As soon as he was gone, she ran to the window, her face no longer strained but almost joyous, and when she was assured that none watched her, lowered the curtain as a signal.
Taylor must have been close at hand, so promptly did he respond to her summons.
“Well, have you got him?” he cried sharply as he entered. “Where is he—where’s the necklace?”
“You were wrong,” she said triumphantly, “there is no necklace. I knew I was right.”
“You’re crazy,” he retorted brutally.
“You said it was in the tobacco-pouch,” she reminded him, “and I’ve searched and it isn’t there at all.”
“You’re trying to protect him,” Taylor snarled. “You’re stuck on him, but you can’t lie to me and get away with it.”
“No, no, no,” she protested. “Look, here’s the very pouch, and there’s no necklace in it.”
“How did you get hold of it?” he snapped.
It was a moment of bitter failure for the deputy-surveyor. The sign for which he had waited patiently, and eagerly, too, despite his impassive face, was, after all, nothing but a token of disappointment. He had hoped, now that events had given him a hold over Miss Cartwright, to find her well-fitted for a sort of work that would have been peculiarly useful to his service. But her ready credulity in another man’s honesty proved one of two things. Either that she lacked the intuitive knowledge to be a useful tool or else that she was deliberately trying to deceive him. But none had seen Daniel Taylor show that he realized himself in danger of being beaten.