"I shall have to request Mr. Harleston to answer. To be quite candid,
Madame Spencer, I can only infer them; Mr. Harleston arranged them."
She turned to Harleston with a mocking smile.
"I am listening, monsieur," she inflected. "What is it you, or rather
America, would of me?"
"The letter you have in your possession," said Harleston.
"The letter!" she marvelled. "Why, Mr. Harleston, you know quite well
that I never had the Clephane letter."
"Very true; we have the Clephane letter, as you style it; and we have
also a _translation_. What we want from you is the letter that Captain
Snodgrass took from his mail box at the Rataplan this afternoon, and
gave to you in the taxi on the way to the Chateau."
She smiled incredulously.
"Absurd, sir!" she replied. "Surely you are not serious!"
"Let me be entirely specific," he returned "I'll put all my cards on the
table and play them open."
"Double dummy, by all means!" she laughed, perching her lithe length on
the arm of a chair, one slender foot swinging slowly back and forth.
"Your play, monsieur."
"There is no need to go back farther than this morning," he observed.
"We knew that you were to meet Captain Snodgrass and lunch with him at
one o'clock at the Rataplan.
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