rmerie." She compressed her lips, cast a look
of spiteful triumph at her antagonist (who still held her arm as in a
vice), and awaited developments in vengeful silence.

"Now!" said the Commissary briskly. "Your names, please. M.
Withershaw--prenom? Thank you. M. _James_ Withershaw. Yours, madame?
Pardon? Spell it, please."

"D-A-N-E--trait d'union--V-E-R-E-K-E-R," said the captor lady, with
precision and a very passable accent.

"Amelie Vildrac."

"Hector Turpin."

A clerk made the necessary entries. Mrs. Dane-Vereker was asked to give
her version of the afternoon's events.

"They are few and easy to relate," she said. "This woman was my maid.
Two days ago she stole, among other things, a valuable and valued cameo
belonging to me, and disappeared. This afternoon, and by the merest
hazard, I found myself next to her at the tables. With an effrontery
natural to women of her type she was wearing the very ornament she had
stolen. Naturally I charged her with the theft, and attempted to seize
my property. That is all I have to say."

"And you, Mdlle Vildrac?"

Amelie shrugged insolent shoulders.

"Things have an air so different from different points of view," she
observed. "Madame tells her story. I tell mine. Which will you believe?
Here are the real facts. It is true, as Madame has said, that until two
days ago I was Madame's maid. It is also true in effect that two days
ago I left her. But not clandestinely, oh no! nor with stolen valuables.
Rather at her bidding, and with a small trinket that she gave to me at
parting. 'Amelie,' she said to me, 'I have planned to leave these people
we are with'--you must understand, Monsieur, that Madame and I were
members of a touring party under the charge of M. Hector Turpin yonder.
Mon Dieu, how strange some of that party! English, all of them, and so
strange!---- But I was saying that Madame had planned to leave them. 'I
am going away with M. Turpin,' she said to me, 'and these stupid people
must extricate themselves as best they may from the trap into which my
clever Turpin has led them. You will not betray me? Go you to Paris
or to St. Hilaire and seek your fortune. Here is money and here is the
cameo you have so often admired. Wear it in memory of me, and for its
sake keep silence.'

"Voila!" Mdlle Amelie spread out emphatic hands. "Am I a thief? Is it
theft to take gifts from another woman? And finally, M. le Commissaire,
seeing that you are bound for La Hourmerie