The Rider of Waroona Part 11

"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?"

"Brennan's! No! The bank manager's; she was just outside the door--listening, I'll be bound."

"You are sure of that?"

"Sure that she was listening? Well, isn't she a woman? What else would she be doing?"

"That is all I want to ask you," he said quietly.

She looked at him wonderingly.

"All?" she asked. "You rode out from Waroona merely to ask me that bit of a question?"

He nodded.

"Well, then," she exclaimed, "if that's how you're going to catch the thieves it's good-bye to my papers."

The eyes which met his told of anger and indignation.

"You expected a rigid cross-examination?" he asked, with a smile.

"I expected questions which would have some bearing on the affair," she retorted.

"Your experience in this sort of thing is somewhat limited, Mrs. Burke.

A tangled skein is unravelled by following a mere thread, not by tearing at the entire ma.s.s. I have hold of a thread, and I am following it."

"And where will it lead you?"

"Where? It does not matter where so long as the tangle is made straight."

"While my papers and my----"

"You need not be uneasy," he interrupted. "They are just as safe as though you held them in your hand."

"Safe for those who stole them," she retorted, with a short, satirical laugh.

"Safe for you," he answered. "You have not been long enough in the country to realise how complete a system of detection we have here. I have never felt more certain of securing both the culprits and the stolen property than I am in this case."

Again she gave a short, satirical laugh.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Of course. You know exactly where the thieves are and where they have hidden what was taken and also where they are hiding. You can put your hands on them whenever you like. One does not need to come to Australia to hear that sort of romance, Mr. Durham; I hoped rather that one would not hear it in Australia, but you police are as capable at blundering and bungling and bluffing here as elsewhere."

"I am neither bungling nor bluffing," he answered quietly.

"You are doing both," she replied warmly. "What are you doing here now?

Why have you come bothering me with ridiculous questions? What can I tell you more than the bank people themselves? Or is it that you think I am the thief? Why don't you say at once you suspect me--old Patsy and myself? Sure it would be in keeping with the rest of it--wasting your time and mine by coming out to ask who was in the pa.s.sage when I left the dining-room! What has that to do with my loss? Do you think I care whether Mrs. Eustace heard what I told her husband? I'd say it to her face if she likes, just as I said it to his. I told him he ought to be arrested, and I say so to you. I'd arrest him and his wife and his a.s.sistant and his servant--everyone in the place if I had my way."

He was watching the light flas.h.i.+ng in her eyes, watching and admiring.