Only it may take till after ten
o'clock. That's what I came to say."

"Save your breath! Ten o'clock's the time. If she doesn't want me to go
back on my bargain she'd better not go back on hers."

He looked more than ever like a ferret, the girl thought.

"Mrs. Sands made no bargain as to time," she said. "And talking of time,
what about the time _you've_ done?"

Peterson gave a cackling laugh. "What's the female for 'Smart Aleck'?"
he sneered. "Guessed by my complexion, did yuh? Well, I don't need to
make no secret of it. My gardeens wished me good-bye and Lord bless me
when the nine months they run me in for was up."

Clo thought she could come close to guessing what the charge had been,
and it would have needed more than the word of a ferret to assure her of
his "innocence." The man was a born sneak-thief or pickpocket. His hands
were slim and small as a girl's. Perhaps if temptation had been put in
his way while he "waited at the newsstand" for Beverley, all those
months ago, he had been unable to resist and thus had missed his
appointment. Not that the girl much cared as to this detail; it was not
her affair. But it was odd, almost "creepy," how the links were being
joined together in the chain of evidence against O'Reilly, the man who
had followed Angel into the Limited--the man against whom Clo had
presently to try her wits. What concerned her most was that her first
attempt at bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her
to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the
moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her
disappointment with a little swagger.

"It suits us just as well as you, to finish up at ten o'clock and get it
over," she said. "If we can, we will. If we can't, you'll have to wait.
The way things are, you have to be in with us, you see, not against us."

"Oh, do I? I ain't so sure!" he flung back. "I ain't sure my fine
madam's not in the game t'other way round--and her husband, too. I know
now that she and Roger Sands travelled in the same train from where she
started. Blowed if I see why she'd do it, but it might be they fixed a
frame-up between them. I can see why it would suit Sands, if it wouldn't
her, and a man's stronger than a woman. Sands was working for John Heron
at the time. That means a lot."

"It doesn't mean that Mrs. Sands would be disloyal to her word. I know
she's true as steel," Clo insisted. She spoke crisply, but her th