"Where? It does not matter where so long as the tangle is made straight."
"While my papers and my——"
"You need not be uneasy," he interrupted. "They are just as safe as though you held them in your hand."
"Safe for those who stole them," she retorted, with a short, satirical laugh.
"Safe for you," he answered. "You have not been long enough in the country to realise how complete a system of detection we have here. I have never felt more certain of securing both the culprits and the stolen property than I am in this case."
Again she gave a short, satirical laugh.
"Oh, yes," she said. "Of course. You know exactly where the thieves are and where they have hidden what was taken and also where they are hiding. You can put your hands on them whenever you like. One does not need to come to Australia to hear that sort of romance, Mr. Durham; I hoped rather that one would not hear it in Australia, but you police are as capable at blundering and bungling and bluffing here as elsewhere."
"I am neither bungling nor bluffing," he answered quietly.
"You are doing both," she replied warmly. "What are you doing here now? Why have you come bothering me with ridiculous questions? What can I tell you more than the bank people themselves? Or is it that you think I am the thief? Why don't you say at once you suspect me—old Patsy and myself? Sure it would be in keeping with the rest of it—wasting your time and mine by coming out to ask who was in the passage when I left the dining-room! What has that to do with my loss? Do you think I care whether Mrs. Eustace heard what I told her husband? I'd say it to her face if she likes, just as I said it to his. I told him he ought to be arrested, and I say so to you. I'd arrest him and his wife and his assistant and his servant—everyone in the place if I had my way."
He was watching the light flashing in her eyes, watching and admiring. The full rich tones of her voice vibrated with the heat of her words, her bosom rose and fell as in her indignation wave after wave of expression swept across her face, each one intensifying the charm she had for him.