He was at a loss in his desire to avoid a tautological repetition of a certain phrase.
“Settle down,” she suggested; “be dull and honest?”
“But, surely, Kate,” said Gregori impatiently, “you don’t want to be a hunted beast all your life?”
“Why not?” she asked in astonishment. “It is just as much fun being hunted as hunting. You have said that a score of times. Does Michael Pretherston—”
“Oh, hang Michael Pretherston,” said Gregori.
“Does Michael Pretherston,” she went on, “get as much fun out of chasing me, as I get out of escaping him? Does Michael Pretherston find the same exhilaration of mind in following on my tracks as I find in keeping ahead of him?”
“Anyway,” said Gregori. “I have had enough of it and I want to go out of the business and I advise you to do the same. And there is another thing, Kate—”
He looked at the Colonel for support, but Colonel Westhanger found it convenient at that moment to be staring at the skylight.
“What is the other thing?” she asked.
“Well, you know I am fond of you,” he said, “and I want to—” he floundered.
“Settle down,” she suggested innocently; “what is all this ‘settling down’ that everybody loves so much? Does it mean we shall never plan another great coup?” She leant her elbows on the table. “Honestly, I am not being wilfully dense. I know money is useful, because it helps one to prepare the way for making more money, but I have not been in this,” she waved her hand, “in all these things for money. I told Michael Pretherston so and he believed me.”
“What have you been telling Michael Pretherston?” asked Gregori suspiciously.
“I told him that,” she said simply.
“But, my dear girl,” said her uncle, “fun and excitement and all that sort of thing are well enough in their way, but you don’t mean to tell me, at this hour, that you have not been working for the ‘stuff’?”
“I will tell you as much at this or any other hour,” she answered immediately.
“I see,” said Gregori with a faint smile, “then really you are what I would call a criminal artist—art for art’s sake, eh?”
“I mean that,” she said again. “One must not judge one’s successes by the amount of money one has made.”
“That is how I joodge it,” said the thick voice of Francis Stockmar; “so much mooney, so much sugsess, isn’t it?”
“I tell you frankly,” said Gregori. “I am in this for the money and so is your uncle. We have taken many risks, some of us have been caught and some of us,” he said significantly, “have been lucky. I’ve got thirty years in front of me, with any luck, and so I am going to—”
“Settle down,” suggested Kate ironically.
“I am going to quit.”
“Come, come, be sensible, Kate,” said the Colonel, patting her on the shoulder. “You have been a very good girl and we owe you almost everything we have. I am sure everyone agrees that you have been the brains of our—er—association. The only time when any of us have been caught is when we have gone out on a side line of our own. Now leave well alone.”
“When hunters have caught the fox,” she said, “do they leave well alone and never hunt again? In war, when a soldier comes through a battle safely, does he leave well alone and never go into action again? Does the huntsman who is nearly caught by a lion leave well, and lions, alone?”
“This is different,” said her uncle doggedly.
“But I don’t understand it. If what you say is right, then I am wrong and have been wrong all my life. I am wrong and the police are right.”
“Of course, they’re right,” said Gregori; “what rubbish you are talking.”
“The police are right?” she asked in open-eyed astonishment.
“Of course they are right. They must protect society. In five years’ time, when I am settled on my little estate in Spain and my house is burgled do you imagine I shall not call in the police?”
“I know they are right in their way,” she said, as if she were speaking her thoughts aloud, “but we are right, too.”
“We cannot both be right,” said Colonel Westhanger.
“I asked you some time ago,” she said, turning to him, “which was the better life—the dull life or ours. They cannot both be better. The elementary conditions cannot change. That life must be the best, or ours.”
“That life is best,” said the Colonel decisively.
She looked at him steadily.
“Then why have you let me live this?” she asked. “You cannot change me. I cannot change. I cannot!” she said with vehemence and the men noted with amazement the emotion she displayed. “Nothing can change me!”
Gregori reached out and took her hand, but she snatched it away.
“I will tell you what can change you, little girl,” he said undeterred by the rebuff, “love can change you. Give me a chance.”
She looked at him and laughed in his face.
“Will you be good or bad, honest or dishonest? You will only be a half man, living two lives. Marry you! And am I to go into witness boxes to testify against your burglar? And prosecute your poachers? I am living now, what I believe to be the truth. I believe I have the right to match my wits against the world and take, by my intelligence, what the old robber barons took by brutal strength. If I pass to the other side I should be a liar, living a life in which I did not believe. I am going on.”
“Then you will go on by yourself.”
“Will I?” she asked softly.
“Go out and find somebody who thinks as you think if you can,” sneered Gregori; “you will be obliged to live a lie, anyway. You will never meet a man who believes in stealing, who believes in fraud and who will go on
