The shot told. I saw it in the sudden blanching of her cheek, in the startled look that met mine for just an instant. If there were nothing else to conceal, I think she would have defied me and flouted at my efforts to extract information on the subject of the Groveland mystery.
But I had touched at a more vulnerable point. If I could now convince her that I knew her past career, the rest would be easy.
It was a delicate undertaking. I might say too much, or too little, but I must press the advantage I had gained. Her attention was secured. Her curiosity was aroused. There was a shade of anxiety on her face.
Drawing a chair opposite her, and seating myself therein, I fixed my eyes upon her face, and addressed her in a tone half stern, half confidential:
"You are a plucky girl," I began, "and I admire you for that; and when I tell you that I have followed you, or tracked you, from the North, through Amora, through Groveland, down to the Little Adelphi, you will perhaps conjecture that I do not intend to be balked or evaded, even by so smart a little lady as you have proved yourself. I bear you no personal ill-will, and I much dislike to persecute a woman even when she has been guilty of"----
I paused; she made a restless movement, and a look of pain flitted across her face.
"Perhaps we may be able to avoid details," I said, slowly. "I will let you decide that."
"How?" with a gasp of relief or surprise, I could hardly guess which.
"Listen. Some time ago two girls disappeared from a little northern community, and I was one of the detectives employed to find them. I need not go into details, since you know so much about the case. In the course of the investigation, we inquired pretty closely into the character of the company kept by those two young ladies, and learned that a Miss Amy Holmes had been a schoolmate of the missing girls. Afterward, this same Amy Holmes and a Miss Grace Ballou made an attempt to escape from the Ballou farm house. The scheme was in part frustrated, but Amy Holmes escaped. Mrs. Ballou furnished us with a photo of Miss Amy Holmes, and when I saw it _I knew it_!"
This time it was an interjection of unmistakable terror. It gave me my cue.
"I knew it for the picture of a young woman who had--committed--a crime; a young woman who would be well received at police headquarters, and I said to myself I will _now_ find this young person who calls herself Amy Holmes."