“Indeed?”

Dumont gasped at the coolness of the man.  “Wh—­what?  You have nothing to say?  Why, sir,” he added, raising his voice, “you have actually made no effort to conceal it!”

Dodge smiled cynically.  “A consultation, will rectify it,” was all he said.  “A conference will show you that it is all right.”

“A consultation?” broke in Beverley in rage.  “A consultation in jail!”

Still Dodge merely smiled.

“Then you consider yourself trapped.  You admit it,” ground out Dumont.

“Anything you please,” repeated Dodge.  “I am perfectly willing—­”

“Let us end this farce—­now,” cried Beverley hotly.  “Drummond!”

The detective had been doing some rapid thinking.  “Just a moment,” he interrupted.  “Don’t be too precipitate.  Hear his side, if he has any.  I can manage him.  Besides, I have something else to say about another person that will interest us all.”

“Then you are willing to have the consultation!”

Drummond nodded.

“Miss Dunlap,” called Murray, taking the words almost from the detective’s lips, as he opened the door and held it for her to enter.

“No—­no.  Alone,” almost shouted Beverley.

The detective signaled to him and he subsided, muttering.

As she entered Drummond looked hard at her.  Constance met him without wavering an instant.

“I think I’ve seen you before, Mrs. Dunlap,” insinuated the detective.

“Perhaps,” replied Constance, still meeting his sharp ferret eye squarely, which increased his animosity.

“Your husband was Carlton Dunlap, cashier of Green & Company, was he not?”

She bit her lip.  The manner of his raking up of old scores, though she had expected it, was cruel.  It would have been cruel in court, if she had had a lawyer to protect her rights.  It was doubly cruel, merciless, here.  Before Dodge could interrupt, the detective added, “Who committed suicide after forging checks to meet his—­”

Murray was at Drummond like a hound.  “Another word from you and I’ll throttle you,” he blurted out.

“No, Murray, no.  Don’t,” pleaded Constance.  She was burning with indignation, but it was not by violence that she expected to prevail.  “Let him say what he has to say.”

Drummond smiled.  He had no scruples about a “third degree” of this kind, and besides there were three of them to Dodge.

“You were—­both of you—­at Woodlake not long ago, were you not?” he asked calmly.

There was no escaping the implication of the tone.  Still Drummond was taking no chances of being misunderstood.  “There was one man,” he went on, “who embezzled for you.  Here is another who has embezzled.  How will that look when it goes before a jury!” he concluded.

The fight had shifted before it had well begun.  Instead of being between Dodge on one side and Beverley and Dumont on the, other, it now seemed to be a clash between a cool detective and a clever woman.