“There is no one to overhear you,” said Kate, tossing aside the silk pillow and resuming her seat. “Mrs. Duffy, who lives here, has gone out of town with her son, and her husband never comes home before evening.”
“Ah, very good,” said Nick.
“As far as I am concerned,” Kate added; “I will not repeat anything you confide to me. You may speak freely.”
“I intend doing so,” Nick replied, with more sinister intonation. “To begin with, however, I wish to know something about yourself.”
“About me?”
“Yes, and about the—Needy Nine,” Nick pointedly added.
Kate Crandall heard him with hardly a change of countenance. There was no apprehensive start, no unmistakable betrayal of how hard she was hit by his ominous words.
Though he thoroughly despised her, Nick could not but admire the nerve of this woman. He could detect only a quick dilation of her searching black eyes and a sudden deeper paleness in her cheeks. These were the only signs of her secret perturbation, and her voice, when she replied, was as steady as his.
“The Needy Nine?” she said inquiringly.
“Yes, the Needy Nine,” Nick repeated.