"Visitors?" There was scorn now in his straight glance, but nothing more. "Is this a place where there's likely to be visitors?"
"Not in the ordinary course of events"--Barrant was still smilingly affable--"but the night your master met his death was not an ordinary night. Somebody may have come to the house."
He paused, again searching for some sign of guilty consciousness in the face revealed in such clear outline near him, but saw none. Again, Thalassa met him with answering look, but remained mute.
"Thalassa"--Barrant's voice remained persuasive, but to an ear attuned to shades, there was a note of menace underlying its softness--"you know there was somebody else here that night."
"Your master's daughter--Miss Sisily Turold." Barrant brought it out sharply and angrily.
Thalassa turned a cold glance on him. "If you know that why do you ask me?" he said.
Thalassa surveyed him with the shadow of a smile on his motionless face. "Do you take me for a fool?" he said. "I let nobody in."
"Thalassa," said the detective earnestly, "let me advise you, for your own sake, to tell the truth now. You may be keeping silence through some mistaken idea of loyalty to your master's daughter, but that will do her no good, nor you either. I know more than you think. If you persist in keeping silent you will put yourself in an awkward position, and it may be the worse for you. You were seen listening at the door of the room downstairs on the day of your master's death."
"So that's it, is it? You think you'll fit a rope round my neck? I'm to say what you want to save it? To hell with you and your policeman's tricks! I don't care that for them." He snapped his long brown fingers in Barrant's face.
"You've a bold tongue, you scoundrel," said Barrant, flushing angrily. "Take care where it leads you. Once more, will you tell me the truth?"
"Do you mean to tell me that you did not see your master's daughter, or let her into the house?"
"Could anybody have got into the house without your knowledge?"
"How could I hear anybody when I was down in the coal cellar?"
The open sneer on Thalassa's face suggested that he was not to be caught by verbal traps. Barrant perceived, with a smouldering anger, that the man was too clever to be tricked, and too stout of heart to be frightened. By accident or design he had a ready story which was difficult to demolish without further knowledge of the events of that night. Barrant decided that it would be useless, at that moment, to apply himself to the effort of worming anything out of Thalassa. He had shown his own hand too freely, and placed him on his guard. There was also the bare possibility that he had told the truth, so far as he knew it. One last shot he essayed.
