doesn't
know it was he I shot at that night!"

"It might do him good if he did!" I felt like shaking her, if I had not
wanted to take her in my arms more. "Can't you see you've no reason to
worry about Hutton? If Dudley told the truth to-night, and he stole
those emeralds and shifted the crime on to you, it's you who have the
whip hand of him!"

"But he didn't," Paulette exclaimed wildly. "He wasn't near the
Houstons' house! It's mad of Dudley to think so. I know he believes it,
but--oh, it's mad all the same! And even if Dick did take those
emeralds--though I can't see how it was possible--it wouldn't clear me!
It would only mean he was able to drag me into it, somehow."

"But you never touched the necklace!" For I knew that.

"No," simply, "but I'm afraid of Dick all the more. If he did take it,
to get me into his power"--she caught my arm in her slim hands I had
always known were so strong--"can't you see he's _got_ me?" she said
between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold?
If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I----Oh, can't
you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?--not able to do anything? I can
make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"--the passion in her voice
kept it down to a whisper--"it's not only that I'm afraid he can make
things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne: I'm
afraid--_for Dudley_!"

The two last words gave me a jar. I would have given most of the world
to ask if she loved Dudley, but I didn't dare: I suppose a girl could
love a man with a face like an egg, if she owed him enough. But whether
she cared for him or not, "By gad, you've got to tell Dudley that
Hutton's here," I said roughly, because I was sick with the knowledge
that anyhow she did not love me.

"Tell him?" Paulette gasped through the dark that was like a curtain
between us. "I've told him twenty times--all I dared. And he wouldn't
listen to a word I said. Ask him: he'll tell you that's true!"

I had no doubt it was. Even on business Dudley's brain ran on lines of
its own; you might tell him a thing till you were black in the face, and
he would never believe it. Lately, between drugs and drink, he was past
assimilating any impersonal ideas at all. Macartney was so worried about
him that he'd told off Baker, one of his new men, to go wherever Dudley
went. I had no use for the man: he was a black and white looking devil
and slim as they make them, in my opinion,