"
Cervera's eyes emitted a single swift, fiery gleam, and her red lips
drew closer. Yet she cried, still pleasantly:
"What do you mean by that, Detective Carter? Is it a joke?"
"You'll find it no joke."
"If it is, sir, I don't see the point."
"You will have a chance to look for it at the Tombs," replied Nick, with
grim quietude. "Senora Cervera, I want you to go along with me."
"The Tombs! Go with you! What do you mean?"
"I mean that you are now under arrest."
"Arrest! For what?"
"For the murder of a girl named Mary Barton," Nick bluntly rejoined,
ignoring the woman's increasing display of amazement and resentment.
"Mary Barton!" cried Cervera. "I never heard of the girl."
"Nevertheless," said Nick, sternly, "you met her on Fifth Avenue this
afternoon, and gave her a jewel casket containing a venomous snake,
which you had stolen from the den of Pandu Singe, and by which means you
inadvertently killed Mary Barton, instead of another for whom your
infernal design was intended. I am aware of all of your late movements,
senora, you see."
"I see that you are a devil!" cried Cervera, with a sudden passionate
outburst. "How dare you come here with such a story as that?"
For a moment at least, the fact that Nick already had discovered nearly
every detail of her infamous crime--though committed only a few hours
before--almost completely unnerved her, and her changing countenance,
her irrepressible outbreak, and the violent agitation of her lithe,
nervous figure, were tokens of self-betrayal by no means unobserved by
Nick.
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