“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.
More clearly still did Dunn realize that the faintest breath of suspicion stirring in the other's mind that he knew of what was hidden in the attic would mean certain death and just such another neat little hole bored through heart or brain as that he had seen showing in the forehead of his dead friend.
“Haven't you, though?” Deede Dawson repeated. “The bedrooms—the attics—that's all?”
“Yes, sir, that's all, take my oath that's all,” Dunn repeated earnestly, as if he wished very much to impress on his captor that he had searched bedrooms and attics thoroughly, but not these downstairs rooms.