"Sit down, Alison," he invited at length. "Do you want some coffee?"
"No, thank you," she answered coldly. Nevertheless, she accepted a corner of the tarpaulin, and sank to the ground with a tired sigh.
"What did you have to do with the killings in that cabin yonder?" he inquired bluntly.
The girl's face went deathly white for an instant, and then an angry scarlet suddenly flamed in her cheeks. "Nothing!" she said in a choking voice. "I don't know a thing about that—what happened. You—you're very—you shan't say such abominable things to me."
"I want to talk to you," remarked the superintendent placidly, "and I thought we'd get the hardest part over first." He hitched his weight around so he could observe the reflecting firelight upon her face, and proceeded with his ruthless catechism.
Under the fire of questions the girl sat inert, scarcely breathing, her tormented eyes veiled by heavy drooping lashes. Sometimes she answered Devreaux's sharp interrogations in seeming frankness, sometimes she only pretended to answer, sometimes her lips closed, trembling, as she stubbornly shook her head. Now and then her glance strayed surreptitiously towards the corporal, as though seeking some hope of mercy from the younger man.
But Dexter did not once look her direction. He sat a little apart, and his face was revealed to her only in profile, its firm, rugged lines showing almost gaunt in the firelight, changeless and unreadable as sculptured bronze. His straight lips were mutely compressed, and his eyes, darkened by night to murky gray, never once left off their brooding contemplation of the fire. The girl watched him at first in faintly hopeful appeal, then with a baffled knitting of arched brows, and finally she turned from him altogether to bow her head drearily before Devreaux's volley of questions.
Her ordeal lasted for some time, but finally the superintendent decided that he was wasting his breath. His method of attack was direct and forceful, like bludgeon work, but when he finished he knew no more about the mysterious young woman than Dexter could have told him. "All right, Alison," he observed with a ponderous shrug. "Without a rack and thumbscrews, I guess we've gone as far as we're going to go."
He scrutinized her for a moment with puckered eyes. "You know, of course, that you're putting yourself in the worst possible light. That's up to you. I give you credit for this much, though: you haven't tried to make us swallow any lies." He relaxed for a moment in an iron-visaged smile. "All tired out, aren't you, Alison?"
"Dead tired," she murmured.