"Every thing, my dear. We've got him coming and going. We've got him dead to rights. He's a rogue and a thief."
With her hands spread flat on either side of her she raised herself to a sitting posture. Her face, framed in its bush of hair, had a look of strained, almost wild, inquiry.
"Thief!" she exclaimed.
"Yes. It's a honeycooler of a story. Burst out all of a sudden like a night blooming cereus. But before I say a word you've got to promise on everything you hold sacred that you won't breathe a word of it."
"I promise."
"It's only for a little while. It'll be public property in a day or two—Thursday or Friday maybe."
"I'm on. How is he a thief?"
Crowder told her. The story was clear in his head by this time, and he told it well, with the journalist's sense of its drama. As he spoke she drew up her knees and clasping her hands round them sat rigid, now and then as she met his eyes, raised to hers to see if she had caught a point, nodding and breathing a low, "I see—Go on."
When he had finished he looked at her with challenging triumph.
"Well—isn't it all I said it was?"