He hardly gave a single glance at Dunn, whose
faintest movement before had never escaped him. He had even put his
pistol back in his pocket, and at almost any moment Dunn, with his
unusual strength and agility, could have seized and mastered him.
But for such an enterprise Dunn had no longer any spirit, for all
his mind was taken up by that one picture so clear in his thoughts
of Ella in her great car driving the dead man through the night.
"She must know," he said to himself. "She must, or she would never
have gone off like that at that time--she can't know, it's
impossible, or she would never have dared."
And again it seemed to him that this doubt was driving him mad.
Deede Dawson entered the house and got a bottle of whisky and a
syphon of soda-water and mixed himself a drink. For the first time
since Ella's departure he seemed to remember Dunn's presence.
"Oh, there you are," he said.
Dunn did not answer. He stood moodily on the threshold, wondering
why he did not rush upon the other, and with his knee upon his chest,
his hands about his throat, force him to answer the question that
was still whispering, shouting, screaming itself into his ears:
"Does she know what it is she drives with her on that big car through
the black and lonely night?"
"Like a drink?" asked Deede Dawson.
Dunn shook his head, and it came to him that he did not attack Deede
Dawson and force the truth from him because he dared not, because he
was afraid, because he feared what the answer might be.
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