She rose, shaking her fur stole into place about her dainty person, and, whipping out a tiny mirror from her vanity case, she applied a rouge stick to her already scarlet lips.

“No—­no—­” and Eunice wailed despairingly.  “Don’t go, Fifi, I —­oh, I don’t know how I feel toward you!  You see—­I will speak plainly—­you see, it was my acquaintance with you that caused the trouble—­mostly—­between me and San.”

“Thought it was money matters—­his stinginess, you know.”

“He wasn’t stingy!  He wouldn’t give me an allowance, but he was generous in every other way.  And that’s why—­”

“Why you came to my ‘gambling house’ to try to pick up a little ready cash!  I know.  But now looky here, Eunice, you’ve got to decide—­either you’re with me or agin me!  I won’t have any blow hot, blow cold!  You’re friends with Fifi Desternay—­or—­she’s your enemy!”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say!  You like me, you’ve always liked me.  Now, stand by me, and I’ll stand by you.”

“How?”

“You think I can’t!  Well, madame, you’re greatly mistaken!  That big blundering fool of a detective person has been to see me—­”

“Shane?”

“The same.  And—­he grilled me pretty thoroughly as to our going to see ‘Hamlet’ and whether we talked the poison scene over—­ and so forth and so on.  In a word, Eunice Embury, I hold your life in my hands!”

Fifi held out her pretty little hands, dramatically.  She still stood, her white fur scarf hanging from one shoulder, her small turban of red breast feathers cocked at a jaunty angle above her straight brows, and one tiny slippered foot tapping decidedly on the floor.

“Yes, ma’am, in my two hands,—­me—­Fifi!  If I tell all we said about that poisoning of the old ‘Hamlet’ gentleman, through his ear—­you know what we said, Eunice Embury—­you know how we discussed the impossibility of such a murder ever being discovered—­you know if I should give Shane a full account of that talk of ours—­the life of Madame Embury wouldn’t be worth that!”

A snap of a dainty thumb and finger gave a sharp click that went straight through Eunice’s brain, and made her gasp out a frightened “Oh!”

“Yes, ma’am, oh! all you like to—­you can’t deny it!  Shane came to see me three times.  I almost told him all the last time, for you steadily refused to see me—­until to-day.  And now, to-day, I put it to you, Eunice Embury, do you want me for friend—­or foe?”

Fifi’s blue eyes glittered, her red lips closed in a tight line, and her little pointed face was as the face of a wicked sprite.  Eunice stood, surveying her.  Tall, stately, beautiful, she towered above her guest, and looked down on her with a fine disdain.

Eunice’s eyes were stormy, not glittering—­desperate rather than defiant—­she seemed almost like a fierce, powerful tiger appraising a small but very wily ferret.