Monty shook his head gravely. “Mighty anxious, believe me.”
Whatever hope she might have cherished that Taylor was wrong, and this man she liked so much was innocent, faded when she heard the figure two hundred thousand dollars. That was the amount of the necklace’s value, exactly. And she had wondered at Monty’s strained, nervous manner. Now it became very clear that he was Denby’s accomplice, dreading, and perhaps knowing as well as she, that the house was surrounded.
She told herself that the law was just, and those who disobeyed were guilty and should be punished; and that she was an instrument, impersonal, and as such, without blame. But uppermost in her mind was the thought of black treachery, of mean intriguing ways, and the certainty that this night would see the end of her friendship with the man she had sworn to deliver to the ruthless, cruel, insatiable Taylor. It was, as Taylor told her, a question of deciding between two people. She could help, indirectly, to convict a clever smuggler, or she could send her weak, dependent, innocent eighteen-year-old sister to jail. And she had said to Taylor: “I have no choice.”
Denby looked at her a little puzzled. In Paris, a year ago, she had seemed a sweet, natural girl, armed with a certain dignity that would not permit men to become too friendly on short acquaintance. And here it seemed that she was almost trying to flirt with him in a wholly different way. He was not sure that her other manner was not more in keeping with the ideal he had held of her since that first meeting.
“I should be anxious, too,” she said, “if I had all that money at stake. But all the same, don’t be too long. I think I may ask you for that cigarette presently.”
CHAPTER TEN
DENBY stood looking after her. “Bully, bully girl,” he muttered.
“Anything wrong, Steve?” Monty inquired, not catching what he said.
Denby turned to the speaker slowly; his thoughts had been more pleasantly engaged.
“I don’t understand why they haven’t done anything,” he answered. “I’m certain we were followed at the dock. When I went to send those telegrams I saw a man who seemed very much disinterested, but kept near me. I saw him again when we had our second blow-out near Jamaica. It might have been a coincidence, but I’m inclined to think they’ve marked us down.”