"Well, he didn't," Collins returned composedly. "I bet he's looking for her right now, and I'm dead sure he won't find her. Charliet wasn't born yesterday: he'll bring her here all right."
"I'll wait ten minutes," I gave in abruptly, and because I knew I couldn't do anything else till I had filled my empty stomach. But there was something I wanted to know. "What did you mean, just now, about not being sure of me—with Hutton?"
Dunn spoke up for the first time. "It was Miss Paulette; we thought it was you we heard her talking to, two nights in the dark. So when she drove off to Caraquet with you and the gold, after we'd heard her say she couldn't trust you—at least, the man we thought was you—we didn't know whether you were in with Hutton or not, or what kind of a game you were playing."
"Me?" I swore blankly. "I suppose it never struck you that I believed the man playing the game was Collins—till you both disappeared, and I decided it must be some one who never was employed around this mine!"
"Well, I'm hanged," said Collins, and suddenly knocked the wits out of me by muttering that at least we'd both had sense enough to know that Miss Valenka was square.
"Valenka? D'ye mean you knew who she was, too?" I stuttered.
"Dunn did," Collins nodded. "I only knew Hutton. But I knew more than my prayers about him, and Dunn told me about the girl. So we sort of kept guard for her and watched you and Hutton—till the day we had the row with him."
"In the mine! He told me." Only half of me heard him. The rest was listening for the sound of footsteps. But the place was still.
"In Thompson's stope," Collins corrected drily. "You see, we thought you and Macartney-Hutton were working together, and we didn't see our way to tackling the two of you at once. So when you went off to Caraquet with Miss Paulette, we thought we'd get Hutton cleared out of this before you got back again. We kind of let him see us leave work in the mine and sneak into the old stope. When he came after us, we dropped on him with what we knew about him; and between us we knew a deal. We gave him his choice about leaving the neighborhood that minute, or our going straight to Wilbraham and telling who he was and what he was there for—which was where we slipped up! He'd the gall to tell us to our faces that we'd no pull over him, because we were doing private work in Thompson's stope and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And—that rather gave us the check."
"But—why? There wasn't six cents' worth of gold there to steal!"