Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/28

 "Why ask me?" repeated the woman for the second time. It was only too plain that she was fencing.

"Because you know," was Blake's curt retort. He let the gray-irised eyes drink in the full cup of his determination. Some slowly accumulating consciousness of his power seemed to intimidate her. He could detect a change in her bearing, in her speech itself.

"Jim, I can't tell you," she slowly asserted. "I can't do it!"

"But I 've got 'o know," he stubbornly maintained. "And I 'm going to."

She sat studying him for a minute or two. Her face had lost its earlier arrogance. It seemed troubled; almost touched with fear. She was not altogether ignorant, he reminded himself, of the resources which he could command.

"I can't tell you," she repeated. "I 'd rather you let me go."

The Second Deputy's smile, scoffing and melancholy, showed how utterly he ignored