“I’d set my heart on a million,” she replied; “but if you’re satisfied, I ought to be. You think girls are funny to be always thinking of looks. How can we help it? We’re never really in anything; we have to stand one side and see the boys do things.”
“Fighting, for instance,” Ben remarked.
They had retraced their steps, and were again at the entrance of the Works. Mundon still sat on the fence, thoughtfully gazing at the nailed gates. The mule was wistfully looking at them, too, with an injured air; as indeed was quite fitting in a tenant who had been evicted.
“Good-night,” said Ben. “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” Beth replied. Then she added in an undertone, “Don’t tell him,”—she indicated Mundon,—“that I’m going to listen.” She turned quickly away, before Ben had time to reply.
Through the long hours of the night, as Ben sat in the shadow of a wall across the street from the Works, he had plenty of time for reflection. Although he had indignantly refused to believe the imputation against Mundon’s honesty, still it kept persistently recurring to him.
“Can it be possible that he was in with that smuggling gang, and that fear of personal safety made him use me as a catspaw to inform on them?” he asked himself, but dismissed this as being highly improbable. Mundon’s surprise when the opium was discovered had been too genuine to be doubted.
Besides, had he been a party to the smuggling, by exposing it he would have put an end to the business in the future, as far as he was concerned. The Custom House authorities had held a theory that he had been one of the ring, from the fact that no one came to remove the opium. As an offset to this Mundon maintained that one or more of the Government employees must have been in with the smugglers and warned them. It was a block-puzzle, the pieces of which Ben placed in many different positions as the night wore on.
How long that night seemed to him! His brain was too excited to permit sleep to trouble him, and his position harassed him.
About two o’clock in the morning he saw a figure stealing along in the shadow of the building. The moon was shining and Ben could see that the man stopped and looked around, as if to make sure that he was not observed.