"The goods from the Abbey. I won't say you wasn't smart to get on to the cache, and nab the box out o' the cave. Only you wasn't quite smart enough—savez? The fellers laugh best who laugh last. And we're those fellers!"
"You spring to conclusions," I said. But my voice sounded small in my own ears—small and thin as the voice of a child. (Oh, to know if this brute spoke truth about his brother and Roger Fane and the car, or if he were fighting me with my own weapon—Bluff!)
Henry Barlow laughed aloud—though he mightn't laugh last! "Do you call yourself a 'conclusion'? I'll give you just two minutes, my handsome lady, to make up your mind. If you don't tell me then where to lay me 'and on you know what, I'll spring at you."
By the wolf-glare in his eyes and the boldness of his tone I feared that his game wasn't wholly bluff. By irony of Fate, he had turned the tables on me. Thinking the power was all on my side and Roger's, I'd walked into a trap. And if, indeed, Roger had been struck down from behind, I did not see any way of escape for him or me. I had let out that I knew too much.
Even if I turned coward, and told Hank Barlow that the late contents of his uncle's coffin were on board the Naiad, he could not safely allow Roger or me to go free. But I wouldn't turn coward! To save the secret of the Abbey treasures meant saving the secret of what that coffin now held. My sick fear turned to hot rage. "Spring!" I cried. "Kill me if you choose. My coffin will keep a secret, which yours couldn't do!"
He glared, nonplussed by my violence.
"Devil take you, you cat!" he grunted.
"And you, you hound!" I cried.
His eyes flamed. I think fury would have conquered prudence, and he would have sprung then, to choke my life out, perhaps. But he hadn't locked the door. At that instant it swung open, and a whirlwind burst in. The whirlwind was a man. And the man was James Courtenaye.