you a better
price to join me, and therefore it will not pay you to lie. But you
will not be able to deceive me by pretending to be."

"I am not," I answered.

"Then why did he send you here?"

"I left his employ three days before I met Mme. d'Epernay. If you were
in New York you must have seen that I was not there."

"Good. Second, where is Louis d'Epernay?"

"I have never seen the man," I replied.

Leroux glanced incredulously at me.

"Then your meeting with _madame_ was purely an accident?" he inquired.
"Your only desire, then, was to get the money you knew she was carrying
with her? But how did you know that she was carrying that money?"

I shrugged my shoulders. How was it possible for us to reach an
understanding?

"I don't know why you are lying to me," he said. "It is not to your
advantage. You must have known that she was in New York; Louis must
have told Carson, and he must have told you. And Louis must have told
you the secret of the entrance, unless----"

"Listen to me!" I cried furiously. "I will not be badgered with any
more questions. I have told you the truth. I met Mme. d'Epernay by
accident, and I escorted her toward the _chateau_, and followed her
after you kidnapped her, to protect her from you."

He grunted and glanced at me with an inscrutable expression upon his
hard features.

"You are in love with her?" he asked.

"Put it that way if you choose," I answered.

He scowled at me ferociously, and then he began studying my face. I
returned stare for stare. Finally he banged his big fist down upon the
table.

"Well, it doesn't matter," he said, "because, whatever your purpose,
you cannot do any harm. And you understand that she is a married
woman. So you will, no doubt, agree to take your money and depart?"

"I shall go if she tells me to go," I answered; but even while I spoke
my heart sank, for I had little hope.

"That is easily settled," answered Leroux. "I will bring her back and
you shall hear the decision from her own lips."

He left the room, and I sat there alone beside the dotard, listening to
the click of the ball and the chink of the coins, and the roar of the
twin cataracts above.

In truth, I had no further excuse for staying. I knew what
Jacqueline's reply must be.

But there had been a sinister smoothness in Leroux's latest mood. I
did not trust the man, for all his bluntness. I suspected something,
and I did not intend to relax my guard.