question.

"I am waiting," began Pollard.

"Waiting for what?" she demanded. "Until he can have had time to
squander what is rightfully yours, until there be no chance of getting
it back or bringing such a man to justice!"

"You little fire-eater!" he laughed at her. "Come with me in here." He
turned and led the way into the room just off the hall and at the front
of the house where he had his office. When the door was closed behind
him he dropped into a chair, his face a little white and drawn from the
exertion of his ride, the first he had had since the girl had come. "I
want to talk with you, and I don't want anybody, Mrs. Riddell in
particular, to overhear. She's too fond of talking."

Winifred stood across the room from him, her quirt in her hand switching
restlessly at the carpet, her eyes showing a little sympathy for his
illness but more anger at Buck Thornton.

"You ask why I don't bring that man to reckoning, and I tell you that I
am waiting. Then you ask, for what?" He leaned a little forward, and she
saw again in his eyes the look she had surprised there on that first day
she had come to Hill's Corners, a look of hate and of a sinister
satisfaction. "Waiting for the time when I am sure there will be no
loophole for him to crawl through! You are ready to go into a court room
and swear that he robbed you; that is a great deal and it will go a long
way toward convicting him. But it isn't enough. It's only your word
against his; don't you see? He will swear that he did _not_ rob you,
won't he? We can prove that you left Dry Town with the five thousand
dollars; we might even prove that you didn't bring it on to me. But we
couldn't prove, beyond the last shadow of doubt, that you didn't lose
it, or that somebody else didn't rob you of it."

"But," she asked, frowning in her perplexity, "what good will it do to
wait?"

"Your evidence," he went on slowly, as though working the thing out for
himself, "is enough to convince eleven jurors out of the twelve; now we
must make sure of the twelfth. How will we do it? One way is to find the
lost bank notes in Thornton's possession. The other way is to get other
evidence to add to yours, cumulative evidence all of which will point
one way, to one conclusion!"

"To one conclusion?" she repeated after him, prompting him, so eager was
she for him to go on.

"To the fact that Buck Thornton is the man who, for six months now, has
been committing the series of crimes,