“Like to tie him up that way now?” asked Deede Dawson.  “You shall if you like.”

She turned and looked full at Dunn and he looked back at her with eyes as steady and as calm as her own.

Again she showed that faint doubt and wonder which had flickered through her level gaze before as though she felt that there was more in all this than was apparent, and did not wish to condemn him utterly without a hearing.

But it was plain also that she did not wish to say too much before her stepfather and she answered carelessly

“I don’t think I could tie him tight enough, besides, he looks ridiculous enough like that with his hands up in the air.”

It was her revenge for what he had made her suffer.  He felt himself flush and he knew that she knew that her little barbed shaft had struck home.

“Well, go and look through his pockets,” Deede Dawson said.  “And see if he’s got a revolver.  Don’t be frightened; if he lowers his hands he’ll be a dead man before he knows it.”

“He has a pistol,” she said.  “He showed it me, it’s in his coat pocket.”

“Better get it then,” Deede Dawson told her.  She obeyed and brought him the weapon, and he nodded with satisfaction as he put it in his own pocket.

“I think we might let you put your hands down now,” he remarked, and Dunn gladly availed himself of the permission, for every muscle in his arms was aching badly.

He remained standing by the wall while Deede Dawson, seating himself on the chair to which Ella had been bound, rested his chin on his left hand and, with the pistol still ready in his right, regarded Dunn with a steady questioning gaze.

Ella was standing near the bed.  She had poured a few drops of eau-de-Cologne on her wrists and was rubbing them softly, and for ever after the poignant pleasant odour of the scent has remained associated in Robert Dunn’s mind with the strange events of that night so that always even the merest whiff of it conjures up before his mind a picture of that room with himself silent by the fireplace and Ella silent by the bed and Deede Dawson, pistol in hand, seated between them, as silent also as they, and very watchful.

Ella appeared fully taken up with her occupation and might almost have forgotten the presence of the two men.  She did not look at either of them, but continued to rub and chafe her wrists softly.

Deede Dawson had forgotten for once to smile, his brow was slightly wrinkled, his cold grey eyes intent and watchful, and Dunn felt very sure that he was thinking out some plan or scheme.

The hope came to him that Deede Dawson was thinking he might prove of use, and that was the thought which, above all others, he wished the other to have.  It was, indeed, that thought which all his recent actions had been aimed to implant in Deede Dawson’s mind till his dreadful discovery in the attic had seemed to make at last direct action possible.  How, in his present plight that thought, if Deede Dawson should come to entertain it, might yet prove his salvation.  Now and again Deede Dawson gave him quick, searching glances, but when at last he spoke it was Ella he addressed.