“Armadale did his best, and in nine cases out of ten he'd have got what he wanted. You're looking at the thing from the sentimental standpoint, you know. The police have nothing to do with that side of affairs. Armadale's business is to extract all the information he can and then use it, no matter where it leads him. If an official had to stop his investigations merely because a pretty girl breaks down and cries, we shouldn't be a very efficient force in society.” “He met his match in young Fleetwood,” Wendover pointed out, with hardly concealed satisfaction. Sir Clinton gazed across the table with a curious expression on his face. “For a J. P. you seem to be strangely out of sympathy with the minions of the law. If you ask me, young Fleetwood will have himself to thank for anything that happens now. Of course, he's gained two or three days in which he can discuss everything in detail with his wife, and they can concoct between them just what they propose to tell us eventually. But I never yet saw a faked-up yarn that would stand the test of careful investigation and checking. And you may take it that, after the way Armadale was received, he'll put every word he gets from them under a microscope before he accepts it as true.” Wendover nodded a gloomy assent to this view. “I expect he will,” he agreed. “Perhaps it's a pity that young Fleetwood took that line.” “I gave him his chance to make a clean breast of it, if he'd any reasonable tale to tell,” Sir Clinton pointed out with a trace of impatience. “All I got was a piece of guttersnipe insolence. Obviously he thinks he can get the better of us; but when it comes to the pinch, I think——” He broke off abruptly. Wendover, glancing round, saw that Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux had come into the room and was moving in the direction of their table. As she came towards them, he compared her, half unconsciously, with Cressida Fleetwood. Both of them would have been conspicuous in any group; but Cressida's looks were a gift of Nature, whereas Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux was obviously a more artificial product. Everything about her proclaimed that the utmost care had been spent upon her appearance; and even the reined-in manner of her walk suggested a studied movement in contrast to Cressida's lithe and natural step. Wendover noted that the wave in her red-brown hair was a permanent one, obviously too well designed to be anything but artificial. “Now, why the deuce does one say ‘foreigner’ as soon as one sees her?” he inquired of himself. “Heaps of English girls wear dresses like that in the morning, though they may not carry them so well. And they have their hair waved, too. And her face isn't particularly Continental-looking; I've seen types like that often enough in this country. It must be the way she moves, or else the way she looks at one.”