"Perhaps you _don't_ know," agreed Sanders. "But you see, you've made so many of her affairs your affairs, it's hard to tell where you draw the line." The French maid turned pale in rather a repulsive way she had, beginning at the lips, which she bit to keep their colour. From her looks she might have been furious--or frightened. "I do not understand you, Monsieur," she almost spat. "That doesn't matter much. What does matter is, we understand _you_." Under her black-dotted veil Simone's olive sallowness greened. "Monsieur accuses me of--something?" Sanders grinned with the utmost cruelty. "Well, what do you think?" "I think a person has perhaps told lies about me, Monsieur!" "Ah!" the detective leapt in his chair as if he had caught her--as if she had given him a chance for which he'd waited. "Ah! What's the name of that person?" The Frenchwoman began to feel sick. Her fears, though acute, had been vague. Suddenly they became definite. She floundered. So much depended on saying the right thing that she was terribly afraid of saying the wrong one. She glanced at Captain Manners again, but he had taken up a paper. To her horror it was the _Inner Circle_, which Sanders had bought and brought in to discuss. Her knees turned to water. She could not help giving a faint gasp. Her eyes were fixed on the "Whisperer's" page, which was held up--as if purposely. Both men saw the stare: and into the minds of both sprang the same thought. Jack had had it before. He had even hinted it to Juliet, who laughed it to scorn, and remarked that she knew Simone better than he could possibly know her. Sanders had had the thought, and mentioned it to Manners. But there was no proof; and the Frenchwoman's "shadower" had never seen her go to the office of the _Inner Circle_. As for letters--Sanders had put Togo onto watching for them. Simone had sent out none at all from the house. Yet now that one bleak glare at the open paper, and both men were as sure as if the woman had confessed. "You think your editor has been talking, eh?" the detective said. "That's as may be. Anyhow, we _know_." The telephone bell rang. Jack took up the receiver. "Yes, Mr. Sanders is here," he replied to some question. "He'll speak with you in a second. Hold the line." Sanders bounded to the 'phone. "Yes--yes--good!" were the only words he said. But Jack knew he was speaking to his man at the café. Then he turned again to Simone. "Come here and call your friend Defasquelle," he sharply ordered. "Tell him he must turn up at his house at once or there'll be a disaster for you both." Simone grasped the back of a chair, and clung to it. "I cannot, Monsieur," she gulped. "I know Monsieur Defasquelle only by seeing him here. I----" "Don't waste words," Sanders cut her short. "It'll be the worse for you if you do. You've just been with him now, at Rudin's. Call him up at his hotel." "If--if I will not?" she stammered.