“You’ve got mighty few minutes, woman, to tell us what we want to know. We have others here who could tell us, but whose traps are tightly closed. We have not killed[Pg 37] them, lest we might kill our golden goose; but understand this: We’ll end them and you, too, unless you give us the information which——”
Kate Crandall checked him with a haughty gesture.
“One moment, Mr. Gridley, if that’s your name,” she said coldly. “I can tell you with very few words all that I know. You will believe me, I think, though this man refused to do so.”
She glanced at Magill, but he made no comments.
“You were seen two nights ago by him and Morgan,” said Gridley, sternly eying her. “They had followed a girl to the home of a clergyman named Maybrick. They saw her look through his library window and then enter his house. They would have listened at his window to her interview with him—but you got there first, and they could not do so without taking risks then thought to be needless. We must know what the girl told him. It’s up to you to tell us. You heard what she said, or you would not have remained to listen.”
“That is true,” Kate coldly admitted. “I heard all that she said to Mr. Maybrick.”
“Tell me,” said Gridley sternly.
“She told him that her father had recently died; that he was a criminal and had forced her to be one, but that she now was determined to reform. She told him that her father was one of a gang that had recently robbed a bank, and that he had had charge of the stolen funds and had buried them, confiding to her their hiding place while on his deathbed.”
“That’s the point,” said Gridley. “That’s the very thing we want to know—where the plunder is hidden.”
“I cannot tell you,” said Kate.