and you have hidden him somewhere.
We have evidence enough to convict you both."

"Imagination, most of it, I expect." He was inspecting the roses and
inhaling their bloom.

"Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary."

"I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain't it?"

"I want you to tell me what you have done with my father."

He laughed a little and looked at her with eyes that narrowed like those
of a cat basking in the sun. He had something the look of the larger
members of the cat family--the soft long tread, the compact rippling
muscles of a tame panther, and with these the threat that always lies
behind its sleepy wariness.

"You're a young lady of one idea. No use arguing with you, I reckon."

"Not the least use. I've talked with Mrs. Wylie."

He raised his eyebrows. "Do I know the lady?"

"She will know you. That is more to the point."

"Did she say she knew me?" he purred.

"She will say it in court--if it ever comes to that."

"Just what will she say, if you please."

Kate told him in four sentences with a stinging directness that was the
outstanding note of her, that and a fine self-forgetful courage.

"Is that all? Comes to this then, that she says I heard her scream, ran
in, and saved your father's life. Is that a penitentiary offense? I don't
say it oughtn't to be, but is it?"

"You helped the villain take his body into the cellar. You plotted with
him to hold Father a prisoner there."

"Says that, does she--that she overheard us plotting?"

"Of course she did not overhear what you said. You took good care of that.
But she knew you were conspiring."

"Just naturally knew it without overhearing," he derided. "And of course
if I was in a plot I must have been Johnny-on-the-spot a good deal of the
time. Hung round there a-plenty, I expect?"

He had touched on the weak spot of Mrs. Wylie's testimony. The man who had
saved Cullison's life, after a long talk with Blackwell, had gone out of
the Jack of Hearts and had not returned so far as she knew. For her former
husband had sent her on an errand just before the prisoner was taken away
and she did not know who had helped him.

Kate was silent.

"How would this do for an explanation?" he suggested lazily. "We'll say
just for the sake of argument that Mrs. Wylie's story is true, that I did
save your father's life. We'll put it that I did help carry him downstairs
where it was cooler and that I did have a long talk with the fellow