Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/184

 to play with the filigree of wood on the mirror support?

"Then you engineered the stealing of my number—from the hollow under the handle of my cane—some time between Paris and Alexandria?" he challenged in a whisper, his face thrust forward between hunched shoulders.

"No, indeed. It was necessary for you to have—the evidence of your profession when the English searched you at Malta. But the loss of your number is not news; Koch, in Alexandria, has reported, of course."

The girl saw Capper's foot steal forward again. He was not six feet from her now. His wiry body settled itself ever so slightly for a spring. Louisa rose from her chair, one hand still resting on the wooden rosette of the mirror standard. She began to speak in a voice drained of all emotion:

"You followed me here to-night, Billy Capper, imagining in your poor little soul that you were going to do something desperate—something really human and brutal. You came in my window all primed for murder. But your poor little soul all went to water the instant we faced each other. You couldn't nerve