Her hands lifted now and pressed hard against her temples, which had begun to throb. Yes, and she must do even more than that. There had been not only treachery on her father's part toward Dave Henderson, there had been treachery and trickery toward the police in an effort to cover up the stolen money; and, tacitly at least, she had been an accomplice in that, and therefore morally she was as much a thief as that man next door, as much a thief as her father had intended to be—unless now, with all her strength, with all her might, she strove to undo and make restitution for a crime in which she had had a part. If it lay within her power, not adventitiously, not through haphazard, but through the employment toward that end of every faculty of brain and wit and courage she possessed, she had no choice now but to get possession of that money and return it to the authorities. Her conscience was brutally frank on that point, and brutally direct; there was no room to temporize, no halfway course—and here was the final, ultimate and supreme test.
Her face in the darkness whitened. Her lips moved silently. It was strength and help she asked now. Her mind was already made up. She would fight for, and, in any way or by any means that offered, get that money, and return it. And that meant that she must watch Dave Henderson, too. There was no other way of getting it. He alone knew where it was, and since it was not to be expected that he would voluntarily give it up, there seemed left but one alternative—to take it from him.
Her mind was almost overpoweringly swift now in its flow of tormenting thoughts. It seemed an impossible situation that she should warn him of danger from one source, only to do to him again what—no! His life was not in danger with her; that was the difference. But—but it was not easy to bring herself to this. She was alone now, with no bonds between herself and any living soul, except those strange, incongruous bonds between herself and that man in the next room whom she was, in the same breath, both trying to save and trying to outwit. Why was it that he was a thief? They could have been friends if he were not a thief; and she would have been so glad of a friend now, and she had liked him, and he did not look like a thief. Perhaps her mother had liked Nicolo Capriano in the early days, and perhaps Nicolo Capriano then had not looked like a thief, and perhaps her mother had counted on turning Nicolo Capriano into an honest man, and——
Teresa rose abruptly to her feet. She felt the hot color flood her face. She saw the man as he had stood that first night on the threshold of her father's room, and he had looked at her so long and steadily—and there had been no offence in his look. She caught her breath sharply. Her mind was running riot! It must not do that! She had many things to accomplish tonight, and she would need all her wits.
She forced her thoughts violently into another channel. How long would it be before this Iron Tavern closed for the night, and Dago George was in bed and asleep? She did not trust Dago George! She knew him as one utterly without scruples, and one who was insidiously crafty and dangerously cunning. She began to rehearse again the scene that she had had with him—and suddenly drew herself up tensely. Why, at the last moment as he had left the room, had he reverted to her father's death, and why had he waited until then, when it should naturally have been one of his first questions, to inquire—so plausibly—when her father's death had taken place?
Her lips grew suddenly hard. Nine days! She had told him nine days. Was there any significance in that—to Dago George, or to herself? She had been delayed in leaving San Francisco by her father's funeral. Dave Henderson had left there several days earlier, but he had only arrived here at Dago George's to-night. True, the difference in time might be accounted for through Dave Henderson's presumed necessity of travelling under cover; but, equally, it might not. Had Dago George thought of that—as she was thinking of it now? Was it possible that Dave Henderson had already got that money, and had come here for refuge with it; that it was now, at this moment, in that next room there, and that, below stairs, Dago George, too, was sitting, waiting for the hours to pass, and sleep to come to all but himself!
She went mechanically to the window, and stood for a moment staring out upon a vista of dark, shadowy buildings that made jagged, ill-defined points against the sky-line—and then, with a sudden start, she raised the window cautiously, soundlessly, inch by inch, and leaned out. Yes, she was right! The iron platform of a fire-escape was common to her room and to the room next door.
For another moment she stood there, and then returned softly across the room to her chair.
“It is too early yet!” she whispered—and, with her chin in her hands, settled back in her chair, and stared into the blackness.