"Sure!" said Harleston. "Drive on and keep driving. You won't drive over me."
"It isn't a great deal," Carpenter went on, slowly tearing the consonant collection into bits, "and perchance it wasn't your Mrs. Clephane; but her name, and her beauty and charm, and Paris, and some other inferences I drew, led me to suspect that--" He completed the sentence by a wave of his hand. "She was Robert Clephane's wife--yes, I see in your face that she is your Mrs. Clephane--and he led her a merry life, though if rumour lied not she kept up with the pace he set. I saw her frequently and she was as--well you have not overdrawn the 'reticence picture.' Shall I continue?"
"Doubtless you already know the tale," Carpenter remarked.
"I know only what Mrs. Clephane has told me," Harleston replied.
The Fifth Assistant Secretary picked up a ruler and sighted carefully along the edge.
"I seem to be in wrong, old man," he said. "Please forget that I ever said it or anything--you understand."
"My dear fellow, don't be an ass!" Harleston laughed. "I'm not sensitive about the lady; I never saw her until last night."
"Quite long enough for a man disposed to make a fool of himself--if the lady is a beauty."
"I'm disposed to hear more from you, if you care to tell me," Harleston replied. "However, jesting aside, Carpenter, what do you know? Mrs. Clephane is something of a puzzle to me, but I have concluded to accept her story; yet I'm always open to conviction, and if I'm wrong now's the time to enlighten me--the State comes first, you know."
"Are you viewing Mrs. Clephane simply as a circumstance in the affair of the cipher letter?" Carpenter asked.
"Then I'll give you what I heard. It's not much, and it may be false; it's for you to judge, in the light of all that you know concerning her, whether or not it affects her credibility. Mrs. Clephane went with a notoriously fast set in Paris, and her reputation was somewhat cloudy."
"I know of that," returned Harleston, "also that Clephane was a roué, and generally an exceedingly rotten lot."
"Precisely--and her conduct as to him may be quite justifiable; yet nevertheless it weakens her credibility; puts her story as to the letter under suspicion. And there is one thing more: Clephane, you know, was killed in an aeroplane smash. Did Mrs. Clephane tell you anything as to it?"