now what you are talking about," he snapped.

"Come," she said quietly--"however freely we may trifle with the very
much overrated Arm of the Law, at least let us be honest with each
other. For some reason or other, you did not tell Inspector Fay the
truth."

He sat upright with a jerk, flamed with passion.

"What the devil is it to do with you?" he demanded fiercely.

"I will tell you in a moment," she returned smoothly. "When you
accounted for your time to the inspector, you told him that you went
into the house to refill your cigarette case?"

His lethargy had disappeared. He leant forward, staring at her, his
hands clutching the arms of his chair.

"But, unfortunately, you did not take the elementary precaution of
having a full case to support the story. In nine times out of ten you
would have got away with it. This was the tenth."

There was silence for a moment. She sat in an easy attitude, meeting his
gaze with complete confidence. No trace of his previous dullness
remained. He was alert and taut.

She went on, with delightful smoothness.

"With an unpardonable lack of respect for the statement of a gentleman,
it occurred to the inspector to test the truth of that account. He did
not want to smoke--but he asked you for a cigarette. It was a gentle
trap. There were only two in your case."

He ground out an oath under his breath.

"Obviously you had not gone into the house to refill your case. Perhaps
you went in for some other reason. Perhaps you didn't go in at all.
Anyway, you lied--and when people deliberately lie in such serious cases
as these, it may safely be imagined that they have some object to serve
in doing so. The inspector was concerned to discover what your object
was. So he came to me."

"To you...." he muttered.

"I told you," she returned, "that he is a little too sharp to play
with--clumsily. He suspected, from what had been told him, that we might
have had a stormy scene together, and had wished to keep it to
ourselves. He was quite ready to believe that the time you had failed so
lamentably to account for had really been passed with me in '_une petite
scene de jalousie_.' Fortunately, I had given him a true account of
myself, which was that I had been alone. So after the necessary
hesitation, and with just the right amount of annoyance, I was able to
confess that we had both lied, and that we had in fact been
together--and he went away satisfied. I am a better liar than you."