"But you are fascinated yourself, Lady Corsoon, else you would scarcely have tolerated a penniless man dangling after your daughter." "I tolerated it, as you say, because Mr. Maunders knows my secret." "Your secret?" In a flash Vernon recalled the conversation with the young man under the peristyle, in which Maunders had hinted that he knew something which would enable him to manage Lady Corsoon. "What is your secret?" "I have come to tell you, so don't interrupt until I have finished," said Lady Corsoon coolly. "I come to you because I know in a hundred ways that you are, what Mr. Maunders is not, an honest gentleman, and also the private detective that I need. I have one great vice, Mr. Vernon, I am a gambler, and for the last two years I have lost a heap of money at bridge. To pay my debts, since Sir Julius kept me always very short of money, I pawned certain family jewels. If Sir Julius finds that out he is capable of causing a scandal by forcing a separation. For Lucy's sake, as well as for my own, I don't want such a thing to take place." "But how can he find out?" Lady Corsoon fished in a green and gold bag which was slung on her arm and produced an elegant sheet of writing paper. "Read that," she said quietly. Vernon started, and suppressed a cry. At the foot of the writing he saw a purple spider impressed clearly--the well-known sign manual of the scoundrel who had murdered Mr. Dimsdale. Glancing his eyes over the pages, he read that The Spider had learned about the pawning of certain family jewels and, moreover, had managed, by forged tickets, to get the same into his possession. He was willing to sell them back for two thousand pounds, to be paid in gold on a certain date and at a certain place, to be arranged when he received Lady Corsoon's reply. The reply was to be put in the agony column of the _Daily Telegraph_, when further arrangements would be made for the payment of the sum and the handing over of the jewels. Failing consent, The Spider intended to apply to Sir Julius and to reveal Lady Corsoon's gambling propensities. The whole of this precious epistle, written very elegantly, ended with the ideograph of the purple spider. "What do you think of it?" asked Lady Corsoon when Vernon finished reading. "What can I think of it, but that the man is a blackguard. You want me to deal with this?" "Yes. I can't pay the two thousand pounds, as I have not got it. My husband keeps me very short. You see that I am candid; but then I trust you, as I doubt Mr. Maunders."