"I've only just been looking round the two
top floors--I ain't touched a thing. Give a cove a chance, sir."
"You've been looking round, have you?" said Deede Dawson slowly.
"Did you find anything to interest you?"
"I've only been in the bedrooms and the attics," answered Dunn,
changing not a muscle of his countenance and thinking boldness his
safest course, for he knew well the slightest sign or hint of
knowledge that he gave would mean his death. "I'd only just come
downstairs when you copped me, sir; I ain't touched a thing in one
of these rooms down here."
"Haven't you?" said Deede Dawson slowly, and his face was paler,
his eyes more deadly, the muzzle of his pistol yet more inflexibly
steady than before.
More clearly still did Dunn realize that the faintest breath of
suspicion stirring in the other's mind that he knew of what was
hidden in the attic would mean certain death and just such another
neat little hole bored through heart or brain as that he had seen
showing in the forehead of his dead friend.
"Haven't you, though?" Deede Dawson repeated. "The bedrooms--the
attics--that's all?"
"Yes, sir, that's all, take my oath that's all," Dunn repeated
earnestly, as if he wished very much to impress on his captor that
he had searched bedrooms and attics thoroughly, but not these
downstairs rooms.
Deede Dawson was plainly puzzled, and for the first time a little
doubt seemed to show in his hard grey eyes.
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