“Of course I deny it. I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to ask that. She’s had a down on me for some time—everybody’s seen it, snapping and snarling at me for nothing—and I suppose she wants to get an excuse for it.”

“She says she came upon you examining a letter of hers, holding it up to the light. And three days ago she found you in her room looking over the papers in her desk.”

“Ah!” he made a gesture of angry contempt. “It would make a person sick—examining her letters! I was looking through the mail bag to see if there was anything for me. If I took up one of [Pg 75]hers by mistake does that prove I was examining it?”

[Pg 75]

“How about the other thing?”

“Being in her room? Yes, I was there. I went in to get a stamp. I had an important letter to go when Gabriel took over the mail and it was time for him. All the rest of you were out. Her room was next to mine and I went in. I never thought anything about it, no more than I would have thought about going into Anne’s or yours or anybody else’s. She’s nutty, I tell you. You can’t trust her word. And if she says I’m hired to spy on her she’s a damned——”

He stopped. Basset’s eye was steady on him in a cold command he knew. There was the same cold quality in the director’s voice:

“If the position Sybil’s in has made her suspicious, that’s all right. I’d like to believe it was the case. But if any of us—supposedly her friends—had inserted themselves in here to carry on police surveillance, using me to get them in—well, I’d not think that all right.”

[Pg 76]

[Pg 76]

Joe leaned over the banister. His control was shaken, his voice hoarsely urgent:

“You got to be fair, Bassett, and because you’re sorry for her is no reason to set her word over mine. It’s not true. Don’t you believe me?”

Bassett did not answer for a moment. He wanted to believe and he doubted; he thought of Joe’s desire to come, of the reward:

“I guess you know, Joe, you can trust me to be fair, but I’m not going to commit myself till I know. It won’t be hard to do that. I can find out when I get back to New York. And take this from me—if what Sybil says is true I’m done with you. No more help from me, no more work in any company I manage. And I fancy the whole theatrical 

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