"Was it like that? I wasn't sure what happened, and I don't know yet where I am. But since I woke up to things, I've lain still, and listened when they thought I was nothing but a log. I wasn't strong enough to do much. I had to lie low! But there was a row about the pearls. Markoff was here--hiding, I think. How these people got the pearls I haven't made out. They had them, though--and Markoff tried to steal them instead of buying as he'd promised. He fell in a fit or something, and died. I heard a doctor talking--a pal of the people here. The night Markoff died they were squabbling over the pearls, a woman and two men in the next room. I heard them say where they were kept--in the room where they'd put Markoff's body till they could get rid of it. They'd no idea I'd come alive. At last, to-day when they were all out, and the coast clear--it can't have been two hours ago--I struggled up and got the pearls--beneath a loose board in the floor under the carpet. They're inside this mattress now. I was planning how to make my 'getaway' when I heard your voice. Jove! This has been a bad dream. But thank God it's over for us both. You'll have to believe in me when I give you the pearls." "Give me your love--your forgiveness," begged Juliet. "I want nothing else." "You'll have to take the lot!" Pat almost laughed. "But as to forgiveness--why, darling one, there's nothing to forgive!" Leon Defasquelle's look, when he saw Sanders instead of the Frenchwoman alone, was in itself a confession. He knew he was trapped. His dark, southern face faded to the yellow green of seasickness. Speechless, anxious-eyed as a kicked dog, he would have backed to the door, but Sanders was ready for that. He stepped between him and the hope of escape. "It's all up, my friend," the detective said, in his quiet voice. Then, remembering that Defasquelle had little English, he went on in half-forgotten school French, a little slang thrown in from novels he'd read. "Your _chère amie_ has split on you. No good getting out the pistol from your pocket. Nothing doing in that line!" (He showed his Browning.) "We can settle this business without blood if you've got common sense." "That woman--that devil has told her side of the story!" Defasquelle raged, with a look that longed to kill. "Now you shall have mine. She was the temptress. She has ruined me." "Liar!" shrilled Simone. "Coward and deceiver! You have a _fiancée_ in Marseilles. You let me think you'd marry me!" "You threatened to betray! I had to defend myself. You made me a thief!" "Ah, accuse _me_!" "Because you are guilty!" It was thus that Sanders heard the story, bit by bit. And patching together these torn rags of recrimination he got the pattern of the whole cloth.