“What did he say to you before he went?” she asked inexorably. Lady Raytham shook her head. “I can’t tell you. He was dreadful, dreadful!” Leslie had waited this opportunity to fire her shot. “He is in our hands,” she said. “Shall we bring him here?” The woman uncovered her eyes and stepped back with a little scream. “Here? Here?” she said huskily. “My heavens, not here! He must go to the mort----” She stopped herself, but too late. “How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie sternly. Under the rouge the woman’s face was gray. CHAPTER VII. LESLIE’S INTERVIEW “How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie again. “Who told you?” “I--I heard.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Who told you? Nobody knows but the inspector and me, and I have come straight away from the place where he was found. I left him three minutes ago.” “Three minutes? I don’t understand.” And then, as she saw that she had been trapped for the second time, the colour came and went in Jane Raytham’s face. “I don’t wonder that you are surprised, Lady Raytham! You know that Barnes Common is a little more than three minutes away, don’t you?” The woman looked round like some hunted animal seeking an avenue of escape. “I know he is dead,” she said desperately. And then she faced the girl with a new resolution and a courage which Leslie could only admire. “I know he’s dead!” she exclaimed. “I know he’s dead! Heaven knows who killed him, but I found him there. I saw him as my car was passing--on the sidewalk. I somehow knew it was he and got out. That is how I know. I should have told the police, I suppose, but I was frightened, terribly frightened. I thought I should faint.” “Where were you going when you found his body?” Leslie’s grave eyes were fixed on the woman. “To--to the Princess Bellini. She has a house in Wimbledon.” “But you couldn’t have parted with her for very long, when you decided to follow her.” Jane Raytham licked her dry lips. “She left something behind--the night was rather pleasant--I wanted the air, so I drove----” “Won’t you sit down, Lady Raytham?” said the girl gently. The woman looked ready to drop. With a little nod she sank down into an easy-chair that was near at hand. Humanity was at the back of Leslie Maughan’s suggestion, but there was something else. She had learned at Scotland Yard never to interrogate either a prisoner or a possible witness while you are on the same level with them. It was a piece of information that had been conveyed to her by the greatest of the criminal counsel of the Bar. “Put a witness on a lower level,” he said, “and he’ll tell you the truth.” Now she looked down at the broken woman who was nervously fingering the arm of the chair, and a wave of pity swept over Leslie Maughan, such as she had never experienced before. “You were not going to Princess Bellini’s, Lady Raytham,” she said gently. “You were looking for Druze; he had taken something of yours.”