Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/221

Rh Away in the back seat Grange was rubbing his hands and grinning.

"My, my," he said. "Don't get much change out o' the Corp'ral, does they? I guess that's hit Emmett where he lives all right."

"I do not like to look at Dick," said Andree under breath. "He has the eyes—it is like one animal caught in a trap."

"Why—I thought he was looking pretty gay, myself."

"Ah! Bete!" said Andree, and turned from him with a shrug.

The question Dick had prepared for came next.

"On what terms were you on with Mrs. Ducane which could make it possible for you to think she would send you to arrest her husband?"

"I got a very great deal of information concerning Ducane's fraudulence from his wife—without her knowledge, of course. I obtained it principally at her own house where I visited very often."

"You mean that you went to a man's house and ate his bread and used his friendship as a cloak to extract damning information about him from his wife?"

"Certainly. I had to have the information."

"But you could not have gained the knowledge that sent you to Lobstick in this way? Please explain the matter fully."

"It has been said that Mrs. Ducane and I acted in collusion in the fact of Ducane's disappearance. That is so far from being the case that she deliberately gave me misinformation in order to prevent his capture. I was under the impression that she was telling the truth. I knew that she had a great deal to bear from Ducane, and I was—I imagined that she had taken me into her confidence for the first time. It was not until I got to Lobstick Island that I realised how fully she had tricked me."

"If she had never given you her confidence before, why should you have expected and believed it on such an important point then? Was it not more likely that you should be suspicious of her desire to betray her husband?"

Dick looked across at Jennifer, and he hesitated a moment.

"Through all our friendship Mrs. Ducane has kept me