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st. She caught the ring of defiance in his tone. She smiled. There was to be verbal sword-play, and she was armed _cap-a-pie_. "Just another cup of tea," she pleaded, and he wriggled uneasily in his chair. The delay was torturing him. She unrolled her big sheets of notes. He looked over at them with well-simulated indifference. "I have an engagement--" he began, looking at his watch. "You must put it off," she said, with sudden heat. "The most important engagement of your life is here, now, in this room, William Meiklejohn. I mentioned the detective bureau when I entered. Which do you prefer to encounter--me or an emissary of the police?" He paled again. Evidently this society lady had claws, and would use them if annoyed. "I do not think that I have said anything to warrant such language to me," he murmured, striving to smile deprecatingly. He succeeded but poorly. "You sent me to drive out into the world the girl whom my son loved," was the retort. "You made a grave mistake in that. I recognized her, after a little while. I knew her mother. Now, am I to go into details?" "I--really--I--" "Very well. Eighteen years ago your brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn, murdered a man named Marchbanks, who had discovered that you and your brother were defrauding his wife of funds held by your bank as her trustees. I have here the records of the crime. I do not say that your brother, who has since been a convict and is now assisting you under the name of Ralph Voles, could be charged with that crime. Maybe 'murderer' is too strong a word for him where Marchbanks was concerned; but I do say that any clever lawyer could send you and him to the penitentiary for robbing a dead woman and her daughter, the girl whom you and he have kidnapped within the last week." Here was a broadside with a vengeance. Meiklejohn could not have endured a keener agony were he facing a judge and jury. It was one thing to have borne this terrible secret gnawing at his vitals during long years, but it was another to find it pitilessly laid bare by a woman belonging to that very society for which he had dared so much in order to retain his footing. He bent his head between his hands. For a few seconds thoughts of another crime danced in his surcharged brain. But Mrs. Carshaw's well-bred syllables brought him back to sanity with chill deliberateness. "Shall I go on?" she said. "Shall I tell you of Rachel Bartlett; of the scandal to be
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