The Odds | Page 4

coloured in some confusion under his look. How could she expect to make a policeman understand? "No--no!" she said, with vehemence. "I'm not quite so soft as that. I'd shoot him myself if he came my way. But I hate to think of a dozen men all on the track of one. It really isn't fair."
He laughed, but without superiority. "And yet you'd swell the odds? Do you call that fair?"
Dot paused to collect her arguments. It seemed that possibly even this machine of justice carried a small fragment of sympathy in his soul. Certainly he was not the judicial automaton she had expected him to be.
"It's like this," she said. "I'd shoot him if he came my way because he has done us a lot of mischief, and I want to stop it. But I'd do it squarely. I wouldn't do it when he wasn't looking. And I wouldn't--ever--make it my profession to hunt down criminals and even employ black men to help. I think that's hateful. I couldn't live that way. I'd be above it."
"I see." He lifted his glass to her in a silent toast, and drank a deep draught. "Then if you chanced to know where he was, I take it you'd just settle him yourself, if you could. But you wouldn't in any case give him away to the police. Is that your point of view?"
"It isn't unreasonable, is it?" she said, with a touch of eagerness. "I mean, if you weren't what you are, wouldn't you do the same?"
"I don't know," he said, smiling at her whimsically. "You see, being what I am handicaps me rather. I haven't much time for working out nice problems."
Dot leaned back again. He had disappointed her. But she could not neglect her duty on that account. She took her arm out of the water and dried it. Then she arose.
"How does it feel?" he said.
"Oh, only a little stiff," she answered, turning away. "Now I am going to get you something to eat. Sit down, won't you?"
Her tone was distant, but he did not seem to notice any change. He thanked her and sat down, facing the open door. Robin sat pressed against his knee. It was evident that the dog entertained no doubts regarding the visitor. Having passed him as respectable, he accepted him without reserve.
This fact presently occurred to Dot as she waited upon her visitor, and, since it was not her nature to prolong an uncomfortable situation, she broke the silence to comment upon it.
"He doesn't take to everyone at sight," she said.
"No?" She saw again that frank, disarming smile. "You see, missis, I know the ways of animals, and a very useful sort of knowledge I've found it."
"I wonder why you call me missis," she said. "I'm Jack's sister, not his wife."
He looked up at her. "But you're the boss of the establishment, I take it?"
She smiled also half against her will. "I'm rather new at present. But no doubt I shall learn."
"And then you'll go and boss some one else?" he suggested.
She coloured a little. "No. I shall stick to Jack," she said, with decision.
"Lucky Jack!" he said. "But you're quite right. There's no one good enough for you around here. We're a low breed mostly."
"I didn't mean that!" she protested, in quick distress. "I never thought that!"
"I know," he said. "I know. But you've sort of felt it all the same. Me, for instance!" His intensely blue eyes challenged her suddenly. "Haven't you said to yourself, 'That man may be up to local standard, but he's made of shocking crude material'? Straight now! Haven't you?"
She hesitated, her face burning under his direct look. "Do you--do you really want to know what I think?" she said.
"I do." There was something uncompromising in the brief rejoinder, yet somehow she did not find him formidable.
She answered him without difficulty in spite of her embarrassment. "I think, then, that it isn't you yourself at all that I feel like that about. It's just your profession."
"Ah!" He began to smile again. "Once live down that, and I might be possible. Is that it?"
She nodded, still flushed, yet curiously not uneasy. "Something like that. Why can't you be a farmer like Jack?"
"I wish I were," he said, unexpectedly.
"Why?" The word slipped out almost in spite of her, but she felt she must have an answer.
He answered her with his eyes full on her. "Because I'd like to lead the sort of life you would approve of," he said. "I've a notion it would be worth while."
She turned aside from his look. "It's only a matter of opinion, of course," she said.
"Is it?" he said. He turned his attention to the meal before him, and ate rapidly for a few moments while he considered the matter. At length: "Yes,"