"Again?" I heard the little start she gave, if I could not see it.
"The night before you and I took the gold out," I answered practically, "when I told you your hair was untidy. I suppose you only thought I knew you had been out of doors, but I heard the man you met leave you and heard you say to yourself that you'd have to get hold of the gold. I didn't know whether you were honest or not then, or when I gave you back your little seal; and not even when you started for Billy Jones's with me. I knew by the time I got there, if I was fool enough to believe it was Collins you were fighting instead of helping. But any fool must see now that Hutton was the only man likely to have followed you out here! I suppose he told you some lie about giving you up for Van Ruyne's necklace, unless you made silence worth while with Dudley's gold?" and her assent made me angry clear through.
"My soul, girl," I burst out, "you balked him about that, even when you knew he'd put that wolf dope in my wagon, and you were risking your life—you put a bullet in him in the swamp—I can't see why you should be worrying to conciliate him by meeting him to-night!"
But she caught me up almost stupidly. "Put a bullet in him? I didn't—you must know I didn't!"
"There was blood in the swamp and on the road!"
I felt her staring at me in the dark. "It wasn't Dick's," she said almost inaudibly. "It must have been some one else's. And—he doesn't know it was he I shot at that night!"
"It might do him good if he did!" I felt like shaking her, if I had not wanted to take her in my arms more. "Can't you see you've no reason to worry about Hutton? If Dudley told the truth to-night, and he stole those emeralds and shifted the crime on to you, it's you who have the whip hand of him!"
"But he didn't," Paulette exclaimed wildly. "He wasn't near the Houstons' house! It's mad of Dudley to think so. I know he believes it, but—oh, it's mad all the same! And even if Dick did take those emeralds—though I can't see how it was possible—it wouldn't clear me! It would only mean he was able to drag me into it, somehow."
"But you never touched the necklace!" For I knew that.
"No," simply, "but I'm afraid of Dick all the more. If he did take it, to get me into his power"—she caught my arm in her slim hands I had always known were so strong—"can't you see he's got me?" she said between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I——Oh, can't you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?—not able to do anything? I can make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"—the passion in her voice kept it down to a whisper—"it's not only that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne: I'm afraid—for Dudley!"