When, however, I informed her that my orders were to take her to the laboratory, she demurred vigorously. It was more by threat than anything else that I managed to get her to go. She finally assented, nervously. Her whole attitude was one of not knowing what to expect this time.
In silence I escorted her in the taxicab to the laboratory, arriving there last of all, due to the cajolery I had been compelled to use to avoid forcing the issue.
Leslie and Lathrop were waiting already. As we entered, Honora bowed to Doctor Lathrop, who returned the bow courteously. Clearly, I thought, this is merely the relation of physician and patient. Doyle had returned, but McCabe was not with him. Shattuck had almost fought against coming, but only a direct threat of arrest on the part of Doyle had succeeded with him. Doyle was correspondingly watchful of his prey. Shattuck bowed to Honora, and I saw that she returned the bow, a slight flush spread over her face. What was it—fear for him or of him?
Perhaps Shattuck misinterpreted the action. At any rate, he seemed not content with a mere bow. He stepped forward.
"I hope, Honora," he remarked, in a low voice, but not so low that I could not catch it, "that you will not think this unpleasantness is in any way due to anything I've done."
For a moment Honora stared at Shattuck, then at Doyle, and finally at Kennedy.
"Not at all," she murmured. "It seems that I no longer have anything whatever to say about my own actions."
She said it with a sarcasm that was cutting, and at the same time with a keen observation of the rest of us. It was as though she were trying to read our minds. Kennedy, at least, gave her no chance.
As she entered, he greeted her blandly, and one would never have known from the look on his face or from his manner that it was he who had ordered them all assembled in his laboratory. He was the coolest of us all.
"I am going to try a little affair here that may or may not yield some results," he remarked, picking up one of the cuff attachments that lay before him on the table. "It is a simple enough thing. You merely slip this cuff over the wrist—so," he illustrated.