“No, on the contrary, every faculty is on the alert,” retorted John Hale. “By God, to think of Robert’s trying to shield Richards by making an innocent girl appear guilty. It’s an outrage and I’ll expose every rotten one of you—”
“Steady, John!” Latimer stepped in front of him. “Go easy! You shan’t insult Judith in my presence.”
“Don’t you interfere. Judith shall learn the truth about her rascally husband”—he waved the watch in front of the white-faced girl. “Richards took this watch from Austin as he took your Valve bonds from your father’s safe. I’ve got the goods on him, and he’ll swing for Austin’s murder.”
“He will not!” Judith’s voice rose, clear and strong, and silenced even her overwrought uncle. Her eyes glowed with passionate anger as she faced him. “You dare to threaten me, Uncle John?”
“I dare to protect Polly Davis from underhand, blackguardly treatment,” he replied. “It is a frame-up.”
“Is it?” Judith’s smile was dangerous. “Go back to Polly and take her that watch. Tell her there is a link missing in the chain you are trying to forge and I have it, although she may have the Mizpah locket. Go, both of you!”
John Hale started as if stung. Then, without a word he pocketed the watch and, seizing Latimer’s arm, dragged him out of the room.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DANCING SILHOUETTES
On hearing the slam of the front door behind her uncle and Frank Latimer, Judith went to the windowed alcove of the library overlooking the street on which their house faced and, concealed from the view of passers-by, she watched John Hale and his companion enter the former’s touring car and drive off. Not until the car had turned the corner did she relax her vigilant attitude, then, turning, she paced up and down the floor. She could not keep still. Her nerves were aquiver, her brain on fire.
How had Austin’s antique watch come into her husband’s possession? Again and again her lips framed the same question—with but the one answer. Richards must have taken it from Austin’s dead body. But why—why? Austin was wearing the watch when murdered; that she could swear to. Had she not taken the Mizpah locket from its chain in that awful moment when she had first discovered his body and left the watch with its dangling broken chain in his pocket?