train without my knowing it? Non! And how else could he have reached you before I? You are playing with me, ma petite Inés. That you did join the Kid, I do not doubt. But not in New Orleans. You did not go there. You came here to San Francisco.”
“Edouard!” she protested, fingering his sleeve with one brown hand, the other holding her throat as if she were having trouble getting the words out. “You cannot think that thing! Do not those weeks in Boston say it is not possible? For one like the Kid—or like any other—am I to betray you? You know me not more than to think I am like that?”
She was an actress. She was appealing, and pathetic, and anything else you like—including dangerous.
The Frenchman took his sleeve away from her and stepped back a step. White lines ringed his mouth below his tiny mustache, and his jaw muscles bulged. His one good eye was worried. She had got to him, though not quite enough to upset him altogether. But the game was young yet.
“I do not know what to think,” he said slowly. “If I have been wrong—I must find the Kid first. Then I will learn the truth.”
“You don’t have to look no further, brother. I’m right among you!”
The Whosis Kid stood in the passageway door. A black revolver was in each of his hands. Their hammers were up.