Part 11 (1/2)

”Oh, what a weight of care you have taken from my mind!” she cried. ”I can rest now in peace and comfort without thinking that every moment may be my last on earth.”

”But if they come they may kill me. What then?” Durham asked, with a smile which had more than amus.e.m.e.nt in it.

She flashed her brilliant glance at him, raising her eyes quickly to his and drooping them slowly behind the shelter of the dark, heavy lashes.

”No,” she said softly. ”You are too brave a man--they will not dare to come while you are here.”

”And so your presentiment pa.s.ses into thin air?” he said.

”It's relieved,” she said. ”Maybe I'm too timid--that affair has upset me so much. Now tell me, do you really think you know who the thieves are?”

She sat down at the table opposite to him and leaned her chin on her hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she repeated her question.

”Do you really think you will find out who the thieves are?” she exclaimed.

”One I already know,” he replied, fixing his eyes on her as his square jaws set firm in his effort to refrain from allowing his features to relax into the smile which was hovering so near.

For a moment the lines round her eyes hardened, and the sparkle became a flash before it melted again as a rippling laugh came from her lips.

”How terribly stern you look!” she cried in a mocking voice. ”Do you ever think of anything but your work, Mr. Durham?”

”Not when I have anything at all difficult on hand,” he replied.

”Then this does puzzle you?”

”It has its difficulties; but, for all that, it is a problem I shall solve.”

Again the rippling laugh rang through the room.

”Why, of course! Was there ever a case the police had in hand where they did not have a clue at the very beginning?”

”Several,” he answered. ”A clever, resourceful criminal, Mrs. Burke, always has the advantage. Where they fail ultimately is in becoming too sure of themselves and too forgetful of the network of snares laid to entrap them and always waiting to trip them.”

”I suppose that is so,” she said slowly. ”I suppose that is so. Poor things--I can't help pitying them, Mr. Durham. One never knows what lies behind their wickedness--what it was which first sent them rolling down the slope that ends--often--on the gallows.”

She shuddered as she spoke, averting her face from him.

”This is a dismal subject,” he exclaimed. ”Let us change it. Will you answer the questions I want to ask you about the bank affair?”

”Ask them. Oh! ask the wretched things and let me get it over. Sure I begin to hate the mention of it,” she exclaimed as she shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

Without apparently heeding her objection, he asked her to say whether anyone was in the pa.s.sage as she pa.s.sed from the dining-room to the entrance of the bank.

”Of course there was. Didn't I tell Brennan at once?” she said.

”Who was it?”

”His wife.”

”Brennan's?”