Miss Knowles laughed a little.
“I’m not quite sure whether you are complimenting us or no,” said she. “But I don’t agree with you at any rate. No woman, for instance, could have done what you did last night.”
Bat shook his head.
“She could,” stated he. “What is there to walking quietly down a dark hall? Don’t you think a woman would have the nerve to do that?”
Calmly he studied the beautiful face before him, and he saw a deeper tint creep into the pink of her cheeks.
“Oh, perhaps that,” said she.
“And more,” insisted Bat. “Much more. What did I do but hold a quiet conversation with the burglar as he went about his work. Is that too much for a woman to do? I’ll venture that one of them has talked just as quietly with a housebreaker, and almost under the same conditions, before now.”
The blue eyes of Miss Knowles fixed themselves upon him in a wide open stare. There was a smile upon her lips, but in the eyes he could see something else—something very like fear.
Campe, as was usual with him, had grown absent-minded, and brooding; apparently his mind was filled with suspicions as to the purpose of the supposed prowler of the morning; at any rate he took no part in the conversation; indeed, he did not seem to hear it.
It was the voice of Miss Hohenlo which broke the silence.