“And what do you know?” he asked indifferently. “What do you know that is likely to interest the police?”
“I ought to have said, perhaps,” she answered after a pause, “what I suspect.”
“Ah, that's so different, isn't it?” he murmured gently. “So very different. You see we all of us suspect so many things.”
She did not answer, for she had said all she had to say and she was afraid that her strength would not carry her further. She began to walk away, but he called her back.
“Oh, how do you think your mother is today?” he asked. “Do you know, her condition seems to me quite serious at times. I wonder if you are overanxious?”
“She is better—much better!” Ella answered, and added with a sudden burst of fiercest, white-hot passion: “But I think it would be better if we had both died before we met you.”
She hurried away, for she was afraid of breaking down, and Deede Dawson smiled the more as he again turned his attention to his chessmen, taking them up and putting them down in turn.
“She's turning nasty,” he mused. “I don't think she'll dare—but she might. She's only a pawn, but a pawn can cause a lot of trouble at times—a pawn may become a queen and give the mate. When a pawn threatens trouble it's best to—remove it.”
He went out and came back a little late and busied himself with a four-move chess problem which absorbed all his attention, and which he did not solve to his satisfaction till past midnight. Then he went upstairs to bed, but at the door of his room he paused and went on very softly up the narrow stairs that led to the attics above.
Outside the one in which Dunn slept, he waited a little till the unbroken sound of regular breathing from within assured him that the occupant slept.