Fyles spoke sharply. He spoke coldly, warningly. He was there with a balance he meant to hold firmly. He was the hardened investigator once more, accustomed to delve in the deepest mire of human nature.
“I tell you he shot Ernie to death. I—saw him!” Annette’s tone was icy. “I can tell to his face what I told you before. And he can’t deny. No!”
The Wolf flashed round at the policeman. And Fyles understood. The man recognized that he had been trapped. But the look was gone in a moment. For the youth was absorbed in the girl he worshipped. He offered no word. He just sat silent, motionless, as the girl went on, patiently enduring the storm of invective she hurled at him.
“You Wolf!” she cried hotly. “You thought you’d get away with it an’ rob me of my man. Oh, you’ve robbed me. Sure you have. But you ain’t gettin’ away with it. No. You’re goin’ to pay good. You’re goin’ to pay all I ken make you. D’you know how much? Maybe you don’t. It’s your life for his. Your life for my man’s. You’re goin’ to hang, cos you shot my Ernie to death!”
The girl ceased speaking. Perhaps she was hoping for reply. Swift, hot retort, the same as it had always been between them. But the Wolf sat gazing at her, and her fury was further goaded by his attitude.
“You crazy fool,” she shrilled at him. “I was to cut him out, cos you said so. I was to marry you! You! Never in your life! Oh, I know. I know the way you did it. Spyin’! That’s it! You spied on me. Ernie an’ me, when we fixed it—you Wolf! But you didn’t figger on me. I was the fool girl to act the way you said. I was a no-account. You planned to get around waitin’ on him, when Ernie came along. That way you’d fix him, an’ no one ’ud be wise. That was you. If you hadn’t a mind to kill him you could have quit your plans, an’ set your liquor play earlier. But it wouldn’t suit the man who figgered to kill Ernie. No. You needed to kill him. So you got around ahead an’ when he came you shot him up from behind, scared to face him. You got him cold. I saw. I was there, too. Watchin’. If I’d had a gun I could have dropped you in your tracks. But I hadn’t a gun. An’ anyway ther’ was better than that, you Wolf. The rope! The rope they’ll set about your fool neck! The rope fer killin’ my man!”
Annette turned to Fyles and gestured in the Wolf’s direction.
“There he is!” she cried, with deadly venom. “That’s your killer. I saw him! I’m witness!”
Neither sound or movement followed the girl’s final denunciation. The Wolf simply looked into Annette’s fiercely accusing eyes. Fyles was watching both. And what he saw stirred him with a feeling of uncertainty.
The girl’s story, and the manner of it’s telling, left him without alternative. He felt it to be real. It rang with the stormy spirit of avenging. This man had murdered her lover. No one could witness her confronting of him and doubt that. Then what was it that gave him his feeling of uncertainty? Was it some unexpressed emotion in the girl, some emotion of which Annette was herself unaware, stirring under the insensate burden of her fury? And if so, what was that emotion? Surely it was not fear? Certainly it was not pity for her old playmate? Fyles wondered. These half-breed women were creatures of mad passion. Was it love for the dead man driving this girl? Or was she actuated solely by a furious desire for revenge?