Now or never! Lavender and his underlings darted down the crazy stairs and across the road. I followed at my best pace, very vital excitement gripping me, in time to see him knock, await the opening of the door, and—then a rush. The three were inside so quickly that, before I could join them, the servant—a middle-aged, hard-featured, somewhat shrewish-looking French-woman—was safe in the custody of the younger detective, Lavender and the other pushing on for the house. ‘If she attempts to scream, throttle her,’ Lavender said, in a sufficiently loud aside to have a wholesomely restraining effect upon the captive. ‘Now, sir,’ to me, ‘as little noise as possible in getting upstairs, please.’ And he glanced meaningly, though not unkindly, at my lame leg. I crept after them as quietly as I could, and had reason; for on reaching the landing we heard voices, a man’s and a woman’s, high in altercation. The door of the front drawing-room, I should explain, stood open, the front room communicating with the back by folding doors. These were closed, and within them the quarrel took place; but so loudly that, as we advanced, I could distinguish nearly every word. ‘It is impossible. I tell you he is still away.’ ‘No one else can have taken them. No one else has a key to this sweet little nest—and so the game is up, my child, by now the fraud discovered. You are trapped—trapped!’ ‘Beast,’ the woman cried, in a tone of concentrated fury and contempt. ‘Go. Do you hear? I tell you to go, or I send Marie for the police.’ ‘Pish, you little fool, you know you dare not. What money have you?’ ‘Money, indeed! I have none, and if I had I would rather fling it in the gutter than you should have it. Go—go—are you deaf?’ ‘Hand over the rest of the jewels then; or I call in the police myself, and tell them—you know what.’ ‘It is a lie—a lie. I am his wife.’ ‘Idiot—you are my wife, not his.’ ‘You cannot prove it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I can. I have the documents safe in Paris.’ ‘Go and fetch them, then.’ ‘So I will, and take you and the jewels along with me. For I am willing to forgive—yes, listen—it is your only chance now that you are found out.—I, your lawful husband, Bartolomeo Marsigli, am willing to forgive, to condone your infidelities, and receive you back.’ ‘And I spit upon your forgiveness. Understand, once and for all, I will never go back to you, never—I would die first. Having had the nobleman, what can I want with the nobleman’s valet? Keep off—you brute. Touch me at your peril. Take that—and that’⸺ The sound of a tussle. Then the man’s voice— ‘Heigh! my fine lady, would you bite then, would you scratch? There, be reasonable, can’t you, for I repeat the game is up. Your aristocratic boy-lover is lost to you for ever in any case. Come away with me to Paris while there still is time. I love you—and I will have you’⸺ Again the sound of a tussle, wordless, tense.