To release her and leave her at liberty might endanger the attainment of both those ends, and so she must remain a prisoner.

"Only," he muttered, "if she knew the attic almost over her head held such a secret, why, didn't she take the chance I gave her of getting hold of my revolver? That she didn't, looks as if she knew nothing."

But then he thought again of the photograph in her room and remembered that agony of grief to which she had been surrendering herself when he first saw her. Now those pa.s.sionate tears of hers seemed to him like remorse.

"I'll leave her where she is," he decided again. "I can't help it; I mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here and have Deede Dawson arrested."

He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reached the landing below he would not even go to make sure that his captive was still secure.

An obscure feeling that he did not wish to see her, and still more that he did not wish her to see him, prevented him.

He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewer precautions to avoid making a noise and still very deep in thought.

For some time he had had but little hope that young Charley Wright still lived.

Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic above had affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos of emotions so that he was for the time much less acutely watchful than usual.

They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembered a thousand incidents of their childhood. They had been at school and college together. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work and play, surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merely some new and specially amusing jest!

Every one had thought well of him, every one had believed that his future career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscure and dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat.

Dunn found himself hardly able to realize that it was really so, and through all the confused medley of his thoughts there danced and flickered his memory of a young and lovely face, now tear-stained, now smiling, now pale with terror, now calmly disdainful.

"Can she have known?" he muttered. "She must have known--she can't have known--it's not possible either way."

He shuddered and as he put his foot on the lowest stair he raised his hands to cover his face as though to shut out the visions that pa.s.sed before him.

Another step forward he took in the darkness, and all at once there flashed upon him the light of a strong electric torch, suddenly switched on.

"Put up your hands," said a voice sharply. "Or you're a dead man."

He looked bewilderedly, taken altogether by surprise, and saw he was faced by a fat little man with a smooth, chubby, smiling face and eyes that were cold and grey and deadly, and who held in one hand a revolver levelled at his heart.

"Put up your hands," this newcomer said again, his voice level and calm, his eyes intent and deadly. "Put up your hands or I fire."

CHAPTER VII. QUESTION AND ANSWER

Dunn obeyed promptly.

There was that about this little fat, smiling man and his unsmiling eyes which proclaimed very plainly that he was quite ready to put his threat into execution.

For a moment or two they stood thus, each regarding the other very intently. Dunn, his hands in the air, the steady barrel of the other's pistol levelled at his heart, knew that never in all his adventurous life had he been in such deadly peril as now, and the grotesque thought came into his mind to wonder if there were room for two in that packing-case in the attic.

Or perhaps no attempt would be made to hide his death since, after all, it is always permissible to shoot an armed burglar.

The clock on the stairs began to strike the hour, and he wondered if he would still be alive when the last stroke sounded.

He did not much think so for he thought he could read a very deadly purpose in the other's cold grey eyes, nor did he suppose that a man with such a secret as that of the attic upstairs to hide was likely to stand on any scruple.

And he thought that if he still lived when the clock finished striking he would take it for an omen of good hope.

The last stroke sounded and died away into the silence of the night.

The revolver was still levelled at his heart, the grim purpose in the other's eyes had not changed, and yet Dunn drew a breath of deep relief as though the worst of the danger was past.

Through his mind, that had been a little dulled by the sudden consciousness of so extreme a peril, thought began again to race with more than normal rapidity and clearness.

It occurred to him, with a sense of the irony of the position, that when he entered this house it had been with the deliberate intention of getting himself discovered by the inmates, believing that to show himself to them in the character of a burglar might gain him their confidence.

It had seemed to him that so he might come to be accepted as one of them and perhaps learn in time the secret of their plans.

The danger that they might adopt the other course of handing him over to the police had not seemed to him very great, for he had his reasons for believing that there would be no great desire to draw the attention of the authorities to Bittermeads for any reason whatever.

But the discovery he had made in the attic changed all that. It changed his plans, for now he could go to the police immediately. And it changed also his conception of how these people were likely to act.

Before, it had not entered his mind to suppose that he ran any special risk of being shot at sight, but now he understood that the only thing standing between him and instant death was the faint doubt in his captor's mind as to how much he knew.

It seemed to him his only hope was to carry out his original plan and try to pa.s.s himself off as the sort of person who might be likely to be useful to the master of Bittermeads.

"Don't shoot, sir," he said, in a kind of high whine. "I ain't done no harm, and it's a fair cop--and me not a month out of Dartmoor Gaol. I shall get a hot 'un for this, I know."

The little fat man did not answer; his eyes were as deadly, the muzzle of his pistol as steady as before.

Dunn wondered if it were from that pistol had issued the bullet that had drilled so neat and round a hole in his friend's forehead. He supposed so.

He said again

"Don't shoot, Mr. Deede Dawson, sir; I ain't done no harm."

"Oh, you know my name, do you, you scoundrel?" Deede Dawson said, a little surprised.

"Yes, sir," Dunn answered. "We always find out as much as we can about a crib before we get to work."

"I see," said Mr. Dawson. "Very praiseworthy. Attention to business and all that. Pray, what did you find out about me?"

"Only as you was to be away tonight, sir," answered Dunn. "And that there didn't seem to be any other man in the house, and, of course, how the house lay and the garden, and so. But I didn't know as you was coming home so soon."

"No, I don't suppose you did," said Deede Dawson.

"I ain't done no harm," Dunn urged, making his voice as whining and pleading as he could. "I've only just been looking round the two top floors--I ain't touched a thing. Give a cove a chance, sir."

"You've been looking round, have you?" said Deede Dawson slowly. "Did you find anything to interest you?"

"I've only been in the bedrooms and the attics," answered Dunn, changing not a muscle of his countenance and thinking boldness his safest course, for he knew well the slightest sign or hint of knowledge that he gave would mean his death. "I'd only just come downstairs when you copped me, sir; I ain't touched a thing in one of these rooms down here."

"Haven't you?" said Deede Dawson slowly, and his face was paler, his eyes more deadly, the muzzle of his pistol yet more inflexibly steady than before.