ess proceeding," he said calmly. "I
should not tell them that name any more than I tell it to you. I will
not tell it. It is of no moment here. It could do you no good to hear
it, and to mention it might do me harm; therefore, I shall not mention
it, no matter how often you order me to do so. It pains me to disobey
you, madam, but you force me into the alternative, and I have no choice.
Pull the rope if you will."

Instead of pulling it, she released it, still staring at him, and she
returned slowly to her chair.

"You are a strange man," she murmured, "and a brave one. There is not
another who would dare to defy me as you have done."

"Perhaps there is not another who has so much at stake," he replied
quietly, but with perfect truth, as the reader knows.

Again she knit her brows in perplexity; again the detective knew that
she was concentrating her mind upon that incident at the prefecture,
trying with all her power to recall the merest detail of it.

Nick remembered that his name had been mentioned aloud at that time; he
recalled the fact that Goron, in rising to shake hands with him, had
called him by name plainly enough. It was evident that she also
remembered that much of the facts, and was now straining every energy
she possessed to recall what that name was.

And while she thought so deeply, her face gradually assumed an
expressionless cast. She closed her lips firmly together. Her eyes
became sombre. She seemed oblivious of his presence, and of her
surroundings. For the moment she was back again in Paris, at the
prefecture, in the presence of Goron, five years ago.

After a little, without another change of expression, she shrugged her
shoulders, and rose from her chair, and then, with an assumption of
carelessness, she passed from the room upon the piazza, saying as she
went:

"Come. We will not bother any more about this for the present. We will
take up the subject again another time, after we have both had
opportunity to think it over. If you care for a cigar, Dago, there are
some in that cupboard yonder. Help yourself."

Now, it happened that Nick did care for a cigar. He had not had one in
many a day, but had forced himself to be content with an old pipe. The
prospect of a cigar was enticing, and so he took her at her word, and
helped himself--turning his back to her as he did so, and so he did not
see the strange smile which crossed her face as she passed through the
door upon the piazza.

He