When
the cataract of diamonds sprang out of the case, however, I felt her
limp body straighten itself. I felt her pulses leap. I felt her begin to
_live_. She had drunk a draught of hope and life, and, fortified by it,
was gathering all her scattered forces together for a new fight, if
fight she must again.
The Commissary of Police turned the leather case wrong side out. It was
empty. There had been nothing inside but the necklace: not a card, not a
scrap of paper.
"Where, then, is the document?" Crestfallen, he put the question half to
himself, half to Maxine de Renzie.
"What document?" she asked, too wise to betray relief in voice or face.
Hearing the heavy tone, seeing the shamed face, the hanging head that
lay against my shoulder, who--knowing a little less than I did of the
truth--would have dreamed that in her soul she thanked God for a
miracle? Even I would not have been sure, had I not felt the life
stealing back into her half-dead body.
"The contents of the case are not what I came here to find," admitted
the Enemy.
"I do not know what you came to find, but you have made me suffer
horribly," said Maxine. "You have been very cruel to a woman who has
done nothing to deserve such humiliation.
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