it without a word, and seemed to plunge it deep
somewhere into his very breast. Then he slapped his coat on the outside.

All this was done without the exchange of a single glance; they were like
two people looking out for the first sight of a desired goal. It was not
till the hansom swung round a corner and towards the bridge that Ossipon
opened his lips again.

"Do you know how much money there is in that thing?" he asked, as if
addressing slowly some hobgoblin sitting between the ears of the horse.

"No," said Mrs Verloc. "He gave it to me. I didn't count. I thought
nothing of it at the time. Afterwards--"

She moved her right hand a little. It was so expressive that little
movement of that right hand which had struck the deadly blow into a man's
heart less than an hour before that Ossipon could not repress a shudder.
He exaggerated it then purposely, and muttered:

"I am cold. I got chilled through."

Mrs Verloc looked straight ahead at the perspective of her escape. Now
and then, like a sable streamer blown across a road, the words "The drop
given was fourteen feet" got in the way of her tense stare. Through her
black veil the whites of her big eyes gleamed lustrously like the eyes of
a masked woman.

Ossipon's rigidity had something business-like, a queer official
expression. He was heard again all of a sudden, as though he had
released a catch in order to speak.

"Look here! Do you know whether your--whether he kept his account at the
bank in his own name or in some other name."

Mrs Verloc turned upon him her masked face and the big white gleam of her
eyes.

"Other name?" she said thoughtfully.

"Be exact in what you say," Ossipon lectured in the swift motion of the
hansom. "It's extremely important. I will explain to you. The bank has
the numbers of these notes. If they were paid to him in his own name,
then when his--his death becomes known, the notes may serve to track us
since we have no other money. You have no other money on you?"

She shook her head negatively.

"None whatever?" he insisted.

"A few coppers."

"It would be dangerous in that case. The money would have then to be
dealt specially with. Very specially. We'd have perhaps to lose more
than half the amount in order to get these notes changed in a certain
safe place I know of in Paris. In the other case I mean if he had his
account and got paid out under some other name--say Smith, for
instance--the money