narily entrusted to me."

"I daresay I might have done so," returned I, indifferently, "if you
had been present when I handed them to Mr. White. Don't you regard
them as being safe with him?"

"To be sure--they could n't be in safer hands. But it is the
implication that I no longer command or deserve the confidence--"

"Pooh!" I unceremoniously cut in. "Burke, if I were you, I 'd be a
little careful how I emphasized an attitude of innocence toward this
affair. There 's no implication or innuendo about; I 'm only too
willing to tell you frankly that I am something more than suspicious of
you. I _know_ that you have n't told everything you might about this
murder. You 're lucky that I have n't run you in before this. Is that
plain enough?"

He recoiled a step, with a queer, hissing intake of breath.

"Swift," he muttered, "I have half a mind to make you prove your words."

"Do," said I, grimly. "I would like nothing better."

He stared at me so long that it gave me an uncanny feeling. I broke
the silence with a blunt demand.

"Burke, where 's that ruby?"

"Don't try to browbeat me," he said through his teeth. "Please
understand that you are not dealing with a criminal, and I don't
propose to be bulldozed by any fat-witted sleuths."

I laughed in his face.

"Maybe it will interest you to know that I have wit enough to contrast
your secretive manner with Maillot's willingness to talk, and to draw
the one consistent inference therefrom."

There is a nervous affliction of the eyes, called by pathologists
nystagmus, which is characterized by a perpetual weaving to and fro of
the eyeballs; it is impossible for the unfortunate victim to fix his
look upon a given point without the greatest effort. When the
attention of such a one is not centred the swaying of his eyes goes on
incessantly.

So it was now with Burke's pale orbs and his lean death's head. He
seemed to be searching, forever feverishly searching, for something
that he could not find. There was something positively repulsive about
the man in this new guise, although the change was so subtle that I was
unable to define it. At last he spoke.

"Swift," he said, scarcely above a whisper, "I 'm a peaceable man;
nevertheless I resent your aspersions. I can't do it openly in the
circumstances; this murder ties my hands; but--damn you!" he suddenly
spat at me, "if my silence would hang Royal Maillot, I 'd bite my
tongue out before I 'd ever utt