her with alarm was his reference to Lady Barbara.  But for this uncertainty, and the possible consequences of such a procedure, she would have thrown open her door and ordered him out as she had done Dalton.  Then, seeing that Pickert still maintained his attitude—­that of a setter-dog with the bird in the line of his nose—­she added testily: 

“Don’t stand there staring at me.  Take a chair where I can talk to you better.  You get on my nerves.  It’s pawned, is it?  Yes.  I believe you, and I know who pawned it.  Dalton’s got it—­that’s who.  I thought so last night—­now I’m sure of it.”  She was on her feet now, tearing at her bonnet-string as if to free her throat.  “He sneaked it out of that box on the floor beside you, when she was hiding from him in her bedroom.”

Pickert retreated slightly at this new development; then asked sharply:  “Dalton!  Who’s Dalton?”

“The meanest cur that ever walked the earth—­ that’s who he is.  He’s almost killed my poor lady, and now she must go to jail to please him.  Not if I’m alive, she won’t.  He stole that mantilla!  I’m just as sure of it as I am that my name is Martha Munger!”

Pickert’s high tension relaxed.  If this new clew had to be followed it could best be followed with the aid of this woman, who evidently hated the man she denounced.  She would be of assistance, too, in identifying both the lace and the thief—­and he had seen neither the one nor the other as yet.  So it was the same old game, was it?—­with a man at the bottom of the deal!