It was she who broke the silence.
“I wonder if it’s true, Bundy?” she said softly.
He felt the blood surge hot into his cheeks. He knew a sudden bitter rebellion at the contempt in those steady eyes, the same bitter rebellion he had known last night in her presence, a rebellion against the fate that caused him, through reason of being the counterpart of some incarnate fiend, to stand in her eyes as that actual fiend himself, as the one who in some way had done her, or hers, irreparable wrong, as the embodiment of all that was loathsome and hideous to her. He was the Rat to her, as to everybody else. The envelope crackled in his fingers, as he clenched his hand. Would he always have to play the Rat—to her! What would that perfect oval face, beautiful even now in its fearless contempt, look like in softer mood?
“Is what true?” he demanded gruffly.
She came toward him across the room.
“That you are really playing the game,” she said slowly. “It’s not much credit to you, of course, since you are doing it through fear, but still——” She shrugged her shoulders daintily, as she stood beside him. “Do you know, Bundy, that lately you seem to have changed somehow. I do not know just how, and I cannot account for it. It puzzles me.”
“Forget it!” growled Billy Kane, alias the Rat. “And I don’t know what game you’re talking about, either!”
“Oh, yes, you do!” she answered. “I told you that I would hold you responsible for any crime committed by your accomplices that it lay within your power to circumvent. That was the chance I gave you, and you seem to be taking it. I thought I would test you out to-night when you might imagine that I was ignorant of what was going on, and that you might, therefore, count on escaping the consequences as far as I was concerned. You were to come here with the Cadger and Gannet at nine o’clock to rob that safe. You are here alone long before that hour, and you have robbed the safe. I presume, at least I am going to give you credit for it, that it is because you are playing the game I referred to, and are checkmating your partners, and preventing the crime from being carried any further.”
There was silence for a moment.
“I think you had better put out that flashlight,” she said.