"Between him and me."
"Don't make too sure. You don't know your Mostyn Scarth as well as I do. I wonder what his next move will be!"
The wonder lit the doctor's face with eager interest, but brighter still was the answering light under the toque with the ass's ears of watered silk.
"I don't know about his next, but I can tell you what his latest move is," said Lady Vera. "He has taken to dogging me all over the place, to see if I don't commit another crime! He was one of the alleged detectives at Pax Monktons Chase!"
"Never!" cried Dollar, taken fairly by surprise. He had forgot almost every feature of the affair in question, except how magnificently Vera Moyle had come out of it. The episode remained in his mind only as the one great dream of his that had come true as yet; the details had disappeared like those of any other dream.
"I happen to know it," said Lady Vera, with some little embarrassment. "I had it from—the other detective."
"Not—" and Dollar stopped to frown—"not Croucher himself?"
"Yes."
"He has dared to speak to you!"
"For the very first time since that night in the train; now do listen, and be fair to the poor fellow. He never was as bad as you thought him; you say yourself that he's a saint compared with Mr. Scarth." Dollar was too savage to smile at this free version of what he had said. "Well, they have fallen out, and Croucher's in a bad way altogether; and he has turned to me for a helping hand—not for money or anything of that kind."