“How goes it, _Maida?_” I asked. It was the name the Baron had used.
She started; the knife stopped its work. She looked up, glancing nervously about the room.
“God!” she said. “You're gettin' nervy, ain't you?”
No speech could have been more unlike the speech of the smooth and respectful Sara.
I smiled as evilly as I could. “Once in a while I take a risk, that's all. Don't refer to it again. But answer my questions, will you? Anything new?”
“God, no! I'm about done with this game. Housework is no holiday to me, and since they nabbed the Nobleman my heart's gone out of me. Our game's about up, unless we get that--“here she used a string of vile, whispered epithets--“this afternoon, and I don't think it's likely. He's got nine lives, that cat of a Hovey!”
My heart thumped. I dared not ask her meaning.
Sara went on, only it was certainly Maida that spoke in the coarse, breathless, furtive voice. “If the Nobleman has talked, they're coming back for us. There's a dozen chances the bridge trick won't work. And, even if it does, the whole pack will be down here to investigate. All very well for you to say that we need just twenty-four free hours to pull the thing off, but I tell you what, madam, Jaffrey and me are gettin' pretty sick--we'd like a glimpse of them jools.”
One phrase of this speech had struck me deaf and half blind. I made a sign of caution to the horrible creature, and I went out. I stopped in the hall to look at the tall grandfather's clock ticking loudly and solemnly. It was already very nearly five o'clock. Paul Dabney's train was in, and he was on his way to “The Pines.” I stood there stupidly repeating “the bridge trick” over and over to myself. The bridge trick! Henry had had a saw and an axe. He might just as easily have been weakening a plank as strengthening it. Had it not been for my presence, his entire reliance on my skill in diverting Mrs. Brane's suspicion, we should not have seen him at his work. But thinking me his leader, the real instigator of the crime, he had probably decided that for some reason I had brought Mrs. Brane purposely to watch him at his task. It was five o'clock. Paul Dabney would be near the bridge. He was probably bringing with him a detective, this Hovey, of whom Sara had spoken so vilely. And the red-haired woman did not mean them to reach “The Pines” that night. By this time she probably had some knowledge of the secret of the bookcase, and she must feel that she had successfully frightened away my desire to take out a book at night. She would rob the bookcase some time within the next twenty-four hours, before any one found the smothered bodies of Paul Dabney and his companion, and with her treasure she would be off. Sara and Henry would give notice. I stood there as though movement were impossible, and yet I knew that everything depended upon haste.